This boilerplate project is without doubt going to save people a lot of time, and is a great contribution to the community. That said, boilerplate projects to

This boilerplate project is without doubt going to save people a lot of time, and is a great contribution to the community. That said, boilerplate projects to get started with a technology or a group of technologies are a red flag that they are overly complex and not built sufficiently modularly (or at the very least people are going about learning them wrong/they're being cargo-culted). I think that boilerplate projects encourage non-essential complexity. I do realize that software becomes complex because of the things it must do -- many of the tools listed in the boilerplate project are there precisely because they add robustness (this could also be called "essential complexity") that is necessary for a robust end product -- and they often solve problems that should not be solved more than once. I am, however, a firm believer that developers should come to find these tools themselves, after confronting and getting to know the problem intimately. Just wanted to leave that thought here -- if you're seeing this and thinking "awesome, now I can get started on my first web app", please don't. You'll probably build more sturdy knowledge from getting started with Flask + jquery, and then graduating once you've tacked too many things onto flask, or written too much spaghetti with jquery and want more structure.