[HN Gopher] Django 6
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       Django 6
        
       Author : wilhelmklopp
       Score  : 117 points
       Date   : 2025-12-04 21:09 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (docs.djangoproject.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (docs.djangoproject.com)
        
       | echelon wrote:
       | Show of hands for backend web services development -
       | 
       | Who uses Django, Rails, or similar full-featured frameworks?
       | 
       | Who uses micro-frameworks like Flask?
       | 
       | Who uses enterprise Java, Jetty, Dot Net, etc.?
       | 
       | Who uses an entirely Javascript stack?
       | 
       | Who uses a non-traditional language that has become more web-
       | servicey, like Go, Rust, or Swift?
       | 
       | Who uses something so wildly untraditional that it's barely
       | mentioned? OkCupid using C++, etc.?
       | 
       | Who uses an entirely custom framework (in any language)?
       | 
       | Would really love to see a break down of who is using what, how
       | people feel about their tech stack, etc.?
        
         | justinator wrote:
         | Perl, CGI.
        
           | echelon wrote:
           | Love it!
           | 
           | Which version of Perl are you using, and what type of
           | service(s) are you maintaining?
           | 
           | Is this older software, or do you use it for new projects
           | too?
           | 
           | Have you rolled any sort of framework yourself?
           | 
           | What are your thoughts on Raku?
        
             | justinator wrote:
             | I target 5.10.1 mostly. This is for a project I started in
             | the late 90's. It uses CGI::Application, which is less a
             | framework and more a method lookup table converter of
             | queries (although I built a path info convertor on top of
             | that). It's still maintained, although before Covid, it was
             | my livelihood.
             | 
             | About a quarter of a million lines of code, excluding the
             | libraries I pull in. I'm mostly self-taught, they wouldn't
             | even let me get a minor in Comp Sci, since I didn't have
             | the math background (Needed Calculus, I completeled Algebra
             | 2 in hs). Boneheaded Uni.
             | 
             | Raku: Second-system effect poster boy. Sensationally
             | dysfunctional community. I think Pugs is what was actually
             | really incredible and Audrey is probably one of the most
             | intelligent people in... the World? Up for contention, but
             | top 10.
        
         | yoavm wrote:
         | I still have some very old Django projects that I'm maintaining
         | for > 15 years. It's an absolute delight.
        
           | collinmanderson wrote:
           | Yes. I'm still maintaining a Django site that I helped get
           | live in 2007. I started learning Django in 2006.
        
         | hecanjog wrote:
         | This would make an interesting poll. I think that's possible
         | here? Maybe with some karma threshold, I don't seem to be able
         | to make one.
         | 
         | We use flask and go at work. I've been micro-framework or roll-
         | my-own-framework most of my career. Go is new for me though,
         | and it's grown on me enough that it's what I prefer for new
         | web-facing projects even for little personal things.
        
           | echelon wrote:
           | What should the options be? Were the ones I suggested coarse
           | grained enough to capture everyone, or should I/we re-group
           | or add more?
        
         | thewebguyd wrote:
         | I"m almost entirely dotnet these days, with a smattering of Go
         | here and there.
         | 
         | I work in ops though, so I'm not building consumer-facing
         | products but mostly IT glue code and internal tooling (mostly
         | Go), dashboards, business report generators, gluing SaaS
         | together, etc. (mostly dotnet/C#).
        
         | tcdent wrote:
         | I started using Django before the official 1.0 release and used
         | it almost exclusively for years on web projects.
         | 
         | Lately I prefer to mix my own tooling and a couple major
         | packages in for backends (FastAPI, SQLAchemy) that are still
         | heavily inspired by patterns I picked up while using Django. I
         | end up with a little more boilerplate, but I also end up with a
         | little more stylistic flexibility.
        
           | BeetleB wrote:
           | > I started using Django before the official 1.0 release
           | 
           | Indeed. I'm still using the 0.97beta. It's perfectly good for
           | production use!
           | 
           | </obscure joke>
        
         | wg0 wrote:
         | - Have written Rails and Django both
         | 
         | - Have written SPAs (React/Svelte)
         | 
         | - Have written Go based services
         | 
         | Each has their on pros and cons.
        
         | alberth wrote:
         | One proxy might be to look at the upvote counts for each of
         | their respective latest release HN posts.
         | 
         | Eg, this post has ~50 (though only posted an hour ago)
         | 
         | Rails 8 had ~550
         | 
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41766515
        
           | echelon wrote:
           | Rails might not get a lot of new articles about it, and the
           | chatter might have died down, but I think a lot of people
           | still use it.
        
         | rabbitvictor wrote:
         | At work, it is mainly Kotlin and Go webservices with some Rust
         | for very specific use cases
        
         | bossyTeacher wrote:
         | Fable (just for the fun of it) and the new one dot net one file
         | web services that resemble flask
        
         | debugnik wrote:
         | In what sense is Go not a traditional language for web
         | services? They're almost the only thing it's good at, and it's
         | been doing them for 13 years.
        
