A response to Dropping Django

http://uswaretech.com/blog/2009/08/a-response-to-dropping-django/

by zumda • 17 years ago

86 17 17 years ago

Davertron4• 17 years ago

'There are a few other questions raised, some of which I agree with(”Sadly, it[the admin app] struggles a little bit with nullable fields and is tricky to customize.”), and some which I dont, (”I will never write CSS by hand again.” - You shouldn’t be, someone else on your team should be doing that.)'

Ugh, this is just a totally unrealistic and out-of-touch argument. Look, I work on a website, and it's me and one other guy, and we both have to write frontend and backend code. It's not even remotely reasonable for us to just stop writing frontend stuff and tell our boss to hire someone else to do it. I fully understand why the Django templating language is the way it is, and it even makes sense, but it's not perfect for all situations, one of which is when the user is a big boy and can handle the responsibility of using full-blown python in a template.

jjames2• 17 years ago

The implication that designers are not "big boys" is offensive. I will parry with: "big boys" often wield power they don't understand to theirs and everyone else's detriment. More importantly, if all the big boys get hit by a machismo bus who will be around to cook the spaghetti?

forsaken• 17 years ago

Good designers seem to think that it is perfectly reasonable:

http://twitter.com/nathanborror/status/3416472007

flogic• 17 years ago

That's always confused me about template languages. They require knowledge of coding but don't include the full power of a traditional language. In a way it's the worst of both worlds. If you're designer is a only a Frontpage or Dreamweaver jocky, you're still hosed. If they grasp coding, why limit them?

scott_s2• 17 years ago

I think the parent's use of "big boy" was ironic; if someone is patronizing me, I might say "Listen, I'm a big boy, I can handle it." I don't see it as, necessarily, saying I'm in a class above others. Just that I can handle the responsibility someone else thinks I can't.

mrtron• 17 years ago

If you want to use full blown python in a template - use a template tag.

What scenario do you require python in a template? I am a big boy, and the few times I have thought about needing python in a template I realized I need to do a bit more work in the view.

I think it is a great example of protecting 'big boys' from themselves. A year from now when you don't remember how you designed a section of your code you can trivially debug and test instead of trying to sort through logic in the presentation layer.

Also, it makes unit testing much easier having logic stop at the views.

Davertron4• 17 years ago

The whole point is that I don't need to be protected from myself. I understand the benefits of an MVC architecture, so I don't need to be limited by the templating language. Just because I want to use python in my template doesn't mean I'm going to start throwing database accesses in there...

bad_user2• 17 years ago

> logic in the presentation layer

Sometimes logic belongs in the presentation layer (if it is related to showing the information to the user).

Take the "if" tag for example. It doesn't support complex conditions (values can only be tested for values of truth, and it doesn't support parenthesis to define precedence) and adding an if block inside another if block is just ugly. To get around this, you usually construct a boolean value inside your view, but it often happens that this value is only relevant for one template (i.e. HTML). And if your view also returns JSON / YAML, that's not clean.

Also, QuerySets are lazy by default, and it goes beautifully hand in hand with caching template fragments, and this works for me since I usually can't cache whole pages (some fragments are more dynamic than others). But if you move template logic in your view, then you're going to have to worry about caching in your view too, duplicating logic.

Also, the if tag doesn't support "ifelse" ... what's up with that? Are designers too stupid to use ifelse properly?

Yes, I know you can create your own tags, but it would've been nice if these things worked out of the box, and it's not OK to define a tag that's not reusable (like in the case of a complex "if" condition that can't be expressed in the template directly), because that's extra work that doesn't pay off.

And since we are talking about designer-friendliness, how are designers going to understand working with such non-standard tags all over the place?

Now, thus far the Django templates haven't been much of a problem for me, but the projects I worked on in Django have been pretty simple. But I know they are not enough so I'm currently looking for alternatives (fortunately it is easy to replace).

tvon• 17 years ago

The admin not allowing email addresses as usernames still irks me, such a seemingly pointless restriction in this day and age.

Decent response to the original article, though I have to admit that I have a pet peeve about developers declaring libraries/frameworks "insufficient", "lacking" or "fundamentally flawed" as an excuse to write things themselves. Or maybe I'm just grumpy.

snprbob86• 17 years ago

(I wrote the original Dropping Django post)

I wrote a quick comment at http://uswaretech.com/blog/2009/08/a-response-to-dropping-dj...

Maybe I wasn't clear enough, or maybe this is just guaranteed flame war territory. But I think this comment sums up what I was trying to say better than anything: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=773510

I'm going to try to write more about our URL routing and authorization soon.

IsaacSchlueter• 17 years ago

I'm not a python or django developer, so I can't comment on the technical merits of what either of you are saying. However, this exchange has left me with a lot of respect for both of you. It's been very polite and professional, and hasn't fallen into the usual vitriol and holy wars.

A response to Dropping Django

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