Alright, let's use the custom approach. And then you need another field. and then you need some slight type checking or (de)serialization, which can change over

Alright, let's use the custom approach. And then you need another field. and then you need some slight type checking or (de)serialization, which can change over time. You'll end up writing your own custom, kludgy ORM over time. I have seen people write their own custom crazy version of GraphQL ("I've created a JSONified way of fetching only some fields from an API call) over ego or just ignorance. It's never a good path. Why bother moving away from SQLAlchemy, which will do all of that for you in a simplified, type-checked and portable way? SQLAlchemy is literally one of the best ORMs out there, it's ease of use and maintainability is insane. People that complain about ORMs might have never really used SQLAlchemy. It is that good. I'm a fan and zzzeek is huge force behind why it is so good. And as always, if you need an escape hatch, you can use raw sql for that ONE sql statement that the ORM is giving you grief for.