Topic

I first encountered SQLAlchemy several years ago. I didn't get it. It seemed every line I attempted to write would drop me into 50 tabs of labarynthine documentation. Why do we have the ORM *and* Core? Should I build my tables as `Table` instances or should I be extending `Base`? How is `Base` more declarative than a function that returns `Table`s?? Can I please just write SQL??? :sob: I'm still hesitant to peek too far behind the curtain, but I do think I've finally wrapped my head around the philosophical underpinnings of the library and the different problems SQLAlchemy allows us to solve. After all, who among us works with databases that aren't problems in and of themselves?