           | monooso wrote:
           | I agree that Go is a good choice for web services. I disagree
           | that it's the only thing Go is good at. DevOps tooling and
           | CLI tools immediately spring to mind.
        
         | aerhardt wrote:
         | As fully-featured as possible, because as much as I like
         | building stuff, I don't give a shit about coding stuff that has
         | been figured out since the 90's. Another question is whether
         | semantics and operations get bloated or affect development
         | speed in a framework but I don't think it's the case with the
         | Django.
        
       | nadermx wrote:
       | Django's batteries included setup makes it a no brainer for
       | almost any project big or small. Kudos to the team and
       | contributers
        
       | ianberdin wrote:
       | Thanks to Django. I got into the webdev world so easily.
       | 
       | Curious, how come Django started to make major versions instead
       | of 1.*?
       | 
       | Can be the decreasing in popularity the reason to make Something
       | to change it?
        
         | yoavm wrote:
         | It didn't - https://www.djangoproject.com/download/#supported-
         | versions
        
           | ianberdin wrote:
           | Oh, looks more transparent.
        
       | sparklingmango wrote:
       | Whenever I use Django, I enjoy it. Simple as.
        
       | ChrisArchitect wrote:
       | Blog post yesterday:
       | https://www.djangoproject.com/weblog/2025/dec/03/django-60-r...
       | (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46136516)
        
       | wg0 wrote:
       | Can someone remind me how we ended up in the SPA era and why
       | exactly? Was it about not seeing the loading spinner? Or there
       | were more reasons to it?
        
         | jorl17 wrote:
         | - Strict team separation (frontend versus backend)
         | 
         | - Moving all state-managament out of the backend and onto the
         | frontend, in a supposedly easier to manage system
         | 
         | - Page refreshes are indeed jarring to users and more prone to
         | leading to sudden context losses
         | 
         | - Desktop applications did not behave like web apps: they are
         | "SPA"s in their own sense, without jarring refreshes or code
         | that gets "yanked" out of execution. Since the OS has been
         | increasingly abstracted under the browser, and the average
         | computer user has moved more and more towards web apps[1], it
         | stands to reason that the behavior of web apps should become
         | more like that of desktop apps (i.e. "SPA"s)[2]
         | 
         | (Not saying I agree with these, merely pointing them out)
         | 
         | [1] These things are not entirely independent. It can be argued
         | that the same powers that be (big corps) that pushed SPAs onto
         | users are also pushing the "browser as OS" concept.
         | 
         | [2] I know you can get desktop-like behavior from non-SPAs, but
         | it is definitely not as easy to do it or at least to _learn it_
         | now.
         | 
         | My actual opinion: I think it's a little bit of everything,
         | with a big part of it coming from the fact that the web was the
         | easiest way to build something that you could share with people
         | effortlessly. Sharing desktop apps wasn't particularly easy
         | (different targets, java was never truly run everywhere, etc.),
         | but to share a webapp app you just put it online very quickly
         | and have someone else point their browser to a URL -- often all
         | they'll do is click a link! And in general it is definitely
         | easier to build an SPA (from the frontender's perspective) than
         | something else.
         | 
         | This creates a chain:
         | 
         | If I can create and share easily
         | 
         | -> I am motivated to do things easily
         | 
         | -> I learn the specific technology that is easiest
         | 
         | -> the market is flooded with people who know this technology
         | better than everything else
         | 
         | -> the market must now hire from this pool to get the cheapest
         | workers (or those who cost less to acquire due to quicker
         | hiring processes)
         | 
         | -> new devs know that they need to learn this technology to get
         | hired
         | 
         | -> the cycle continues
         | 
         | So, TL;DR: Much lower barrier to entry + quick feedback loops
         | 
         | P.S (and on topic): I am an extremely satisfied django
         | developer, and very very very rarely touch frontend. Django is
         | A-M-A-Z-I-N-G.
        
         | aniforprez wrote:
         | Aside from the usual separation of tech stacks for different
         | teams, the big thing for me is lack of any sort of type hinting
         | or safety in templates at least in the big frameworks such as
         | Django, Rails etc. I would much rather work with a separate
         | build process that utilizes typescript than deal with the
         | errors that come out of incorrectly reading formless data and
         | making typos within templates.
        
         | poemxo wrote:
         | I'm not in web anymore but, to me, it seemed easier to
         | visualize richly linked data in Angular than having a Django
         | template render it. Once you have the mindset of making your
         | website into an app, you are tempted to move navigation to the
         | app too. That way your app can keep delivering its core user
         | function without the interruption of a page load.
         | 
         | In retrospect it was slightly hubristic, as in reality you
         | sometimes have to force reload SPA's, and if you're integrating
         | on top of legacy systems that you just link to, you're not
         | really avoiding the bad UX of a jarring page load. But I do
         | find it elegant to separate presentation from data.
        
         | mamcx wrote:
         | Because JS is bad, and JS have a MASSIVE user base, so whatever
         | they do is the web.
         | 
         | And because JS is on the frontend, solutions _are front end_ ,
         | even the ones that eventually run on the (js) back-end.
         | 
         | Is like how people use a RDBMS but never do foreign keys,
         | views, etc and re-invent all, poorly.
        
