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Ask HN: Where is the Django community?

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Re: Ask HN: Where is the Django community?

#151
post #54
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PHP would be the best web framework PHP is not a web framework like Django, it's a language like Python.There are however, many good Django like PHP frameworks. Just wanted to clarify.

Partly a slip of the keyboard. But PHP is language + web-oriented 'libraries' (actually built-ins) so the it's a blurry distinction.

In the context discussed in this thread, "framework" means code that includes MVC, URL routing, and often an ORM. PHP in itself doesn't offer that; you need a framework such as CodeIgniter or Zend Framework on top. So no, PHP isn't a "framework" in itself (at least not in the way that Django is).

Re: Ask HN: Where is the Django community?

#152
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PHP would be the best web framework PHP is not a web framework like Django, it's a language like Python.There are however, many good Django like PHP frameworks. Just wanted to clarify.

Having been writing web interactivity since before PHP, I'd disagree with you that PHP "is a language like Python". Look at how it started, as personal home page template processing scripts in Perl, and you'll see it started with much more in common with a templating tool or web framework than with a formal language. "PHP/FI was created by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1995, initially as a simple set of Perl scripts for tracking…

First of all, how it started isn't as important as where it is now. And what we have now is a full-fledged programming language. Secondly, if you can build large-scale maintainable websites with PHP, who cares how the language got started originally. It's all about what you can do with the language - and in that regard PHP is a great tool (although certainly not the only tool available).

Re: Ask HN: Where is the Django community?

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you'll find that any "free webhost" is going to give you a lot of trouble if you want to deploy a project built on a modern web framework. Rule of thumb: if it doesn't have SSH access, and it's not a Platform-as-a-Service like Heroku or Gondor, you're probably not going to have much luck deploying anything except PHP or static HTML. Check out webfaction.com, it's great for beginners and does most of the deplo…

My webhost has SSH access, it just doesn't give me root. It offers RoR through CPanel, which I just assumed would work, but I haven't tried using it so I don't really know. But I take your point, a VPS is really the best thing. I just can't convince my husband to let me spend money on it and I'm unemployed :P.

Take a look at virtualenv / virtualenvwrapper for managing your python packages. Complete lifesaver when it comes to deploying apps.

Re: Ask HN: Where is the Django community?

#154

I went through this "ror vs. django" thing a few months ago, and ended up picking up Django. I got the Django book and liked it and I had no problems with my actual project itself in terms of having enough "community." However, now I'm in the "figuring out how to deploy it" stage and it's been a real pain. My free webhost supports RoR and python, but doesn't have Django installed, I don't want to spend the money on a…

I think you'll find that any "free webhost" is going to give you a lot of trouble if you want to deploy a project built on a modern web framework. Rule of thumb: if it doesn't have SSH access, and it's not a Platform-as-a-Service like Heroku or Gondor, you're probably not going to have much luck deploying anything except PHP or static HTML. Check out webfaction.com, it's great for beginners and does most of the deplo…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Where is the Django community?

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you'll find that any "free webhost" is going to give you a lot of trouble if you want to deploy a project built on a modern web framework. Rule of thumb: if it doesn't have SSH access, and it's not a Platform-as-a-Service like Heroku or Gondor, you're probably not going to have much luck deploying anything except PHP or static HTML. Check out webfaction.com, it's great for beginners and does most of the deplo…

My webhost has SSH access, it just doesn't give me root. It offers RoR through CPanel, which I just assumed would work, but I haven't tried using it so I don't really know. But I take your point, a VPS is really the best thing. I just can't convince my husband to let me spend money on it and I'm unemployed :P.

Look into ep.io, gondor.io, djangozoom.com or one of the other recently-available Django/Python/WSGI hosts, then. They're free to start with (like Heroku) and are built with Django in mind.

Re: Ask HN: Where is the Django community?

#156
There are in fact more books focused on Rails compared to Django, and this logically reflects the inferior documentation of Rails compared to Django, necessitating and creating a greater market for additional documentation. This market doesn't exist so much for Django not because of the lack of interest in learning Django, but because the documentation is so good. End of that story.

