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Isn’t part of the point of the article that it is not a starting point UI? “[The admin] is not intended for building your entire front end around.” Or have a mi

by 542458 3y ago

Isn’t part of the point of the article that it is not a starting point UI? “[The admin] is not intended for building your entire front end around.” Or have a misunderstood what the author is saying?

3c6bYDXLMj 3y ago
Yep. You’re on the money. Look at it this way. The product I worked on got acquired, and we went from a 5 person bootstrapped company that knew the product intimately, to all sorts of far less familiar customer support, sales, etc people needing to do various sorts of “admin” actions. I flat-out refused to subject these newbies to Django admin, and prioritised building proper administrative tooling. That decision has paid dividends. Django admin by its nature is always going to expose idiosyncrasies of your data model and by its own admission doesn’t give you infinite opportunity to insert your business logic layer. Cue someone used to working in “scale until you die” startups telling me that any time not spend on juicing MAU is time wasted. I like working in sustainable businesses. I’ve worked with Django for a decade. I’ve done ungodly things with Django admin. Things most people wouldn’t dream of. I am completely over doing any of that. This isn’t a fault of Django admin. It’s very good at doing what it’s intended to do. It’s just a very common beginner’s trap to try to push it further than it wants to go. There’s plenty to critique Django admin for. I fought with it just last week. At the same time, most complaints I see about it tend to be people (IMO) misusing it. It’s the service panel. And yes, people other than the engineers that built the thing have reason to pop open the service panel. These are your mechanics. But, and especially for SaaS products, don’t conflate “user” with “customer”, and not think about your other audiences.
bonzini 3y ago
It's a starting point for the developer to interact with the database, before the frontend is complete.
- hnfong 3y ago
  FWIW, pretty sure it's _also_ intended for the developer (and "admin") to use the admin interface to interact with the database even after the frontend is complete..
_joel 3y ago
Perhaps, yes, I'm referring to the question being posed more than anything. I understand the point, but imho the default admin is to administer the models and state, not (out of the box) intended for end users. Some don't require an admin interface anyway. I understand the sentiment though, I think :)
gnz11 3y ago
No you aren’t misunderstanding, that is directly mentioned in the docs. I think a lot of new Django devs get tripped up by that. > The admin’s recommended use is limited to an organization’s internal management tool. It’s not intended for building your entire front end around. https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/4.2/ref/contrib/admin/ https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/4.2/ref/contrib/admin/

by 542458 3y ago

3c6bYDXLMj 3y ago

Yep. You’re on the money. Look at it this way. The product I worked on got acquired, and we went from a 5 person bootstrapped company that knew the product intimately, to all sorts of far less familiar customer support, sales, etc people needing to do various sorts of “admin” actions. I flat-out refused to subject these newbies to Django admin, and prioritised building proper administrative tooling. That decision has paid dividends. Django admin by its nature is always going to expose idiosyncrasies of your data model and by its own admission doesn’t give you infinite opportunity to insert your business logic layer. Cue someone used to working in “scale until you die” startups telling me that any time not spend on juicing MAU is time wasted. I like working in sustainable businesses. I’ve worked with Django for a decade. I’ve done ungodly things with Django admin. Things most people wouldn’t dream of. I am completely over doing any of that. This isn’t a fault of Django admin. It’s very good at doing what it’s intended to do. It’s just a very common beginner’s trap to try to push it further than it wants to go. There’s plenty to critique Django admin for. I fought with it just last week. At the same time, most complaints I see about it tend to be people (IMO) misusing it. It’s the service panel. And yes, people other than the engineers that built the thing have reason to pop open the service panel. These are your mechanics. But, and especially for SaaS products, don’t conflate “user” with “customer”, and not think about your other audiences.

bonzini 3y ago

It's a starting point for the developer to interact with the database, before the frontend is complete.

hnfong 3y ago
FWIW, pretty sure it's _also_ intended for the developer (and "admin") to use the admin interface to interact with the database even after the frontend is complete..

_joel 3y ago

Perhaps, yes, I'm referring to the question being posed more than anything. I understand the point, but imho the default admin is to administer the models and state, not (out of the box) intended for end users. Some don't require an admin interface anyway. I understand the sentiment though, I think :)

gnz11 3y ago

No you aren’t misunderstanding, that is directly mentioned in the docs. I think a lot of new Django devs get tripped up by that. > The admin’s recommended use is limited to an organization’s internal management tool. It’s not intended for building your entire front end around. https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/4.2/ref/contrib/admin/ https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/4.2/ref/contrib/admin/