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In what ways has Django been a hindrance in your experience? In my experience, I have never felt that way. When i have used a micro framework, sooner or later

In what ways has Django been a hindrance in your experience? In my experience, I have never felt that way. When i have used a micro framework, sooner or later I always regret it and wish I had Django. When I use Django, and I needed to do somthing different, I have never had a problem with it getting in the way, I have used alternate ORMs, Raw SQL, I by default use Jinja templates, and many other "non-standard" things with Django. Async has been about the only area where I would even consider anything different in the past.

bluewalt 2y ago
Not a hindrance, but something like not having a typed database, no auto completion over time, can be a real drawback (I know about django-types). Finally, in my opinion, the best reason to not use Django is not the project itself (because it will do the job in 99% case), it's because all you learn is tied to Django. Having learn Pydantic recently was a breed of fresh air, and I would reuse it in lots of projects, not only web projects.
- ensignavenger 2y ago
  I'm not sure what you mean? Django ORM works with common SQL databases, which are generally "typed"? Auto completion is generally a function of your IDE, and there are certainly IDE's with autocompletion that work well with Python and Django? I agree that Pydantic is a great library... I use it with Django quite often, as Django is a Python Library and it plays very well with other Python libraries like Pydantic.
globular-toast 2y ago
The main problem with Django is where to put business logic. It's actually kinda funny to write it like that, because that's the most important thing if you want to do something that isn't just CRUD. Quick, where would you put a high-level business function that touches multiple models? Where would you put the model-level validation for that? I've seen all of the following: in a view, in a form, in a service-layer function, arbitrarily in one of the models/managers, implicitly in the database schema (just catch the IntegrityErrror!). There are endless discussions online about where to do this. This isn't a good sign. It should be easy. The business logic should be at the heart of an application. But instead we see Django's ORM at the heart. Django models are really limiting and totally tied to the database. You can't even have a model that has a list/set of items without getting into ForeignKeys etc. You can't test any of it without having the database present. Why would I need the database to be there to test business logic?! The point of an ORM is to do object persistence, not to do business logic. So I've seen people do a separate set of ORM models and domain models and then manually mapping between them. This is possible, but it's a whole lot easier with something like SQLAlchemy which is actually designed for that (it's a data mapper rather than active record type ORM). Then there's stuff like django-admin and ModelForms etc. which are the last thing you want if you're doing more than CRUD. Tbh it would be utterly remarkable if Django somehow made this stuff easy. But it doesn't and I find myself wishing I just put in the effort to set up the boring stuff like auth etc. but with a proper architecture.
- the__alchemist 2y ago
  > Quick, where would you put a high-level business function that touches multiple models? Where would you put the model-level validation for that? It's just python: `descriptive_name.py`. `ingest_validation.py` etc. If this seems too terse, it's because your question was posed in a general way. If you have more info on the sort of business logic you have in mind, or the sort of data validation, I'll reply with more. Could you describe what you have in mind regarding models not tied to the database? If it's the naive interpretation I'm thinking of, use python dataclasses and enums. Django models are specifically to represent database schema. Reading between the lines, perhaps you are looking for something not covered by a web framework? Django's features are for responding to HTTP requests, managing a relational database, auth, email, admin, templates etc. If you're trying to do something not part of this, use other parts of the Python language. Django is a library; Python is the more fundamental tool used to build applications.
- ensignavenger 2y ago
  So you want a web framework that dictates how you structure your application code? I think one of Django's strengths is that if a component doesn't work well for the application you are building, you are always free to choose something else. If the default Django app structure doesn't work well for you, you can pick any structure that does. Though I would argue that the default structure is exactly what the vast majority of web applications need.
  - globular-toast 2y ago
    No, I want a web framework that is just a web framework. The web is just an entrypoint to an application, like a CLI or GUI. If you use something like Flask or Pyramid this is exactly what you get. They are roughly analogous to something like Qt. Something that sits at the edge of an application converting low-level user input into high-level commands and events etc. You could use Django like this, but you'd end up manually mapping between Django models and high-level domain models. But this mapping is exactly what an ORM like SQLAlchemy does! It seems crazy to do it yourself. So nobody does. They build fat models with all the business logic right next to application logic like foreign keys etc. Even if you did try to do something different developers would complain that it's no longer a "Django project". Have you ever seen any Django project do business logic completely independently of application logic?

