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In 2003, Django was started by Simon Willison and Adrian Holovaty at the Lawrence Journal-World newspaper.
They started Django as their internal project but with the growth in the project, they released it in July 2005 and named it Django, after the name jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt. Python has become quite a popular programming language in recent years. Python has gained its popularity for its versatility and applications in almost all the fields.
You can do web development, machine learning, Software development, Enterprise level application development and the list goes endless. If you have mastered or even getting started with the Python programming language and are wondering if you can make websites using Python or do web development using Python? Choosing the framework is not an easy task and if you are thinking is there any framework in Python for web development. Yes, there is a web development framework in Python named Django.
Let’s learn and understand various aspect of Django.
Introduce yourself to Django?
It is an open-source Python-based web framework. It is based on the MVT (Model template views) pattern, MVT is the modified version of MVC (Model View Controller) pattern. It is maintained by an American non-profit organisation. The main purpose of it is to make web development easy, clean, and secure.
History of Django
In 2003, Django was started by Simon Willison and Adrian Holovaty at the Lawrence Journal-World newspaper. They started Django as their internal project but with the growth in the project, they released it in July 2005 and named it Django, after the name jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt. In 2005 Django was able to handle several high-traffic websites. Currently, Django is an open-source project with contributors from all over the world.
Things that make Django stand out:
It makes your website launch in a few hours. With the fast development process, and half work already done by its built-in features, you don’t need to worry about half of the work. It reduces the trouble of development so that you can focus on writing clean code and website design.
It contains numerous features to handle common tasks in web development like it take care of authentication, RSS feeds, administration, site maps and more. It takes care of website security and helps developers to make secured websites avoiding security mistakes, like cross-site scripting, clickjacking, SQL injection. Its authentication system provides a secure way to manage users’ accounts and authentication process.
Some of the busiest sites on the planet use its capability to flexibly scale to meet the heaviest traffic demands. It focuses on explicit programming rather than implicit programming.
It is used by Top Companies and MNCs like Instagram, Disqus, Spotify, Youtube, Bitbucket, Dropbox and many more. Companies and governments and even organisations use it to build content management systems, social networking platforms and scientific computing platforms. It is best for startups for fast and robust development of applications.
It has gained popularity with the rise in Python popularity. In the future, it is going to be a more popular and strong framework than today.
Some features that it offers:
- It proposes less code, fast development.
- It follows the DRY (Don’t repeat yourself) principle.
- It maintains clean code throughout the development of applications.
- It promotes the MVC pattern.
Sunny-side of Django
The advantages of it are several, let’s see a few of its which will convince you to learn it for sure:
- Object-Relational Mapping (ORM) Support: It supports a large set of database systems including MySQL, Oracle, Postgres, etc. It also supports the NoSQL database through Django-nonrenal fork.
- Because of the internationalisation system, it supports multilingual websites, which means you can develop your website at an international level, having visitors from all over the world. Hence, traffic is for sure going to increase because of Django.
- Django has built-in support for RSS, Caching, AJAX and many different frameworks.
- Django has an administration interface, to easily maintain user activities.
- Testing in Django is hassle-free with a lightweight web server resulting in fast web development.
- Django forms require no installation and are inbuilt in the framework. Forms are easily available to render in templates.
As already stated above it supports a large set of databases, here is the list of databases it supports
- MySQL (django.db.backends.mysql)
- PostGreSQL (django.db.backends.postgresql_psycopg2)
- Oracle (django.db.backends.oracle) and NoSQL DB
MongoDB (django_mongodb_engine)
The blues of Django
Every aspect has pros and cons, same is the case of it. Although it is a great framework, there are some problems with it that can cause you the problem. Some of the disadvantages are listed below –
- The URL specifying with regular expressions is not an easy task to perform, especially for a beginner.
- It is not suited for small projects, and best suited for big projects.
- It is a too monolithic framework.
- Everything in it is based upon ORM.
- In the case of it, you must have knowledge of the full system.
Django Vs other frameworks
- It is incapable of handling multiple requests at a time, while there are various frameworks out there that can handle multiple requests simultaneously. In this case, it fails.
- It is more flexible as compared to others.
- It is not a good choice for small projects, it’s a perfectionist’s framework for big projects because its main focus is on the fast development of complex and large projects, which has large code, and needs to be scaled, and more secure.
When to choose Django?
If other frameworks are chosen over it, it is not always the case, there are some areas where it outperforms. Here are the reasons it should be chosen over other frameworks:
- When faster development of web applications is required.
- For developing API Backend.
- When you have to scale a web application.
- When the fast deployment of the application is needed.
- It contains the perfect ORM for working with a database.
- To develop secure applications.
- To develop single-page applications fast and secure.
Is Django worth learning?
According to Stackoverflow survey, it is the most loved Python web framework. Of course, it is worth learning in 2020 with the on the growing popularity of Python and its simplicity. It is easy to learn. If you are a Machine Learning enthusiast, it is good to go for you to build web applications integrated with AI.
It is a powerful tool in Machine Learning with its compatibility with powerful machine learning libraries like PyTorch, Numpy etc. It’s statistical and computational capabilities make it best for Machine Learning. The Machine learning regression, prediction, are all supported by it. Isn’t it amazing?
One framework is offering numerous advantages you can’t resist yourself from learning it. In it, you write less code as compared to other frameworks and build scalable, secure applications. On Github, it has 54.1k stars. It is constantly updated and monitored by users.
According to Glassdoor, the average national salary of it developer is Rs.7,81,000 and goes up to Rs,24,24,000.
Resources to learn Django
There are free as well as paid resources for learning it. Below are some of the resources listed including youtube videos, books, from beginners to expert level. Video Tutorials are easy to follow and get started really quickly. These are the best series for getting started with it:-
Books to learn Django
Django – Web Development with Python
FAQ (Frequently asked questions):
What architectural pattern does Django follow?
It follows the MVT – Model View Template architectural pattern. The model handles the data or the data access layer. The template is the user interface or the presentation layer. The view is responsible for managing the business logic and handling the interaction between template and data.
Is Django a high-level or low-level framework?
It is a high-level Python framework. It has most of the boilerplate all ready for you to directly start with rapid development.
How do we pronounce Django?
Some pronounce it as “D- Jango” or “Jango” simply. It is actually “Jang-oh”.
Is Django stable?
It is quite a stable framework now as evident by its use by major companies such as Instagram, Mozilla and Pinterest. Startups are turning up to it for rapid development.
Django or Flask?
The million-dollar question!! But that difficult answer. You can choose any one firstly. Secondly, it completely depends on your needs and wants. If you have a well-planned project that is vast enough and you want to scale up in future, you should go with it. It comes with multiple already existing features that will make your development faster.
On the other hand, Flask is a micro-framework. That means not much of the boilerplate is available rather you get the flexibility to do things your way. It is good for experimental purposes, for microservices and projects that may include other latest technologies in the future.
Do I need to know Python before learning Django?
It is a web development framework based on python. So it is good to know python but not necessary. You should be clear about the web development terminologies such as HTTP requests, HTML, CSS and about database management system. You can learn python on the go.
How long will it take to learn Django?
It varies completely from individual to individual. It highly depends on your previous development experience. For beginners, It can easily take 2-4 months to get comfortable in it.
Conclusion:
If you want your application ready in a few hours and deploy it, Django is a rapid web development framework. There is no better framework than Django for this purpose. Django has all the features to make your web development easy even if you are not familiar with web development, it has various features to make your life easier. It has a built-in admin interface to make workflow easy for websites.
I hope you find this article useful. If you have any queries drop a comment, we are always there to help you out.
