(Disclaimer: I'm the author of one of the books linked at the end of the post.) Design is not just important for usability, but also for marketing. If you have

(Disclaimer: I'm the author of one of the books linked at the end of the post.) Design is not just important for usability, but also for marketing. If you have an awesome framework, you have to get the word out so people know about it and want to use it. It's not the same kind of marketing a business uses because it's not directly tied to revenue, but it is important if you want said framework to be used and its surrounding community to grow. How many blog posts do you see complaining about or even advocating the new framework hotness? People are jumping ship to Node.js now and saying Rails sucks, and there's consistently a new framework du jour. I'm not saying that's a good thing, but it is definitely proof that marketing affects framework adoption. I know it sounds kind of scummy to talk about marketing OSS. The point isn't to position Python as the sexy new language everyone needs to switch to, but to represent the community and quality tools and knowledge it offers. If a new programmer visits the Django site and then the Rails site, might they assume Django is a smaller community because the site isn't as pretty? Maybe the first impression is that Django isn't as well maintained, when we all know that's not true.