[murkt]

Seeing a new library in 2026 that uses Django-style filter syntax is really surprising.

With SQLAlchemy approach I can easily find all usages of a particular column everywhere.

    .filter(Folder.user_id == user_id)

Versus

    .filter(user_id=user_id)

Grepping by user_id will obviously produce hundreds and thousands of matches, probably from dozens of tables.

[mr_Fatalyst]

You can't call filter() without a model. It's always Folder.objects.filter(user_id=user_id), so the context is right there in the code. Plus the generated .pyi stubs give your IDE full type info per model, so "go to usages" works through the type system.

[murkt]

When it’s a simple single-line query: sure.

When they’re 30 lines apart, because it’s a function that builds a complex query with joins and filters based on some function arguments: not easy.

I don’t really understand how .pyi will give me proper Find usages here. I haven’t used them a lot, though, and just rely on pycharm Find Usages or just rg.

Also, what about foreign keys? Let’s say it’s a filter on user__email__startswith. Are you able to find it when executing Find Usages on User.email field?