I‘m trying to learn Django just for this kind of MVP purposes. I also did a small mini project in RoR by following their documentation. Is there anything that is significantly easier to do in RoR vs. Django? Alternatively, is there anything, say, on a larger scale that I can do with RoR that I cannot do in Django if the project grows? These are the questions I‘ve been wrestling with quite a bit now. After learning Vue and React.js and having used and being cognizant of Next, Nuxt, Supabase, Firebase and all that other stuff, I‘m looking to become a bit of a better developer by understanding the intricacies of traditional monoliths and how problems are solved on the backend. I‘d also like to be able to serve predictions and host ML models in production. Likewise, if my MVPs catch on, I’d like to retain majority of my ”IP” by the means of Django or RoR. Any intuition perhaps on my above questions? Thx!
Django shines at creating a nice project scaffold with all the things you need to do rapid development. It has first class support for DB, unit testing, schema migrations, good enough templating system, performant ORM and can be easily debugged. The documentation is top notch and the best thing is the community. Due to its longevity I found that almost all the issues I had were resolved by a simple Google query or visiting the docs.
It’s very easy to add functionality like social auth with few lines of code.
I’ve also not found anything like Django admin in any other framework. I would highly recommended Django for an MVP.
My view on this is that there is little between them so in that case it’s better to look at availability of skills you’d need to take it forwards in the operating region. For e.g. if it’s easier to hire Ruby developers then choose Rails.
I see a lot of people talking about Elixir, etc. on this thread, but I’m based in the U.K. and I’ve never seen a company locally using Elixir so even if it’s really cool, it’d be a bad idea for me to choose it absent a very very good reason. If I choose Django then even if I can’t find a Django developer, I can likely find people who know Python and the barrier to entry is pretty easy.
Several companies in the UK use Elixir including the BBC, USWitch and the NHS!
The London Elixir Meetup https://www.meetup.com/elixir-london/ has 1,467 members and is great place to meet fellow alchemists and learn interesting things!
Noted. but responding to the “UK” comment; London is often a good guide/proxy for the UK tech scene.
But for reference: there are quite a few universities in the UK where students are learning & using Elixir for distributed/embedded computing projects so these people will gradually filter through into the workforce.
Also there are plenty of Ruby/Rails Devs who have embraced Elixir/Phoenix.
But it’s a classic network effect problem; adoption drives jobs which drives learning and further adoption. Without a big corporate sponsor like a FAANG co, Elixir/Phoenix doesn’t have the mindshare of other languages/platforms.
In my city, if I restrict it to the “Greater X” area that includes some outlying towns on LinkedIn, I get 7 people that mention Elixir, and 3400 with Python. If I do the same in London, I get 751 people listing Elixir and 113k listing Python.
The scale is just not there to make it worthwhile in evaluating for any company to adopt other than a FAANG or really major employer IMO
