Here are a few Django packages that I have found useful multiple times when setting up a new Django application.

As a software engineer, I tend to be on the frugal side and try not to over spoil myself, but there are certain purchases that I think make your life more comfortable. People often say that you spend 1/3 of your life sleeping so it makes sense to spend money on a quality mattress. Well, as a software engineer, I spend the other 2/3 of my life in front of a computer so I think there is some justification in spending on my computer and accessories. This will be the first of what I hope will be many installments of posts on my tools of the trade. This first installment will be about my keyboard.

I often find that when I am working in Django, I want to have the ability to get a summary of many objects related to a single object in an efficient manner. For larger projects or more complex scenarios there may be a reason to denormalize the data in your model and precompute such summaries, but certainly in small projects and in many situations, this is something you might want to do.