         | dexwiz wrote:
         | Because the web was made to render documents, but users want
         | apps. CSS in part is so confusing because its original
         | incarnations pulled heavily from traditional print media layout
         | terms.
         | 
         | Everything since then was an attempt to leverage JS to turn
         | documents into applications. Why? Ask any user.
        
       | sroerick wrote:
       | Django was my first big freelance project, and still feels
       | tremendously cozy to use. I've done some goofy things with it and
       | it's always served me really well. Thank you Django
        
       | alex1138 wrote:
       | Duh-jango
        
       | willahmad wrote:
       | Django is awesome, but I wish there was an easy way to use modern
       | web frameworks with it.
       | 
       | A lot of times it's either through Nextjs/Nuxtjs + Django as an
       | API or complex bundling process which requires a file where you
       | register bundle versions/manifests then another build process
       | which embeds them into template
       | 
       | both are so complex
        
         | stevex wrote:
         | Django + AlpineJS + HTMX is pretty nice.
        
           | FartinMowler wrote:
           | Especially with template partials now in the core of Django
           | 6.
        
         | mushufasa wrote:
         | Yes the API process is very complex and then you have to have a
         | team with proficiency in two parallel sets of web technologies
         | -- python vs javascript. That said, the fact that you can go
         | that route means that Django can be a good pick for early-stage
         | projects where you don't need a frontend framework, because
         | there's the optionality to add it later if your project really
         | requires it.
        
         | frdy wrote:
         | Have you tried Django with Inertia.js?
         | 
         | https://inertiajs.com/
        
       | stevex wrote:
       | One thing Django has going for it is that the "batteries
       | included" nature of it is perfect for AI code generation.
       | 
       | You can get a working site with the usual featuers (admin panel,
       | logins, forgot reset/password flow, etc) with minimal code thanks
       | to the richness of the ecosystem, and because of the minimal code
       | it's relatively easy for the AI to keep iterating on it since
       | it's small enough to be understandable in context.
        
         | throwawaymaths wrote:
         | why would you need batteries included? the ai can code most
         | integrations (from scratch, if you want, so if you need
         | something slightly off the beaten path it's easy
        
           | jorl17 wrote:
           | I think the logic can be applied to humans as well as AI:
           | 
           | Sure, the AI _can_ code integrations, but it now has to
           | maintain them, and might be tempted to modify them when it
           | doesn't need to (leaky abstractions), adding cognitive load
           | (in LLM parlance: "context pollution") and leading to worse
           | results.
           | 
           | Batteries-included = AI and humans write less code, get more
           | "headspace"/"free context" to focus on what "really matters".
           | 
           | As a very very heavy LLM user, I also notice that projects
           | tend to be much easier for LLMs (and humans alike) to work on
           | when they use opinionated well-established frameworks.
           | 
           | Nonetheless, I'm positive in a couple of years we'll have
           | found a way for LLMs to be equally good, if not better, with
           | other frameworks. I think we'll find mechanisms to have LLMs
           | learn libraries and projects on the fly much better. I can
           | imagine crazy scenarios where LLMs train smaller LLMs on
           | project parts or libraries so they don't get context
           | pollution but also don't need a full-retraining (or
           | incredibly pricey inference). I can also think of a system in
           | line with Anthropic's view of skills, where LLMs very
           | intelligently switch their knowledge on or off. The
           | technology isn't there yet, but we're moving FAST!
           | 
           | Love this era!!
        
       | personjerry wrote:
       | Do you guys find Django includes enough batteries? Why or why
       | not?
       | 
       | I find myself using Cookiecutter Django [^1] more often than not,
       | better auth, a bunch of boilerplate configs, S3 and email setups
       | if you want, and other stuff rather than have to jiggle with
       | "Django infra" myself
       | 
       | [^1]: https://github.com/cookiecutter/cookiecutter-django
        
       | gnulinux996 wrote:
       | What is the Java equivalent of Django?
       | 
       | I really love django and everything around it, but I would also
       | like to write a webapp in Java.
       | 
       | Getting django + rest_framework up and running and actually be
       | productive takes me max 10 minutes, trying to do the same with
       | spring boot I am a week in and I had to open the jakarta specs to
       | understand the magic.
        
         | frikk wrote:
         | How about this? https://github.com/dropwizard/dropwizard
        
       | blorenz wrote:
       | Django powers my SaaS. I use it mainly as a data backend with its
       | ORM, admin, and incorporate Strawberry graphql into it for the
       | data exchange to my frontends. I wish it was better with async,
       | though.
        
       | spapas82 wrote:
       | Using Django for almost 15 years, almost exclusively, for both
       | business and personal projects. Have tried a lot of other
       | frameworks, nothing clicks so good with me.
       | 
       | My only (small) complain with this release would be that they
       | included the task framework but didn't include a task backend and
       | worker. I'd prefer to wait a bit and include everything in the
       | next version.
        
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       (page generated 2025-12-04 23:00 UTC)