Thanks Bill. This was helpful. I understand that it's difficult to offer advice without too many specifics, so I'm hoping to get some high-level advice / examples of Django at scale, which you provided.
Thank you! On Wednesday, February 3, 2016 at 10:49:51 AM UTC-5, Bill Blanchard wrote: > > Let's try to adress some of their concerns: > > - We need to move to a service-oriented infrastructure because Django is >> too monolithic > > > It depends on what your application does and what you're planning to do > with it in the future. People are quick prescribe SOA as the end all way > to scale, but they tend to ignore the added complexity that comes with > building out and integrating smaller services. > > - It's too easy to write slow queries using the Django ORM > > > It's just as easy (arguably easier) to write slow queries using pure SQL > or any other ORM. The ORM makes a lot of good decisions for mediocre > programmers (I'd put myself in that category). If you're a great > programmer and have great programmers who really understand SQL, then > you're just as likely to get your ORM queries right as you are straight > SQL. > >> >> - It's hard to hire Django engineers > > > Compared to what? .NET or Java engineers? Probably. Harder than the > newest shiny javascript framework engineers? Probably not. Django has > about as robust an engineering population as Ruby/Rails does. I don't > know what you'd convert to in order to make hiring easier. All engineers > (especially good ones) are really hard to come by these days. If you're > looking at outsourcing to Southwest Asia, then yes, the Django population > isn't as high as .NET/Java/PHP. However, hiring challenges are most > typically defined by your location and your ability and/or willingness to > explore remote workers. > > While Instagram and DISQUS use Django to service large numbers of people, >> they don't use it for any serious backend work > > > Reddit is also a large Django user. All engineering decisions should be > made around what your particular needs are and what skills your team > possesses or is able to acquire. Needs of an organization evolve over time > and the organizations adjust as they need to. > > Many organizations start with a Python/Django or Ruby/Rails application to > build a product *quickly *which is what those stacks excel at. A mantra > typically heard in the community is "don't optimize prematurely". If > you're saying "man, we're going to hit a wall at 100,000 users", well you > need to get to 90,000 users first before worrying about 100,000. Getting > the 90k users is the real hard part. > > All this being said, your colleagues could be right to want to move off > Django. We don't know much about your particular circumstances. > > For more information on optimizing Django for scale, check out this book. > https://highperformancedjango.com/ > > Best of luck. > > Bill > > > > > On Wed, Feb 3, 2016 at 10:30 AM, Joshua Pokotilow <jpoko...@gmail.com > <javascript:>> wrote: > >> At the startup where I work, we've written a lot of our server code in >> Django. So far, we've adopted a "build it fast" mentality, so we invested >> very little time in optimizing our code. A small amount of load testing has >> revealed our codebase / infrastructure as it stands today needs to run >> faster and support more users. >> >> We recently hired some new engineers who are extremely skeptical that we >> should optimize our existing code. Their main concerns are: >> >> - We need to move to a service-oriented infrastructure because Django is >> too monolithic (monolithic = technology lock-in & difficult to troubleshoot) >> - It's too easy to write slow queries using the Django ORM >> - It's hard to hire Django engineers >> - While Instagram and DISQUS use Django to service large numbers of >> people, they don't use it for any serious backend work >> >> After having worked with Django for the last 3 years, I'm a big believer >> in it, and I believe it would scale. To defend my position, I've pointed >> out to my colleagues that it's easy to identify bottlenecks with tools like >> the Django Debug Toolbar and Yet Another Django Profiler. With my >> colleagues present, I've isolated and fixed significant speed problems >> inside of a few hours. I don't believe the Django ORM is inherently bad, >> although I do think that coders who use it should Know What They're Doing. >> Finally, I've referenced blog entries that talk about how Instagram and >> Disqus use Django on the backend for backend-y tasks. >> >> Despite my best efforts, my colleagues are still pushing to have us >> rewrite large portions of our infrastructure as separate services before we >> try to fix them. For example, we have one slow REST endpoint that returns a >> boatload of user data, and so there's talk about using a new microservice >> for users in lieu of our existing Django models. Even if we are able to fix >> bottlenecks we encounter in a timely fashion, my colleagues fear that >> Django won't scale with the business. >> >> I'm writing this post to garner additional evidence that Django will >> scale. Anything compelling (and preferably not obvious) that would help >> shed some light on Django's ability to scale would be *greatly* >> appreciated, as it's very difficult for me to defend my position that >> Django is a viable long-term solution without solid evidence to back up my >> claims. It certainly doesn't help that I don't have any experience scaling >> Django myself! >> >> Thank you. >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "Django users" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to django-users...@googlegroups.com <javascript:>. >> To post to this group, send email to django...@googlegroups.com >> <javascript:>. >> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/django-users. >> To view this discussion on the web visit >> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/django-users/83968c41-d415-4189-b33b-9f99b10b1c41%40googlegroups.com >> >> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/django-users/83968c41-d415-4189-b33b-9f99b10b1c41%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> >> . >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >> > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Django users" group. 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