paragiraffe

The D is silent. Silent. Ask my coworkers — you should probably not say “duh-jango” around me. (FAQ: What does “Django” mean, and how do you pronounce it?)

Django is not Python on Rails. Pleasantly, most of the things I didn’t like about Rails were done differently in Django. I have no beef against Rails, and I’ll let you sort these out. It’s really a personal preference. (FAQ: <Framework X> does <feature Y> — why doesn’t Django?)

Django is NOT a CMS. But, Django is a great tool to write a CMS with. (FAQ: Is Django a content-management-system (CMS)?)

The Django admin and generic views are free gifts. Generic views not doing everything you need? Guess what? You can write your own views. Don’t complain, earn your paycheck! Same with the admin — it’s just a Django app itself, so feel free to hack it to fit your own needs. (FAQ: How can I customize the functionality of the admin interface?) Django gives you a lot of tools by way of contrib apps and generic views, and complaints about these kinds of things really rub me the wrong way.

Models do not an app make. Writing your models is a very important (and personally, very satisfying) part of writing your Django application, but you’re also going to have to write some urls, views, and templates. I think a lot of developers get caught up in the modeling part.

The Django documentation does NOT suck. I hear grumbles about this frequently, and a little piece of me dies every time. The Django documentation is actually very good, and I think its greatest weakness is there are even more features than what it covers. I think one of the “problems” is that people start using Django without knowing any Python and get tripped up here or there, but I don’t think it’s Django’s job to teach you Python. (It’s Mark Pilgrim‘s job.) Finally, if you have an improvement for Django’s documentation, contribute.

Django is not a democracy. See the famed favicon thread as an example. Oh, the pixels that have been shed over that one.

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