I'm disturbed by the fact that you are getting downvoted (here and in another comment thread on this page), largely because I largely agree. I am not an expert by any means so I try to stay atop of "best practices," but what you are saying resonates with what I thought I understood. So if you are way wrong I'd love it if somebody would come out and definitively say so.

I am using my first framework (yiiframework) at the suggestion of another dev. I still do things like

  query(user_input){
     switch(user_input){
       case(x):
         do query_x;
         break;
       case(y):
         do query_y;
         break;
   ...
   }
   }

The other dev thinks I'm nuts, but I avoid a lot of worry with this. I may lose some performance I suppose...