Happy 20th Birthday, Django • Hacker News Board

Re: Happy 20th Birthday, Django

#41

Post by simonw » Mon, Jul 14, 2025, 3:17 PM UTC

BeetleB wrote: post #21

saikatsg wrote: post #16

I know one of the co-creators (Simon W) is quite active on HN :)

Simon wasn't a cofounder. He was an early employee/intern for LJW though. Perhaps the first person other than Jacob or Adrian to work on it.

Adrian and I co-created Django while I was working at LJW in a "year in industry" program from my UK university - which got me a student visa, so you could call it an "internship" but it was paid and 11 months long.

Jacob joined shortly before I left, then Adrian and Jacob turned Django from a closed-source newspaper CMS project into open source Django. I think they deserve way more credit for the framework than I do, they made it open source and were co-BDFLs for the next decade of development.

I'll still take the co-creator credit though, because Adrian and I designed, built and sometimes even pair-programmed the core of the framework - request/response objects, view functions, template system - together during my year at the LJW.

If you're interested in more details I told a bunch of the story in this talk: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Jul/13/django-birthday/ - and more in this Fireside Chat interview at PyCon AU: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1E_UqhFmJQs

Re: Happy 20th Birthday, Django

#42

Post by fatbird » Mon, Jul 14, 2025, 3:19 PM UTC

dcrazy wrote: post #39

ghc wrote: post #18

In a very real sense, I have Django to thank for my entire career. As an undergraduate, my first academic job in a research lab had me building websites to promote the research in a lab. Django was brand new, and I was uninterested in petty concerns like stability and security, so I did everything in Django. Years later (2009), I got to do interesting work in a cutting edge machine learning lab due to the expertise I…

Does/did Django have a reputation for instability or insecurity? Also, how on Earth did the ML PhDs decide physically segregated databases for each user were a requirement?

It has neither reputation, and to my knowledge, has never had serious incidents of either. It powers huge websites like pokemon.com

And if you spend any time working with a group of PhDs, you'll be shocked at some of the harebrained schemes they come up with. Dumb people are dumb in simple ways. Smart people are dumb in genius ways.

Re: Happy 20th Birthday, Django

#43

Post by pyman » Mon, Jul 14, 2025, 3:22 PM UTC

BeetleB wrote: post #21

saikatsg wrote: post #16

I know one of the co-creators (Simon W) is quite active on HN :)

Simon wasn't a cofounder. He was an early employee/intern for LJW though. Perhaps the first person other than Jacob or Adrian to work on it.

Django was developed by Adrian and Simon, and the django site was created by Wilson Miner.

Re: Happy 20th Birthday, Django

#44

Post by chistev » Mon, Jul 14, 2025, 3:25 PM UTC

A really wonderful framework.

I've only worked with Express js as an alternative and I just love how Django handles lots of things for you and let's you focus on the core logic.

Re: Happy 20th Birthday, Django

#45

Post by chistev » Mon, Jul 14, 2025, 3:27 PM UTC

bnchrch wrote: post #25

As someone today who is an unrelenting critic of python. I have to say thank you to Simon and the Django community as a whole. Its a wonderful "batteries included" framework that has launched many successful projects, companies, and careers. Mine included. And I'd be lying if I didnt say I still use pgadmin as my benchmark for evaluating admin panels in other ecosystems. What you all created with Django is amazing. W…

How can you be an unrelenting critic of Python but love Django?

Re: Happy 20th Birthday, Django

#46

Post by chistev » Mon, Jul 14, 2025, 3:28 PM UTC

Takennickname wrote: post #35

Unquestionably the best framework I've ever used. I could never learn backend javascript because why would I put in the effort when this exists.

Exactly me!

But I still learn Javascript lol

Re: Happy 20th Birthday, Django

#47

Post by rollcat » Mon, Jul 14, 2025, 3:28 PM UTC

I've shed a tear.

I was still at uni (2008) when I got my first PHP job. I've shown Django to my boss. He's never started another PHP project since.

Django is now older than I was when I first used it. To another 20 years.

Re: Happy 20th Birthday, Django

#48

Post by chistev » Mon, Jul 14, 2025, 3:28 PM UTC

acjohnson55 wrote: post #13

I haven't used Django in many years, but I have fond memories of learning it and building my startup as a Django app.

Is the start up still going well?

Re: Happy 20th Birthday, Django

#49

Post by simonw » Mon, Jul 14, 2025, 3:34 PM UTC

pyman wrote: post #43

BeetleB wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simon wasn't a cofounder. He was an early employee/intern for LJW though. Perhaps the first person other than Jacob or Adrian to work on it.

Django was developed by Adrian and Simon, and the django site was created by Wilson Miner.

Jacob joined a little later but I think of him as a co-creator as he worked on Django substantially prior to the initial open source release, then acted as co-BDFL with Adrian for the next decade.

Re: Happy 20th Birthday, Django

#50

Post by Daishiman » Mon, Jul 14, 2025, 3:36 PM UTC

ghc wrote: post #18

In a very real sense, I have Django to thank for my entire career. As an undergraduate, my first academic job in a research lab had me building websites to promote the research in a lab. Django was brand new, and I was uninterested in petty concerns like stability and security, so I did everything in Django. Years later (2009), I got to do interesting work in a cutting edge machine learning lab due to the expertise I…

Same here! Django was not only the first piece of software that allowed me to do real freelancing and software development, but also exposed me to high-quality Python source code and development practices taken from the development team.