Comments on: My experience with Django and Rails http://scottmoonen.com/2009/01/09/my-experience-with-django-and-rails/ Jesu, Juva Wed, 03 Feb 2010 15:16:30 +0000 http://wordpress.com/ hourly 1 By: Brandon http://scottmoonen.com/2009/01/09/my-experience-with-django-and-rails/#comment-421 Brandon Wed, 03 Feb 2010 15:16:30 +0000 http://blog.fullvalence.com/?p=48#comment-421 Coming from .NET, Rails was bliss. Ruby is very pretty and has some very nice features, but 99% of the sites I build need an admin, and I hate writing admins. First of all, I think both frameworks are good. However, what I discovered through my experience with both frameworks over two years, is that what Rails had in hype, Django had in substance. I found that I could accomplish tasks faster, with more portability in Django than I could in Rails. Django's admin gets me 99% of the way there with most projects, and that single app module alone has saved me months of development time and greatly streamlined the process of administrating data and permissions. Django's application structure and url patterns are highly modular to begin with. I can pull in apps as an svn:external, add the app to my installed applications, add the url patterns (2 lines of code total), sync my db or run the South migrations, and I'm up and running. Yes, you can write plugins in Rails, but it's not the same. I feel that Django's ORM is just as or more powerful than ActiveRecord, with very clean syntax. Q objects make it very simple to create highly complex queries. Django's template system, while spartan in appearance, is much better in my opinion than allowing the embedding of pure Python or Ruby code in templates. You're forced to encapsulate, and it makes for highly portable code. If you're a Django developer and haven't looked at writing template tags or inclusion tags, do so today. Django's popularity is reaching a tipping point, and I'm getting more and more calls from recruiters looking for Python/Django people. In 13 years as a professional developer, it's the most well-conceived framework I've used. It put the fun back in development for me, and saves me a lot of time. I'll get on my soapbox for Django any day against Rails, .NET or PHP. My $0.02. Coming from .NET, Rails was bliss. Ruby is very pretty and has some very nice features, but 99% of the sites I build need an admin, and I hate writing admins.

First of all, I think both frameworks are good. However, what I discovered through my experience with both frameworks over two years, is that what Rails had in hype, Django had in substance.

I found that I could accomplish tasks faster, with more portability in Django than I could in Rails. Django’s admin gets me 99% of the way there with most projects, and that single app module alone has saved me months of development time and greatly streamlined the process of administrating data and permissions.

Django’s application structure and url patterns are highly modular to begin with. I can pull in apps as an svn:external, add the app to my installed applications, add the url patterns (2 lines of code total), sync my db or run the South migrations, and I’m up and running. Yes, you can write plugins in Rails, but it’s not the same.

I feel that Django’s ORM is just as or more powerful than ActiveRecord, with very clean syntax. Q objects make it very simple to create highly complex queries.

Django’s template system, while spartan in appearance, is much better in my opinion than allowing the embedding of pure Python or Ruby code in templates. You’re forced to encapsulate, and it makes for highly portable code. If you’re a Django developer and haven’t looked at writing template tags or inclusion tags, do so today.

Django’s popularity is reaching a tipping point, and I’m getting more and more calls from recruiters looking for Python/Django people.

In 13 years as a professional developer, it’s the most well-conceived framework I’ve used. It put the fun back in development for me, and saves me a lot of time. I’ll get on my soapbox for Django any day against Rails, .NET or PHP.

My $0.02.

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