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Django is an artifact from another time period of the web, and I'd argue it's in decline. If you want an admin wrapper around your database, you have better m

Django is an artifact from another time period of the web, and I'd argue it's in decline. If you want an admin wrapper around your database, you have better many modern alternatives (I use directus). If you want low code and easy platform, you have bubble.io. If you want an easy api for your database, you can use things like hasura. If you want python frameworks, try fastapi (its third party admin is great). If you want an orm, sqlalchemy gives you more bang for your buck. Many of Django's third party packages are out of date. The data science python community has settled on Gradio. The sweet spot of Django seems to have disappeared. Jobs for Django are lower paying, and often more high stress than .net or other languages. Django has a great outreach with it's Django Girls, Afro-Django and Django Foundation. However I feel like it's technical side needs far more love, the source code needs some major refactoring and cleanup. I thought about this indepth on whether to send my daughter to django girls, or just train her in .net and c# myself.

vb-8448 3y ago
> Django is an artifact from another time period of the web, and I'd argue it's in decline. If it's able to survive other 3 or 5 years, I'd argue the pendulum will just swing back to the "django's way". > If you want an admin wrapper around your database, you have better many modern alternatives (I use directus). If you want low code and easy platform, you have bubble.io. If you want an easy api for your database, you can use things like hasura. If you want python frameworks, try fastapi (its third party admin is great). If you want an orm, sqlalchemy gives you more bang for your buck. And your requirements.txt or poetry.lock file grows and grows. The thing I really like about django is that I don't need any external packages to start. I have basically everything I need to start inside a single package and don't need to bother about how to integrate sqlalchemy with flask, how to add auth and authorization to my stack or how to check that all of my tens of dependencies are safe and regularly updated. The only thing I really miss is something like LiveView. I know there's htmx and similar, but i hope they will be some "official way".
Nextgrid 3y ago
What you mention as weaknesses would be considered strengths by other people though. I'm sure it's indeed possible to replace every single bit of Django functionality with a third-party package or service, but there's value in not having to do that.
macNchz 3y ago
Most of the alternatives you list wind up having to be cobbled together with other things to create a full application, I think Django still delivers very well on the promise of being an extensible unifying layer that keeps development focused on differentiated work rather than reinventing too many wheels. Having used Django on and off for ten years or so I don’t perceive the ecosystem to be dying–the last large project I worked on used dozens of third party Django plugins and only one or two were unmaintained, and even those had some active forks happening.
3c6bYDXLMj 3y ago
This reeks of personal taste and bias. “Django jobs pay less”? Yes, I suppose in comparison to C#/.NET jobs in corporates. To not send your daughter to Django Girls because of your personal language bias is completely lost on me. Django Girls isn’t even about learning Django. The benefit your kid is getting from that, the skills they’re really learning, are transferable. C#/.NET is just about inarguably a less approachable platform for a beginner looking to develop rapidly and have fun doing it. Python by itself just has a much lower barrier to entry. Again…it sounds like you’re not taking your personal tastes and familiarity into consideration nearly as much as you should be. You’ve also entirely missed the point of Django admin. It is not your app. It is not your project. It’s intended as a crutch. The fact that it integrates with your ‘front-end’ code, in a way that a no-code platform popped in front of your database does not, is literally its main selling point.
- stuckinhell 3y ago
  No I haven't missed the point at all. I've worked in the industry for over 20 years now, skills are transferable only to a degree. If you are applying to a corporate job, the person with c#/.net has the edge over someone with the equivalent experience in python/django. Developers hate admitting this, but tech stacks matter to your hiring potential. My daughter can learn teamwork and other skills from the billion other kid oriented groups, for programming skills I'm going to help her get the easiest best paying job.
  - taway1237 3y ago
    > for programming skills I'm going to help her get the easiest best paying job. Why would anyone want that? This sounds bland and boring.
  - Ancapistani 3y ago
    > If you are applying to a corporate job, the person with c#/.net has the edge over someone with the equivalent experience in python/django. If. I spent seven years working a corporate job. My pay is higher today working for startups than it would have been if I'd climbed the corporate ladder. I've had a couple of windfalls in that time: a ~$50k payout when an investment round occurred prior to an IPO, and a ~$125k payout when that IPO happened after I left. If I had joined that company earlier, more aggressively exercised my RSOs when I had them, or had stayed until the IPO occurred, I would have seen a ~$1.5m profit. I learned from that, and now choose my employer based on my estimation of their chances at a successful exit in the time period I want to commit to the company. For me, that means choosing earlier-stage companies where I can accumulate more equity. A happy side effect of that is that I have a much larger relative impact on the company's direction, which keeps me interested and engaged in their success. In other words... I have no interest in a corporate job. I know I'm far from alone in that.
evantbyrne 3y ago
You may or may not be correct about it being in decline. Who knows. What I am sure of is this: engineering managers that hire candidates primarily based on which framework they've used most recently are trash. I just got hired into a biotech job which uses a framework I had never touched before the coding exam. The process was the most intense thing I have ever experienced with nine separate screenings/interviews in which I had to beat out at least 500 other applicants. Being able and willing to learn enough to solve unfamiliar issues is so much more valuable than tooling experience in this field.
earthboundkid 3y ago
I mean, the Lawrence paper has been on WordPress for like half a decade now. It's just in a hard spot because the niche it was made for got squeezed out of the market from the middle. If you have enough money for a developer, you probably also have enough money for a real backend UX.
greenie_beans 3y ago
> I'd argue it's in decline can you please expand upon this argument? you didn't really try to convince anybody.
- stuckinhell 3y ago
  It's usage is mostly rest api's in silicon valley. It's third party ecosystem is basically dying (especially noticeable when compared to ruby on rails). Job hiring for Django is disappearing from the non startup arena, which is especially bad for career developers since you need a career pathway.
  - biorach 3y ago
    You got any citations at all for those claims?
  - greenie_beans 3y ago
    i use it everyday and i'm nowhere near silicon valley. i've also noticed a lot of startup hiring posts for django developers. we are both speaking anecdotally, but here is the HN hiring post from october 2023 that includes 9 posts: https://hnhiring.com/search?q=django https://hnhiring.com/search?q=django
    - stuckinhell 3y ago
      That's my point, only startups using a software is a negative signal for a career developer.
      - greenie_beans 3y ago
        ah, i see. maybe so. agree to disagree about django being bad for a career.
      - biorach 3y ago
        and how do you know that only startups are using it?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

