Django plugins you shouldn't start without

As someone who is just starting to dive into Django and Python in general I have to admit being confused by benchmark after benchmark that puts Python near to the bottom of the performance curve when compared to other technologies (Go being one that jumps out at me).

I have to admit that part of me is wondering if I am making the right decision in investing time, effort and money getting up to speed on Python/Django for new projects rather than devoting that time to something like Go. Can't do both. Not enough time and we need to get things done.

Now, I do appreciate that Python has a huge ecosystem and lots of very useful libraries out there. That alone might make the price of admission worth it. I also look at these benchmarks and it seems that PHP (something I am really trying to leave behind) frequently scored above the various Python ecosystems.

Can someone put this into perspective for me? In the end performance can and is hugely important. What am I missing when looking at all of this?

Re: Django plugins you shouldn't start without

#5

Post by rMBP » Sat, Nov 02, 2013, 11:42 PM UTC

Wow, sekizai looks great. Removes many of my headaches with django's limited block system.

Re: Django plugins you shouldn't start without

#6

Post by ris » Sat, Nov 02, 2013, 11:45 PM UTC

Excellent. Pile up your django with extensions, then look forward to the fun when you have to port your app from e.g. django 1.3 to 1.5 and find a new set of versions of all of your dependencies that work nicely together. And of course figure out a migration path for it all. That is, if extension xyz is still maintained at all.

Lean is beautiful, people. Carefully assess every dependency you add, as each one has the potential to become a burden.

Re: Django plugins you shouldn't start without

#7

Post by stiaje » Sat, Nov 02, 2013, 11:50 PM UTC

robomartin wrote: post #4

As someone who is just starting to dive into Django and Python in general I have to admit being confused by benchmark after benchmark that puts Python near to the bottom of the performance curve when compared to other technologies (Go being one that jumps out at me). I have to admit that part of me is wondering if I am making the right decision in investing time, effort and money getting up to speed on Python/Django…

Very often in web development, the kind of performance Go or Java delivers just isn't necessary. You'll often find that the time you spend on developing new features is much more important, and with python I think this can be significantly less.

Re: Django plugins you shouldn't start without

#8

Post by vdaniuk » Sat, Nov 02, 2013, 11:51 PM UTC

robomartin wrote: post #4

As someone who is just starting to dive into Django and Python in general I have to admit being confused by benchmark after benchmark that puts Python near to the bottom of the performance curve when compared to other technologies (Go being one that jumps out at me). I have to admit that part of me is wondering if I am making the right decision in investing time, effort and money getting up to speed on Python/Django…

I am also a novice and not an authority on Python, but can offer three reasons for using Python even if it is not fast as other languages.

1. Raw language speed is an important factor to consider but for some projects language syntax, community, ecosystem and libraries are much more significant. Those are python strong aspects. Due to its simple syntax, Python is very popular at mooc platforms, such as Coursera, edX and Udacity. Really lots of very good educational content and I mean MIT level good.

2. Usually web projects do not need to scale that much. Website traffic distribution follows power law so if you do not expect your project to be in top 1%, Django will usually handle all standard CRUD workloads.

3. There are Python bindings for many C libraries, for example image manipulation with C speeds is available using ImageMagick bindings.

Re: Django plugins you shouldn't start without

#9

Post by vikp » Sat, Nov 02, 2013, 11:56 PM UTC

robomartin wrote: post #4

As someone who is just starting to dive into Django and Python in general I have to admit being confused by benchmark after benchmark that puts Python near to the bottom of the performance curve when compared to other technologies (Go being one that jumps out at me). I have to admit that part of me is wondering if I am making the right decision in investing time, effort and money getting up to speed on Python/Django…

I think it really centers around ease of use, amount of libraries, and community support. Django is widely adopted, has a long history of use, and is relatively easy to get started with. Performance is obviously important, but there are plenty of major websites using Django, so it can scale. This is a decent thread on that: http://www.quora.com/Django-web-framework/What-is-the-highes... .

Here is a great comparison of Go and Django: http://lincolnloop.com/blog/djangonaut-building-webapp-go-go... .

I personally have used Django for quite a few projects, and haven't had any "I wish I used a different framework/language" moments.

Re: Django plugins you shouldn't start without

#10

Post by patio11 » Sun, Nov 03, 2013, 12:03 AM UTC

robomartin wrote: post #4

As someone who is just starting to dive into Django and Python in general I have to admit being confused by benchmark after benchmark that puts Python near to the bottom of the performance curve when compared to other technologies (Go being one that jumps out at me). I have to admit that part of me is wondering if I am making the right decision in investing time, effort and money getting up to speed on Python/Django…

For many web programming tasks, your user-perceptible speed and/or maximum system loads will not be dominated by the performance of your web application but rather by database, I/O (including networking), and client performance (JS performance, aggressive asset caching, CDN usage, etc etc).

Go or Java are wonderful languages if you have serious number-crunching needs or if cutting your server budget in half would save you a billion dollars. My server budget is $500 a month and if you doubled the performance of all of my servers it would be $500 a month. I'll elide the detailed explanation of the whole "User clicks a button" to "User sees something happen" HTTP request waterfall chart but my Rails app is generally less than 5% of it.

YMMV if you're Google, but I'm not Google.