286 karma · joined November 1, 2017
Finally, in my opinion, the best reason to not use Django is not the project itself (because it will do the job in 99% case), it's because all you learn is tied to Django.
Having learn Pydantic recently was a breed of fresh air, and I would reuse it in lots of projects, not only web projects.
+1 on this. Django scales pretty well when adopting a clean architecture like Django Model Behaviours with mixins.
> Otherwise, I've found its ORM quite powerful.
Same. In ten years, the only issue I had is with a very complex query that the ORM was not able to write properly. But a workaround existed.
I'm currently using FastAPI in a project. It's very enjoyable (especially with a strictly typed codebase) but I have to write lots of batteries by myself, which is not very productive (unless you keep this boilerplate code for future projects).
People keep genuinely saying it's a good thing to have many tools to apply to the right usage. Personnaly, constantly switching from htmx to vue.js just fucks my brain.
I miss the time where I used Django or Rails and didn't need to ask myself all these questions.
htmx shines to add dynamic behaviour on some pages, but is not appropriate to replace a medium-sized SPA in my opinion.
Feedback and contributions are welcome!
Remote: Yes, but I would prefer an hybrid mode in Paris.
Willing to relocate: No
Technologies: Django, Nuxt, TailwindCSS, Docker.
Résumé/CV: david-dahan.com
Email: david.dahan3 [a] gmail.com
I built multiple ambitious products from scratch in early-stage startups and created my own startup. I have a deep understanding of the requirements of a startup, and I'd like to become the founding engineer (future CTO) of an early stage startup. I have more than 10 years of experience. You can read my blog: https://david-dahan.com/blog (mix of English and French).
This kind of projects could have a better adoption rate with standards for documentations.
For the last 6 months, I had job opportunities every day and say no to everything until I find the right one. Your family and friends will laugh at you, but in the end you'll be happier than them.
For example, let's say you need to write an admin dashboard with many pages, no fancy stuff. Odds are you'll be very productive with a good old Django/Rails, having no API to write and a single simpler project to maintain.
Once that monolithic framework choice is made, before HTMX, as soon as you needed interactivity, you had to mess with jQuery and the code was quickly awful. The only solution was to plug a SPA framework and develop an API (this is not trivial!). HTMX (and other tools like Alpine.js) solve that problem well.
So, the question is not "is HTMX better than SPA frameworks", but rather: "Knowing that I can now build decent front-end with Django/Rails, does a more complex stack with Next worth it?"
HTMX-like tools make SPA frameworks a little less indispensable in some use cases. That's it.
I'm not sure it's possible, but it could be great to make this a team project officially supported by Django (like DRF or channels). This would bring trust and support, compared to solo-dev projects that can die instantely if the developer can't support it anymore. Anyway, I'd be glad to sponsor your project on Github.
From this new perspective, here are the tools I'd use in my front-end Django: - Level 0: no dynamic UI needs -> no additional tool (pure HTML/CSS templates) - Level 1: simple dynamic needs -> HTMX + Hyperscript - Level 2: SPA-like needs -> Tetra (instead of Alpine itself)
I've been using django ninja for months and I can say that it's a very good replacement to DRF. It's way simpler to use and less bloated, thanks to pydantic.
However I would not use it for important projects in production, because of a lack of support and documentation, and the fact that it relies almost entirely on a single developer (like many other projects, right).