So, is it okay to stick to Django in 2020? The last project I made in Django - I used v3.0 and it was still fine although a lot had changed from v1.11. Except of course I forgot DRF a bit and had to throw out some APIs I wrote in it before deciding to roll out my own way in CBVs as going back to docs for custom stuff in DRF was too complicated/required unnecessary efforts. Same for allauth, drf-rest-auth, etc. Okay for basic APIs, not as much for customization. Sorry for the digression. And Django 3.0 still doesn't have event loop based async processing like Node, at least not fully.

Honestly, after working with Node+Express and having to write all the "magic" parts yourself, I feel more light and free, - not having to understand a framework and then thinking about my app's business logic later. In Node+Express I can simply scaffold a basic server and start writing routes, integrate with SQL queries, and be done with it. Maybe even install a couple of libs to sort out CORS, session auth, security stuff etc. And the performance is definitely better than running a Django app for simple serialization of DB data and sending that back. The biggest pain is obviously Django ORM - it's honestly light years ahead of anything in JS. But I can live without it, having spent a year on manually created migrations in my company that I know can be automated.

So, what do you use and recommend for backend development in 2020? When you have to write a POC quickly for an app idea you have, what's the technology you use to flesh its backend out?

P.S: This is not a rant against Django - I love Django and my whole career started because of it. I'm forever thankful to the Django community and Django itself. I just want to gain some insights into what other Django devs have been using regularly.