[Demiurge]

So the ORM is too stupid to know that in the case the other_id is NULL, it doesn't need to create a join subquery. But would you rather the PostgreSQL query planner figure this out or do it yourself in python? I would like to see the time difference both queries take, and I don't think I would want Django ORM to do this.

[zzzeek]

I think you should run EXPLAIN ANALYZE on both queries and see what you find.

[Demiurge]

I now understand that it won't be optimized away because it's doing something, and I think I still want it to do that something. I've run into plenty of ORM limitations and use custom SQL for procedures and custom joints, but I still wouldn't call Django ORM stupid for doing what it's doing, in this case.