Relationships in SQLAlchemy

I got curious when I was looking over a Claude designed model for my weight tracker app. My intent was to learn why it didn’t full out normalize some tables. It scoffed and told me not to over-engineer my tables due to the scope of the audience. I might have made up the scoffing part,[…]

February 23, 2026

Rethinkering

The Fundamentals were Fundamental All Along.

I don’t know who turned me on to it, but when I was in high school, I learned about kalos kagathos. It was a philosophy about being a complete person. It isn’t enough to just be physically fit or to just be smart. It wants development of the whole person: mind, body, and character, all[…]

August 7, 2025

Factory Pattern for Testing Roles

I wanted to dig into the Factory pattern a bit. I was fighting the thought that conceptually, it’s just a class with methods, but that’s not entirely right. I think what I’m settling into is thinking of it as an object that has purpose. It’s not modeling something. It’s creating. It’s using a model, and[…]

July 1, 2025

Rethinkering

I Just Wanted to Add Features — Then I Started Testing

I’m working on a side project that uses Discord for authentication and connects to a PostgreSQL database. Once I got the login flow down, it’s super hard to resist the urge to start implementing other features as fast as possible. I mean it’s a side project, right? Yet, I can’t shake a nagging feeling, that[…]

May 14, 2025

Rethinkering

UML, Flow, Which Way Do I Go?

Help me out here. Should I chart or not? I had two project heavy courses over the last year. One professor was adamant about charting. The other couldn’t care less. In fact, I’ll paraphrase his charting advice: “I’m obligated to tell you there is a thing called a UML diagram. Some businesses use it. Some[…]

March 29, 2025

Rethinkering

Project Management to sweat the Small Stuff

The school year is chaotic to say the least. I’m juggling two group projects plus a MERN stack capstone. Not to mention, the individual projects that creep up with a baseball bat made of finely-crafted tedium ready to swing for the fences. While it may seem excessive to treat even small assignments like full-blown projects,[…]

Rethinkering