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I haven't worked with Rails, but have worked extensively with Django and this doesn't seem to be the case. Even though Django is very similar to Rails in some w

I haven't worked with Rails, but have worked extensively with Django and this doesn't seem to be the case. Even though Django is very similar to Rails in some ways, to pretty big differences is that Django seems to be much more explicit in general and (I might be wrong about this) Django seems to be easier to use in a SOA since your controllers (views in Django) are not as tightly coupled to your models.

cauterized 10y ago
That's correct. Around the time that Rails became popular, Django was undergoing a major refactoring to remove "magic" and make its underlying logic more explicit. Further smaller changes have been made since then for the same purpose: explicit over implicit, code or configuration over convention is part of Django's philosophy. IMO that also makes it easier to graduate from a beginning to an intermediate level use of the framework because while there are sane defaults in many places, in others you're required to define your specific implementation explicitly from the start. It's a tiny bit more code up front, but all the details are exposed and it's obvious how to override default behavior. And at the same time the framework supports keeping your code reasonably DRY and takes care of much of the tedious, repetitive stuff. There's still tight coupling in some places (ModelForms, for instance, are arguably part of the controller layer and are tightly coupled to the ORM). But they're reasonably optional (you can use plain Django Forms instead of ModelForms in your views or not use the Forms library at all.)
- jbbarth 10y ago
  This argument often comes up and I'm genuinely curious why people think Django is less "magic" than Rails, in my experience it has been the opposite. My experience with Django (for instance: class-based views and admin parts) is actually that you have dozens of magical classes or methods and if you don't know them all, you're screwed. Often when I try to do something, many aswers on StackOverflow boil down to "just override a_method_that_is_hidden_somewhere()" or "just use ListButWithSpecificBehaviorView(), easy you see?". Are there any specific example you have in mind where Rails do something magical that requires more code in Django but where Django is more explicit? PS: not trying to start a flamewar, both are OK-frameworks, bla bla bla ;-)

cauterized 10y ago

That's correct. Around the time that Rails became popular, Django was undergoing a major refactoring to remove "magic" and make its underlying logic more explicit. Further smaller changes have been made since then for the same purpose: explicit over implicit, code or configuration over convention is part of Django's philosophy. IMO that also makes it easier to graduate from a beginning to an intermediate level use of the framework because while there are sane defaults in many places, in others you're required to define your specific implementation explicitly from the start. It's a tiny bit more code up front, but all the details are exposed and it's obvious how to override default behavior. And at the same time the framework supports keeping your code reasonably DRY and takes care of much of the tedious, repetitive stuff. There's still tight coupling in some places (ModelForms, for instance, are arguably part of the controller layer and are tightly coupled to the ORM). But they're reasonably optional (you can use plain Django Forms instead of ModelForms in your views or not use the Forms library at all.)

jbbarth 10y ago
This argument often comes up and I'm genuinely curious why people think Django is less "magic" than Rails, in my experience it has been the opposite. My experience with Django (for instance: class-based views and admin parts) is actually that you have dozens of magical classes or methods and if you don't know them all, you're screwed. Often when I try to do something, many aswers on StackOverflow boil down to "just override a_method_that_is_hidden_somewhere()" or "just use ListButWithSpecificBehaviorView(), easy you see?". Are there any specific example you have in mind where Rails do something magical that requires more code in Django but where Django is more explicit? PS: not trying to start a flamewar, both are OK-frameworks, bla bla bla ;-)