null=True on CharField Is Always Wrong — Here Is Why

PROFESSIONAL DJANGO ENGINEERING #4 Two ways to represent 'no value' means every query that checks for empty strings has to handle both. The rule is simple once you know it. Django provides two separate flags for handling empty values on model fields. They are frequently confused, and conflating them leads to subtle bugs, inconsistent data, and queries that are harder to write than they should be. Here is the rule stated plainly, and then the reasoning behind it. null=True is a database directive