Why We Choose Django
Adriana Campoy
October 25, 2019
At sophilabs, we pride ourselves on our technical expertise, which enables us to find the best solutions to meet our clients' needs. One of the technologies we're well-versed in is Django, an open-source framework for developing web applications. In this post, we'll look at what Django can do and why it's an excellent choice for creating a website.
What is Django?
Django is a web framework that facilitates efficient and high-quality web development. It is written in Python, a programming language that prioritizes simple syntax and readability for human programmers.
Adrian Holovaty and Simon Willison created Django in 2003 while they were building interactive web applications for newspapers. They released Django as an open-source framework in 2005. Pronounced JANG-oh (the D is silent), it's named after jazz manouche guitarist and composer Django Reinhardt. 1
Today, many high-profile sites use Django, including Instagram, Spotify, Dropbox, Mozilla, Reddit, Pinterest, NASA, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Onion, National Geographic, Eventbrite, and Disqus. But what makes Django the ideal choice for such a wide variety of platforms?
Why Django is Great for Building Websites
Django provides many key advantages for developers and customers alike. Let's walk through some of these and take a closer look at each of them.
Speed and Efficiency
Django is designed to help developers build quickly, allowing a fast turnaround for the product. Among Django's core philosophies are less code, which encourages simplicity and facilitates future maintenance; don't repeat yourself (DRY), which avoids redundancy; and loose coupling, which allows different layers of the framework to be independent of each other and thus easier (and quicker) to change. 2 The framework also promotes reusing existing code so that developers don't waste time reinventing the wheel. The automatically-generated admin panel saves developers time as well.
Maturity
Django is a mature framework, meaning that each part has been thoroughly examined and tested by an abundance of developers. Django has many useful libraries in addition to a well-established, supportive community, so it's easy for developers to find help when they encounter a problem. It has great documentation, and the software is frequently updated to maintain top quality. Furthermore, Django is built on a mature language, Python, which has been around since 1991 and has its own very active community.
Customization
Django makes it simple to build functionality exactly to the project requirements, saving time and resources that might otherwise be spent maintaining unnecessary features. Django has a rich ecosystem, and adding or removing plug-ins is straightforward. The framework's well-designed architecture allows for flexibility.
Scalability
Django is great for creating websites that can promptly scale up to handle increased user traffic and transactions. The framework's "shared nothing" architecture means components are independent of each other. This allows for the addition of hardware at any level, lending flexibility when necessary. 3 Giants like Instagram and Disqus have taken advantage of this key characteristic of Django to keep up with their growth. 4
Security
Django has a first-rate security system, addressing issues like cross-site scripting, SQL injection, and clickjacking. 5 The framework rapidly releases security patches whenever new vulnerabilities are detected. Django is especially effective for user authentication and protecting sensitive data, making it a great choice for ecommerce and social media sites.
Versatility
An extremely broad range of sites can be built using Django, from social media to booking engines to Big Data projects. It's an excellent choice for websites with interactive, dynamic, or database-driven content. It's great for news outlets, online publishers, museums, and libraries, which often need to manage massive archives. It's also fantastic for AI and emerging technologies. An added bonus: Django has great SEO tools to increase visibility and traffic.
We're Django Experts
Our team at sophilabs has extensive experience building web applications with Django. Some of our engineers have been working with this technology since 2006, only a year after the framework was first released. We know Django inside out and have used it time and again to create beautiful custom websites for our clients.
Want to find out more? Drop us a line, and tell us about your project! We'd love to hear from you.
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"What does Django mean, and how do you pronounce it?" FAQ: General, Documentation, Django Project. ↩
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Design Philosophies, Documentation, Django Project. ↩
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"Does Django scale?" FAQ: General, Documentation, Django Project. ↩
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Django Introduction, MDN Web Docs, Mozilla. ↩
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Security in Django, Documentation, Django Project. ↩
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