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Ask HN: Drupal or Django for my startup? and why

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Ask HN: Drupal or Django for my startup? and why

#1

Post by pepeto »

Hey there,

I wanted to know which choice is wiser - try to save up money with a CMS like Drupal or go with a flexible framework like Django or asp.NET

The project is a startup for cars that includes: - marketplace cars and all kinds of other vehicles - marketplace for autoparts - marketplace for tires - marketplace for all kinds of services around car - washing, repairing, etc - booking - vin checking versus 3rd party databases - chat/messaging systems - ratings - statistics - owner tools - my garage - where you put data about your own car - promo codes/vouchers etc. - ...

...in other words, it is huge. It is not the classical startup of 2 people in a garage, but instead a business with funding that aims to topple the leader of car selling in Bulgaria (small country).

It would be tremendously helpful to state what your experience is (how good you are at either), have you had specific experiences you didn't like with either and what other specific things might be a problem for one or the other.

Any thoughts or guidelines will be super helpful, so thanks in advance.

pp

Re: Ask HN: Drupal or Django for my startup? and why

#4

Post by roddds »

Background: I work at a Fintech startup where the backend is built with Django. I have about 4 years of experience with it, and have worked on Django projects from several different industries, from education to ecommerce. I absolutely recommend that you go with Django. Your project sounds like will deal with many different types of problems, and using Django and Python will allow you to take advantage of the huge ecosystem of third-party libraries that will save you a ton of time. CMS systems like Drupal are great if your main activity is publishing content, but anything past that will leave you fighting with its internals while you should be writing business logic.

Re: Ask HN: Drupal or Django for my startup? and why

#5

Post by ben_jones »

The older I get the more I realize that language/framework decisions at many companies is a function of 1) what your existing team knows already and 2) the business requirements of your company. Furthermore I believe the goal of a founder is to solve problems with people (like fundraising, hiring, etc.) and not computers (by coding).

Re: Ask HN: Drupal or Django for my startup? and why

#6

Post by pepeto »

roddds wrote: post #4

Background: I work at a Fintech startup where the backend is built with Django. I have about 4 years of experience with it, and have worked on Django projects from several different industries, from education to ecommerce. I absolutely recommend that you go with Django. Your project sounds like will deal with many different types of problems, and using Django and Python will allow you to take advantage of the huge ec…

Interesting. I am not arguing, just sharing: people say that Drupal now is a framework and you an actually write custom stuff, not just stack modules. Can that be, what do you think?

Re: Ask HN: Drupal or Django for my startup? and why

#7

Post by pepeto »

ben_jones wrote: post #5

The older I get the more I realize that language/framework decisions at many companies is a function of 1) what your existing team knows already and 2) the business requirements of your company. Furthermore I believe the goal of a founder is to solve problems with people (like fundraising, hiring, etc.) and not computers (by coding).

Good point, though not on point ;)

Re: Ask HN: Drupal or Django for my startup? and why

#8

Post by aliskov »

It sounds like you're not the technical founder because those two frameworks are completely different in nature and if you were you'd have a clear answer. I don't have professional experience with either. I do have experience with failed startup ideas because I started with a focus on technology and not problem. Btw, I am also Bulgarian so that's probably what we have in common. There are tens of technology stacks that can create a technical solution. However, there are very few founders that can create a strategy and build a business to topple an existing player. Just remember that. The technology should be the easy part to figure out.

Just my 2c.

Re: Ask HN: Drupal or Django for my startup? and why

#9

Post by drewjaja »

We migrated from Drupal to Django a few years ago and haven't been happier. Sites have become easier to maintain, new features are developed faster and designers find Django templates easier to work with.

We found Drupal's hooking system a pain to work with and it made debugging incredibly difficult.

We were using Drupal 6 at the time, not sure what has improved since then.

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