bluewalt 2y ago

Not a hindrance, but something like not having a typed database, no auto completion over time, can be a real drawback (I know about django-types). Finally, in my opinion, the best reason to not use Django is not the project itself (because it will do the job in 99% case), it's because all you learn is tied to Django. Having learn Pydantic recently was a breed of fresh air, and I would reuse it in lots of projects, not only web projects.

ensignavenger 2y ago
I'm not sure what you mean? Django ORM works with common SQL databases, which are generally "typed"? Auto completion is generally a function of your IDE, and there are certainly IDE's with autocompletion that work well with Python and Django? I agree that Pydantic is a great library... I use it with Django quite often, as Django is a Python Library and it plays very well with other Python libraries like Pydantic.

globular-toast 2y ago

The main problem with Django is where to put business logic. It's actually kinda funny to write it like that, because that's the most important thing if you want to do something that isn't just CRUD. Quick, where would you put a high-level business function that touches multiple models? Where would you put the model-level validation for that? I've seen all of the following: in a view, in a form, in a service-layer function, arbitrarily in one of the models/managers, implicitly in the database schema (just catch the IntegrityErrror!). There are endless discussions online about where to do this. This isn't a good sign. It should be easy. The business logic should be at the heart of an application. But instead we see Django's ORM at the heart. Django models are really limiting and totally tied to the database. You can't even have a model that has a list/set of items without getting into ForeignKeys etc. You can't test any of it without having the database present. Why would I need the database to be there to test business logic?! The point of an ORM is to do object persistence, not to do business logic. So I've seen people do a separate set of ORM models and domain models and then manually mapping between them. This is possible, but it's a whole lot easier with something like SQLAlchemy which is actually designed for that (it's a data mapper rather than active record type ORM). Then there's stuff like django-admin and ModelForms etc. which are the last thing you want if you're doing more than CRUD. Tbh it would be utterly remarkable if Django somehow made this stuff easy. But it doesn't and I find myself wishing I just put in the effort to set up the boring stuff like auth etc. but with a proper architecture.

the__alchemist 2y ago
> Quick, where would you put a high-level business function that touches multiple models? Where would you put the model-level validation for that? It's just python: `descriptive_name.py`. `ingest_validation.py` etc. If this seems too terse, it's because your question was posed in a general way. If you have more info on the sort of business logic you have in mind, or the sort of data validation, I'll reply with more. Could you describe what you have in mind regarding models not tied to the database? If it's the naive interpretation I'm thinking of, use python dataclasses and enums. Django models are specifically to represent database schema. Reading between the lines, perhaps you are looking for something not covered by a web framework? Django's features are for responding to HTTP requests, managing a relational database, auth, email, admin, templates etc. If you're trying to do something not part of this, use other parts of the Python language. Django is a library; Python is the more fundamental tool used to build applications.
ensignavenger 2y ago
So you want a web framework that dictates how you structure your application code? I think one of Django's strengths is that if a component doesn't work well for the application you are building, you are always free to choose something else. If the default Django app structure doesn't work well for you, you can pick any structure that does. Though I would argue that the default structure is exactly what the vast majority of web applications need.
- globular-toast 2y ago
  No, I want a web framework that is just a web framework. The web is just an entrypoint to an application, like a CLI or GUI. If you use something like Flask or Pyramid this is exactly what you get. They are roughly analogous to something like Qt. Something that sits at the edge of an application converting low-level user input into high-level commands and events etc. You could use Django like this, but you'd end up manually mapping between Django models and high-level domain models. But this mapping is exactly what an ORM like SQLAlchemy does! It seems crazy to do it yourself. So nobody does. They build fat models with all the business logic right next to application logic like foreign keys etc. Even if you did try to do something different developers would complain that it's no longer a "Django project". Have you ever seen any Django project do business logic completely independently of application logic?