> How big of a break will [Django 2.0] be?

Not abnormally big at all if you're writing Python 3 code. The Django team is very good at communicating about planned changes in advance. Aside from dropping Python 2 support, the only reason they're calling it Django 2.0 is because they switched version numbering schemes to a modified version of SemVer.

I would learn now if I were you.

> A friend also expressed that it might not be worth it to use Django if just for the ORM and migrations (backend is just api), is he right?

I'm not sure, because I don't know what the alternatives are for you (I dabble in Django on the side). But I do know that some people do use parts of Django instead of all three layers, so it may not be ridiculous.

> A friend also expressed that it might not be worth it to use Django if just for the ORM and migrations (backend is just api), is he right?

I only started using Django about 6 months ago, but I would have started much earlier if I'd known about the incredible built-in admin interface. The built-in user system is also very convenient. I think Django makes a great backend-only system, especially in combination with Django REST framework.

2.0 is just a time-based version numbering change. Besides dropping Python 2 support, 1.11 -> 2.0 will not be any more of a break compared to 1.8 -> 1.9.

If your code works on 1.11 without warnings, it will work on 2.0 just fine.

Have a look at Django Rest Framework for your backend. Also there are lots of other Django apps which might be useful for backend only apps like eg. ratelimiting.

> A friend also expressed that it might not be worth it to use Django if just for the ORM and migrations (backend is just api), is he right?

Yes, he is right. If you add The rest framework: http://www.django-rest-framework.org/ you can implement your app all the newest JS frameworks and maintaining a great server environment. You'll have nice debugging tools, a great language and a robust and mature framework.

You might want to look into Django Rest Framework [1]. It is very well made and documented. Django's ORM + DRF is a great combination for API servers.

[1] http://www.django-rest-framework.org/

If you're looking for a good ORM with migrations in python, I highly recommend SQLAlchemy and Alembic, with the web app in Flask (although you could use any web framework, which is a nice benefit of using smaller components like this). There's a bit more boilerplate to get it set up the first time vs Django, but it's not bad and there are good resources for it. SQLalchemy is an amazing ORM, and the flexibility of being able to write and organize your code with this stack in ways that work well for your problem vs being stuck doing it the "Big MVC Framework Way" in Django is really nice.

I use it all the time for small data migration projects, as the ORM saves a lot of time for inserts and updates. The Admin makes it very fast to create, edit and view data as well. Even if you don't use Django at all for the final project, it can save a lot of effort during development.