Is Django the framework I've been looking for?

On 7/21/06, Jacob Kaplan-Moss <jacobjacobian.org> wrote:
>
> On Jul 20, 2006, at 9:58 PM, Elver Loho wrote:
> > Speaking of duct-tape, though. The various
"magic" bits of Django
> > seemed, to me at least, to be somewhat
duct-tape-ish. Yeah, it was
> > certainly useful being able to just set a variable
and have it do
> > something cool that you need, but it made me
scared of what extra
> > magic might be hiding under the hood that might
bite me in the butt
> > later.
> >
> > I think the law of leaky abstractions applies
here.
>
> I wonder if you could be a bit more explicit here... I
can't think of
> a single place where you "just set a variable and
have it do
> something cool", so I'd like to know more about
what scares you.

The admin module? http://www.djangoproject.com/documentation/tutorial2/


Elver

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On Jul 21, 2006, at 11:50 AM, Josh Trutwin wrote:
> What's the digg link out of curiousity?

http://digg.com/offbeat_news/Dog_eats_Nintendo..
._DS_Lite%3B_Oh% 
2C_and_NIntendo_s_Customer_Service_rocks.

Wow, almost 1200 diggs now... schweet.

Jacob

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On 7/21/06, Elver Loho <elver.lohogmail.com> wrote:
> On 7/21/06, Jacob Kaplan-Moss <jacobjacobian.org> wrote:
> > I wonder if you could be a bit more explicit
here... I can't think of
> > a single place where you "just set a
variable and have it do
> > something cool", so I'd like to know more
about what scares you.
>
> The admin module? http://www.djangoproject.com/documentation/tutorial2/

So, to elaborate, what scares you about the admin app?

The admin introspects the model and dumps the output into an
HttpResponse. Parameters in the 'Admin' inner class
control what that
HttpResponse ends up looking like.

How is that magic?


-- 
"May the forces of evil become confused on the way to
your house."
  -- George Carlin

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I'm inclined to agree with Jacob. On the note of
"magic", it never
ceases to amaze me how people complain that there's too
much of it, but
also complain when they have to keep passing the same
objects around (a
common sign of no/little magic).

CherryPy has its share of magic as well, including
thread-local module
global's. "magic" bits allow you to avoid
repetition and enable
functions to access objects that would normally require a
long path of
object passing (very inconveinent).

Django's flow is definitely optimized to content-oriented
sites where
you'll have people (or yourself) adding content, and the
common
interaction will be reading that content and possibly
responding. If
your site is along those lines, you will be seriously
hard-pressed to
beat Django since that's exactly the flow it was created
for.

Disclosure: I'm the lead developer of the Pylons web
framework.

Cheers,
Ben


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On 7/21/06, Elver Loho <elver.lohogmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 7/21/06, Jacob Kaplan-Moss <jacobjacobian.org> wrote:
> >
> > On Jul 20, 2006, at 9:58 PM, Elver Loho wrote:
> > > Speaking of duct-tape, though. The various
"magic" bits of Django
> > > seemed, to me at least, to be somewhat
duct-tape-ish. Yeah, it was
> > > certainly useful being able to just set a
variable and have it do
> > > something cool that you need, but it made me
scared of what extra
> > > magic might be hiding under the hood that
might bite me in the butt
> > > later.
> > >
> > > I think the law of leaky abstractions applies
here.
> >
> > I wonder if you could be a bit more explicit
here... I can't think of
> > a single place where you "just set a
variable and have it do
> > something cool", so I'd like to know more
about what scares you.
>
> The admin module? http://www.djangoproject.com/documentation/tutorial2/

Which just so happens to be a separate application that is
not in any
way required to use django. Of course, if you elect to take
that
route, you'll have to build your own 'less magical'
backend. But if
that makes you feel more comfortable you are given that
option.
Nothing scarey there.


-- 
----
Waylan Limberg
waylangmail.com

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On Fri, 21 Jul 2006 11:56:14 -0500
Jacob Kaplan-Moss <jacobjacobian.org> wrote:

> 
> On Jul 21, 2006, at 11:50 AM, Josh Trutwin wrote:
> > What's the digg link out of curiousity?
> 
> http://digg.com/offbeat_news/Dog_eats_Nintendo..
._DS_Lite%3B_Oh% 
> 2C_and_NIntendo_s_Customer_Service_rocks.
> 
> Wow, almost 1200 diggs now... schweet.

