Why does CI Wiz use entities instead of plain arrays?

CI4 entities give you typed, predictable objects instead of anonymous associative arrays. The benefits are practical: - **Type safety**: fields are cast to their declared types (int, bool, datetime) automatically, so you stop getting ``"1"`` instead of `true` from TINYINT(1) columns. - **Autocomplete**: your IDE knows the entity's properties and can complete them, which associative arrays cannot offer. - **Encapsulation**: you can add computed properties, mutators, and business logic to an entity class without touching the model. - **Portability**: an entity is a plain PHP class with no CI4 framework dependency in its interface, making it easy to use in contexts outside the framework. For developers coming from CI3 who are used to `$row->field` on a `stdClass` result, the mental model is essentially the same — the difference is that the class is explicit, documented, and typed.