Hi!
A couple of weeks ago I held a presentation on PyCon Sweden 2015 with
the title "Why Django Sucks". The idea was to follow in the footsteps of
great conference talks like these:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGYrvlVoAdf9j3v_teol3s7hl8gkUd8E2
These talks are great because they encourage people to take an outside,
critical, perspective of Django and where it's going.
My talk was well received, with many both interested and skeptical
questions afterwards. Unfortunately, the final video was missing the
sound, so the camera crew is working on fixing that now. I'll post it to
this thread as soon as I get it. Meanwhile, here's a text summary:
---
The theme for my talk was that Django's bad support for Javascript heavy
sites. Everyone is using javascript for their sites nowadays. Problem
is, Django (and large parts if the Django community) has long had a
approach to Javascript that can be summed up with Simon Willison's reply
to someone asking for AJAX support in 2005:
"For me "Ajax support" really is pure marketing fluff - as far as I'm
concerned EVERY web framework supports Ajax unless it does something
truly moronic like refuse to let you output documents that don't have
the standard header/footer template."
Source: http://bit.ly/django2005
The problem with this mindset (I'm not picking at Simon from 10 years
ago) is that the web as large is moving towards MORE javascript, with
live notifications, live updating templates, and reusable template
components. And these are hard to implement in Django as things work
today. I see this is the biggest competitive disadvantage Django has
going forward.
So, what specific features am I proposing? I will get to a specific set
of features soon. But first I want to make clear that a completely
different set of features could get us to the same goal. That is: it's
possible to agree on the broader goal for Django, and disagree on my
specific set of features. If you don't agree on the features, I would
love to see your proposed feature list.
Just to give one alternate path: In that old thread from 2005, Jacob
Kaplan-Moss suggested exposing the ORM through Javascript with an RPC API:
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/django-developers/XmKfVxyuyAU/lkp6N1HTzG4J
Jacobs suggestion is interesting, but I have three other features that I
would like to discuss. I think they would greatly ease building
javascript heavy sites with Django.
*I will split the specific suggestions into three different e-mail
threads, so we can discuss them separately*.
Here's a short intro to them:
1. Template Components
React.js popularized the notion that in front-end development, code
organization should be based on interface components, not split up into
HTML, Javascript and CSS. It's simply a different way to organize the
code for your front-end, that I strongly think Django should make
easier. (read more in separate thread)
2. Support a client side template language
The multiple template engine work has made it possible to switch out
Django Templates with another engine. One of the most powerful things
this enables is to use a template language that is executable both on
the server and client. This means you can do the same kind of live
updates to your page that the Meteor.js people are doing, and just
re-render parts of the DOM as a direct result of a database update.
(read more in separate thread)
3. Support Server-Sent Events
If you want a snappy user experience, polling isn't enough. There are
two major ways to get out of the request-response cycle. Namely:
websockets and server-sent events. Server-Sent Events have a much
simpler protocol, and could be implemented with asyncio (no external
dependencies except for backwards compatibility) in a performant way. It
would be a great reason to choose Django over other frameworks. (read
more in separate thread)
---
This is not a "request for features". I am in no way saying that I think
you should build things for me. Instead I'm willing to work on them
together with anyone interested, if these are features that the core
team would be interested in.
But first I would like to see if you:
1. Agree on the main point that Django should do more for javascript
heavy sites.
2. Agree that one or more of the specific features that I'm proposing
would be a good fit for Django (see separate threads).
No matter what, I would love to hear your thoughts and ideas here.
Regards,
Emil Stenström
Twitter: @EmilStenstrom
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