Nice - I saw that one come accross my RSS feed and almost
looked at
it, but since digg v3 the daily RSS is about 200 articles a
day -
but I just dugg your article anyway.

Digg is funny, looks like two other people tried to submit
the same
story as yours and they combine for only 20 diggs.  I think
one of
them is actually pretending to be you:

http://dig
g.com/search?s=dog+eats+nintendo

So this isn't completely OT, there are 5 django articles on
digg -
one titled "Top ten things that suck about
Django" - only 6 diggs
though.  

http://digg.com/searc
h?s=django

Josh

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Elver Loho wrote:
> In CherryPy, every "directory" of the
website is mapped to a class
> with its exposed methods being the "files"
in that directory. It's a
> godsend as you can write any kind of functionality
(shopping cart,
> blog, whatnot) into a class or two and plop it anywhere
else. Very
> portable and versatile.
>
> Django is somewhat more flexible (as you can map any
function to any
> path), but CherryPy's class/method way of mapping
things suits me
> better. It just seems more logical. Whereas Django
allows you to
> redefine logic if needed :P

I think this is a drawback for CP. While "cool!"
from the programming
side, you basically end up having your app structure become
a public
API, right? So if you ever shuffle your app's structure you
break
anything that was previously using or expecting anything
from it. Or
you end up mod-rewriting, which is generally what the
various
dispatchers do in the first place.

As you say, it's [a case of making users deal with] the
programmer's
("more logical") view of the application, a sin
covered better by
others elsewhere... clearly not world-ending, but more
brittle over
time IMO. I do think I heard once upon a time that newer
versions of CP
would be Route-able one way or another though... okay sorry
all for the
tangent.


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On 21 Jul 2006, at 17:55, Elver Loho wrote:

>> I wonder if you could be a bit more explicit
here... I can't think of
>> a single place where you "just set a variable
and have it do
>> something cool", so I'd like to know more
about what scares you.
>
> The admin module? http://ww
w.djangoproject.com/documentation/ 
> tutorial2/

Is it the inner class that you found disturbing?

class Poll(models.Model):
     # ...
     class Admin:
         pass

If so, you should know that the actual admin framework
itself is a  
completely separate application from the rest of Django - it
was  
refactored out of the core nearly a year ago, and now lives
in  
django.contrib. The model classes are a collection of useful
metadata  
about the models, and the admin framework needs a bunch of
metadata  
to decide how to behave. The (in my opinion very smart)
decision was  
made to pull that out in to an inner class. This sets a nice
 
precedence for extending Django's model syntax in the
future - for  
example, I think there has been talk about having a 'class
Search'  
inner class with parameters for controlling how a proposed
Search  
contrib application should index models.

There's no magic here - just a neat way of adding
namespaced metadata  
to models without cluttering things up too much.

Cheers,

Simon

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Thanks everyone for your input. So far I'm really pleased
with what I  
see. I'm gonna take Django for a test drive on a website
project I'm  
about to start now and see how it goes -- but I do get the
feeling  
I'm falling in love 

The one thing I think I may miss about Rails most is Ruby.
Python is  
absolutely gorgeous when compared to PHP or Perl (then
again, so is  
toe fungus). But I think Ruby may have a slight edge in
terms of  
elegance and terseness. But that's just based on passively
reading  
some code -- maybe I'll feel differently once I explore
Python's  
classes and get my hands a little dirty.

Anyway cheers for the tips!

Sean

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On 7/21/06, Waylan Limberg <waylangmail.com> wrote:

> Which just so happens to be a separate application that
is not in any
> way required to use django. Of course, if you elect to
take that
> route, you'll have to build your own 'less magical'
backend. But if
> that makes you feel more comfortable you are given that
option.
> Nothing scarey there.

While I can see the point you're trying to make, it seems
like you're
trying to dismiss his point as a technicality rather than
address it
at a technical level.  The admin app is supported by the
django devs,
ships with django, and is a large component of the
tutorials.  For all
intents and purposes (especially to someone just starting
off), it is
django.  The original poster's problem was with
"magic" in django, not
just the core framework.

FWIW, I don't necessarily agree with him.  I just hate
seeing concerns
being dismissed due to word choice.

-- 
Kevin

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