vb-8448 3y ago

> Django is an artifact from another time period of the web, and I'd argue it's in decline. If it's able to survive other 3 or 5 years, I'd argue the pendulum will just swing back to the "django's way". > If you want an admin wrapper around your database, you have better many modern alternatives (I use directus). If you want low code and easy platform, you have bubble.io. If you want an easy api for your database, you can use things like hasura. If you want python frameworks, try fastapi (its third party admin is great). If you want an orm, sqlalchemy gives you more bang for your buck. And your requirements.txt or poetry.lock file grows and grows. The thing I really like about django is that I don't need any external packages to start. I have basically everything I need to start inside a single package and don't need to bother about how to integrate sqlalchemy with flask, how to add auth and authorization to my stack or how to check that all of my tens of dependencies are safe and regularly updated. The only thing I really miss is something like LiveView. I know there's htmx and similar, but i hope they will be some "official way".

Nextgrid 3y ago

What you mention as weaknesses would be considered strengths by other people though. I'm sure it's indeed possible to replace every single bit of Django functionality with a third-party package or service, but there's value in not having to do that.

macNchz 3y ago

Most of the alternatives you list wind up having to be cobbled together with other things to create a full application, I think Django still delivers very well on the promise of being an extensible unifying layer that keeps development focused on differentiated work rather than reinventing too many wheels. Having used Django on and off for ten years or so I don’t perceive the ecosystem to be dying–the last large project I worked on used dozens of third party Django plugins and only one or two were unmaintained, and even those had some active forks happening.

