Django is starting to gain more traction and I do believe we'll start to see a bit more of a hockey stick effect on it's adoption over the coming months. 1.0 being released last year and (at least part-wise) adoption by the Google AppEngine have both been great PR events for Django but I'd also argue that Django doesn't have it's Twitter or BaseCamp yet i.e. a killer application that grabs the mindshare of startup CTO and CEOs that seemingly make them choose Rails.
At Thinktiv, while we're a professional services company thats officially platform agnostic, we've chosen Django as our in-house framework of choice for development. Django suits the majority of our customers applications very well (generally interesting presentations and visualization of structured data and media). Whenever we've had customers where we get to influence the framework used, we'll sell Django into the account. However, we've had customers comeback and want to build on Rails for the exact opposite reason from this thread: lack of people in the Austin area who know Python/Django to take on the maintenance work after we've done the initial application build. So it seems like we've got a bit of a chicken/egg problem. Our organization is going continue to evangelize Django in our community. The more that the Django-community sells its virtues in our various consulting gigs the more opportunity we'll get to use the framework we love. To further Malcolm's point above, be a good programmer first. Good programmers should be able to pick up (or already know) multiple platforms, frameworks, languages quickly. Being a first rate programmer who's technology agnostic will open up a huge number of opportunities where you'll get to be the person who influences what gets used in various situations. It's in those situations that you'll get to grab your favorite tool: Django. Jon Loyens Thinktiv, Inc. On Jan 11, 1:14 am, Malcolm Tredinnick <malc...@pointy-stick.com> wrote: > On Sat, 2009-01-10 at 15:38 -0700, David Lindquist wrote: > > First, I understand that the world economy is in a slump, and that > > the job market as a whole has not fared well of late. But even before > > the recent downturn, I noticed that there are precious few jobs in > > Django development (yes, I know about DjangoGigs.com). A simple > > keyword search on popular job boards shows that the number of Ruby on > > Rails jobs outnumber Django easily by a factor of 10 or 20. True, > > Rails has been around longer, but not by much (a year maybe?). > > > So my question to the group is: if Rails has been widely adopted in > > the enterprise, why hasn't Django? Do you think Django will catch on? > > Or do you think it will be more of a "boutique" framework? > > There are some slight problems with your methodology. Large companies > adopting something like Django aren't necessarily going to be posting to > djangogigs.com or places like that. They'll already have competent > programmers in-house to do the work. Or they'll hire through more > traditional channels. So it might well be that Django is more heavily > used in large organisations than Rails and all the Rails jobs you see > being advertised are because there are lots more gigs at the smaller > end. > > I have no evidence to support this either way, but it's always tough to > estimate "the number of people using X" by the job advertisements > without a lot more controlling of factors. > > It's probably a mistake to base your entire career for any period of > time on only doing Django work unless you have some long-term contract > or permanent position already lined up. But it's not a bad skill to have > in your bag of tools, since many other problems that contractors are > asked to solve can be solved using that particular skill. Keep in mind > that keyword searches only find offerings where the client/employer has > already picked the solution and is trying to backfill a lack of skills > and hoping desperately that adding more people or bringing in new people > won't make things worse than they are (hiring contractors is very > risky). There are many other positions where the hirer is in a position > of having a problem and after a solution. That's where the experienced, > all-around consultant can often add genuine value. > > Over the years, Python job advertisements have lagged behind other, > trendier areas. It's led to some perception problems, particularly when > trying to "sell" Python-based solutions to more conservative outfits. > But you can only hold one job at a time, so all you need is one job > opening in an area you can work in and you're fine. Do you want to be a > quality craftsman in an area where the quality can be identified > (Python), or just one of tens or hundreds of thousands in an area like > Rails or Java or C#? > > Malcolm --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Django users" group. To post to this group, send email to django-users@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to django-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/django-users?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
