PHP, Python & Django

When I started learning Python & Django I was alone. I didn't personally know anyone using it. I had actually started learning Ruby on Rails due to all the hype surrounding it. I had been developing PHP apps for 8 years. I liked PHP, but it got to a point where maintaining very large projects became a schlep to say the least.

I was laughing at Rails vs PHP Rails Envy videos when I saw this Ruby on Rails vs Django video. Honestly I thought many Rails guys where pretty smug & self-righteous. When they had nothing bad to say about Django (other than they were saying Django badly) I decided to check out that framework also.

Off the bat, there were things I immediately like better about it:

1. The website theme was green, not red. I like green better than red.
2. Python seemed to have a better history and community than Ruby.
3. Their template syntax was similar to PHP's Smarty template engine, which I really liked.
4. Their description of Model/View/Template made more sense to me than every Model/View/Controller explanation I have heard or read.
5. I saw a blog post comparing an app written in Django, PHP, & Ruby and Django performed the best.

I'll admit, learning Django was tough coming from the PHP paradigm. I sense that C/C++ developers might go through something similar when they start using C#. You feel a little constrained by the framework. Although it makes hard things easy, it makes many easy things hard. But, I think that was more of a function of moving from the anarchy that is PHP to a framework. Truthfully, it made me feel like an old dog trying to learn new tricks.

Looking back, what made it more difficult is that I was learning Python and the Django framework at the same time and I couldn't always differentiate the two. I didn't know what was Python magic & what was Django magic.

I worked on a few projects to help me learn Django. I then got a job doing Django full-time (along with some legacy Perl). It has been VERY helpful working with a team and seeing different styles of programming. Some programmers make great use of the Python magicness. I still keep things relatively simple.

One of the greatest ah-ha moments for me was when I learned how to use functions inside of model classes. That opened up so much for me and made referencing values in templates so much easier. Here is a very simple example:

class Person(models.Model):
   first_name = models.CharField()
   last_name = models.CharField()

   @property
   def full_name(self):
      return "%s %s" % (self.first_name, self.last_name)

Now, in my template I can use the full_name function...

Obviously, you don't gain much from this example, but I hope you can see the benefit of throwing in function to create the output you need in a template.

Lately I'm finding just how powerful forms and other Django tools can be if you take the time to learn to do them properly.

I still often consider myself a newbie, but I have got to say Django keeps getting better & better.

On a side note, I would likely still do a small project in PHP, because nothing scales down like PHP. In fact, I recently made a sign-up form for our ultimate frisbee group. It is a one page PHP script. It uses SQLite for data & pulls weather from Google's API. Using Django for something like that would have been overkill. Setting up the hosting would have been a bigger pain still. So yes, there is still room in my world for PHP.