3c6bYDXLMj 3y ago

This reeks of personal taste and bias. “Django jobs pay less”? Yes, I suppose in comparison to C#/.NET jobs in corporates. To not send your daughter to Django Girls because of your personal language bias is completely lost on me. Django Girls isn’t even about learning Django. The benefit your kid is getting from that, the skills they’re really learning, are transferable. C#/.NET is just about inarguably a less approachable platform for a beginner looking to develop rapidly and have fun doing it. Python by itself just has a much lower barrier to entry. Again…it sounds like you’re not taking your personal tastes and familiarity into consideration nearly as much as you should be. You’ve also entirely missed the point of Django admin. It is not your app. It is not your project. It’s intended as a crutch. The fact that it integrates with your ‘front-end’ code, in a way that a no-code platform popped in front of your database does not, is literally its main selling point.

stuckinhell 3y ago
No I haven't missed the point at all. I've worked in the industry for over 20 years now, skills are transferable only to a degree. If you are applying to a corporate job, the person with c#/.net has the edge over someone with the equivalent experience in python/django. Developers hate admitting this, but tech stacks matter to your hiring potential. My daughter can learn teamwork and other skills from the billion other kid oriented groups, for programming skills I'm going to help her get the easiest best paying job.
- taway1237 3y ago
  > for programming skills I'm going to help her get the easiest best paying job. Why would anyone want that? This sounds bland and boring.
- Ancapistani 3y ago
  > If you are applying to a corporate job, the person with c#/.net has the edge over someone with the equivalent experience in python/django. If. I spent seven years working a corporate job. My pay is higher today working for startups than it would have been if I'd climbed the corporate ladder. I've had a couple of windfalls in that time: a ~$50k payout when an investment round occurred prior to an IPO, and a ~$125k payout when that IPO happened after I left. If I had joined that company earlier, more aggressively exercised my RSOs when I had them, or had stayed until the IPO occurred, I would have seen a ~$1.5m profit. I learned from that, and now choose my employer based on my estimation of their chances at a successful exit in the time period I want to commit to the company. For me, that means choosing earlier-stage companies where I can accumulate more equity. A happy side effect of that is that I have a much larger relative impact on the company's direction, which keeps me interested and engaged in their success. In other words... I have no interest in a corporate job. I know I'm far from alone in that.

evantbyrne 3y ago

You may or may not be correct about it being in decline. Who knows. What I am sure of is this: engineering managers that hire candidates primarily based on which framework they've used most recently are trash. I just got hired into a biotech job which uses a framework I had never touched before the coding exam. The process was the most intense thing I have ever experienced with nine separate screenings/interviews in which I had to beat out at least 500 other applicants. Being able and willing to learn enough to solve unfamiliar issues is so much more valuable than tooling experience in this field.

earthboundkid 3y ago

I mean, the Lawrence paper has been on WordPress for like half a decade now. It's just in a hard spot because the niche it was made for got squeezed out of the market from the middle. If you have enough money for a developer, you probably also have enough money for a real backend UX.

greenie_beans 3y ago

> I'd argue it's in decline can you please expand upon this argument? you didn't really try to convince anybody.

stuckinhell 3y ago
It's usage is mostly rest api's in silicon valley. It's third party ecosystem is basically dying (especially noticeable when compared to ruby on rails). Job hiring for Django is disappearing from the non startup arena, which is especially bad for career developers since you need a career pathway.
- biorach 3y ago
  You got any citations at all for those claims?
- greenie_beans 3y ago
  i use it everyday and i'm nowhere near silicon valley. i've also noticed a lot of startup hiring posts for django developers. we are both speaking anecdotally, but here is the HN hiring post from october 2023 that includes 9 posts: https://hnhiring.com/search?q=django https://hnhiring.com/search?q=django
  - stuckinhell 3y ago
    That's my point, only startups using a software is a negative signal for a career developer.
    - greenie_beans 3y ago
      ah, i see. maybe so. agree to disagree about django being bad for a career.
    - biorach 3y ago
      and how do you know that only startups are using it?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]