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Comment by akuchling | Hacker News Reader

It is in fact deliberate, though; the "Philosophy" section on https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/3.1/ref/templates/language... explains it: "If you have a background in programming, or if you’re used to languages which mix programming code directly into HTML, you’ll want to bear in mind that the Django template system is not simply Python embedded into HTML. This is by design: the template system is meant to express presentation, not program logic."

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The way I've seen this play out in reality is that a lot of the "presentational logic" required by the templates gets computed in the "Django Views" layer (akin to the "controller" layer in traditional MVC). So in the end Django views both perform business/service logic and presentational logic.

I took it for granted after doing Django for several years but after doing a lot of web development in a more explicit MVC paradigm (Elixir and Phoenix in this case), my old Django code didn't really separate the web layer from the business logic layer. If I write more Django in the future I'll definitely be more aware of this but in many cases the framework (Templates, Forms, Models, Django-apps) don't really encourage this type of in-app architecture.

That's something I think most developers would agree with, I certainly do.

Still, I don't think what I mentioned is unreasonable or goes against the framework's philosophy. The templating system already has plenty of logical statements, might as well make it work like expected.

See also Jinja2's take on that https://jinja.palletsprojects.com/en/2.11.x/faq/#isn-t-it-a-...

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