Study Notes & Tools

Flask blueprints: modular routing without a microservice

Blueprints group related routes, templates, and static files into a self-contained module that registers onto the main Flask app. They give you modularity without splitting the deployment.

Git: rebase vs merge

Merge preserves history exactly as it happened, with a merge commit. Rebase rewrites your branch's commits onto a new base for a linear history. Both achieve the same end state; they differ in what the log looks like and what's safe to do after.

Python f-strings: formatting that reads like text

Formatted string literals (PEP 498, Python 3.6+) embed expressions inside string literals with `{expr}` syntax, with optional format specs after a colon. Faster and more readable than %-formatting or .format().

Python list comprehensions

A concise-list-building syntax that replaces simple for-loop-and-append patterns. Supports filtering via an inline if clause.

Python virtual environments with venv

Per-project isolation for Python dependencies using the built-in venv module. Covers creation, activation across OSes, and freezing to requirements.txt.

SQL: GROUP BY and HAVING

GROUP BY collapses rows that share a key into one row per group so aggregates (COUNT, SUM, AVG) can be applied. HAVING filters groups after aggregation, where WHERE can't reach.

SQL: INNER JOIN vs LEFT JOIN

INNER JOIN keeps only matched rows from both tables. LEFT JOIN keeps every row from the left table and fills NULL where the right table has no match.

Tailwind CSS: utility-first basics

Tailwind exposes design tokens (spacing, color, typography) as small atomic class names you compose directly in HTML. Trades named-component CSS for inline composition; pairs with a build step that strips unused classes.

Interactive flashcard runner that loads a deck from study_content/decks/ and quizzes in random order. Stub — not implemented yet.

Interactive linear-regression playground. Paste a two-column dataset, see the fitted line, R², residuals, and a scatter plot. Stub — not implemented yet.

Read-only in-browser SQL playground seeded with a small example schema (users, orders, products). Run queries against it to practice JOINs, aggregations, and subqueries without setting up a database. Stub — not implemented yet.