As for the greater perceived online presence of the Rails community, I think this reflects two things:

1) Greater confusion among Rails users, who as a general group seem less technically inclined "on the whole" (there are obviously a ton of brilliant Rails developers as well). In general, Rails users want things to be pre-configured for them, and therefore never really learn how things work under the hood, and are thus ill-equipped to make simple changes to their own apps.

2) Greater Apple-like fanboy-ism among Rails users, which takes on a religious fervor with people thinking they have met salvation, and it makes them feel special. They love to evangalize about it, and this personality trait in part the perceived greater popularity of Rails.

That said, both frameworks are obviously still very popular and effective at building web applications. Try both and go with whichever one you like better, and stop fretting about whether you've made the "right" decision.

Re: Ask HN: Where is the Django community?

#157

I worked for four years in my startup in which we decided to go with django; four years ago RoR (v1.2.3) and django(0.97) were almost at par. Even though RoR had a slightly bigger community, django was clearly emerging as a leader. Both were equally good but we went for django because it had better performance, the explicit style seemed better than the inflexible conventions approach, Python's one-clear-way-of-solvin…

You clearly haven't used Django in quite some time:

try "pip freeze > requirements.txt" and "pip install -r requirements.txt" for managing dependencies between deployments

deployment is a matter of making a generic .wsgi file and pointing your server to it, how is that hard?

the "south" app makes database migrations very easy, the fact that you didn't know about this speaks volumes about your "experience"

Django is universally known to have better docs than Rails and virtually any other web framework, see almost every comment on this page

Your other comments lack any objectivity and aren't even worth responding to. I have nothing against Rails, but it's fanboys like you that give it a bad name.

Re: Ask HN: Where is the Django community?

#158
post #6

Let me tell you the truth, though this will not be popular: Django is not a good framework. It's clumsy, inflexible and restrictive. The community is pretty much dead. If you want to work in ruby, go for ror. If you want to work in python, go for a micro framework like Bottle. I made the mistake of investing a lot of my time in Django. It was not worth it in the end. All my Django projects ended up being a big mess,…

I am involved in Django and love it and the community. I only do RoR work when I have to and I hate it.

It comes down to personal preference. To me Django was much easier, more flexible, and "funner" to work in.

Re: Ask HN: Where is the Django community?

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you'll find that any "free webhost" is going to give you a lot of trouble if you want to deploy a project built on a modern web framework. Rule of thumb: if it doesn't have SSH access, and it's not a Platform-as-a-Service like Heroku or Gondor, you're probably not going to have much luck deploying anything except PHP or static HTML. Check out webfaction.com, it's great for beginners and does most of the deplo…

My webhost has SSH access, it just doesn't give me root. It offers RoR through CPanel, which I just assumed would work, but I haven't tried using it so I don't really know. But I take your point, a VPS is really the best thing. I just can't convince my husband to let me spend money on it and I'm unemployed :P.

If you have SSH access, and Python is installed on the system, you don't need root to install Django. The best approach is via pip/virtualenv, but as a last resort, you can just upload the django source folder in the same directory as your manage.py, and it will work.

Re: Ask HN: Where is the Django community?

#160
post #25
post #6

Let me tell you the truth, though this will not be popular: Django is not a good framework. It's clumsy, inflexible and restrictive. The community is pretty much dead. If you want to work in ruby, go for ror. If you want to work in python, go for a micro framework like Bottle. I made the mistake of investing a lot of my time in Django. It was not worth it in the end. All my Django projects ended up being a big mess,…

Here's a true fact about programming: Following the herd means that there's a better chance that someone will have already solved any given problem you encounter and released documentation or a drop-in implementation. I like the idea of Django/Bottle/etc. because I use Python for a lot of my non-web stuff. But RoR has a bigger and more active population. Unless there's something specific to your situation which chang…

OK, then, I'll go with PHP sigh.
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