Making reusable micro applications with Django is not obvious.

Django development context

Note that this is not an error of any kind, as the homepage states:

Django was designed to handle two challenges: the intensive deadlines of a newsroom and the stringent requirements of the experienced Web developers who wrote it. It lets you build high-performing, elegant Web applications quickly.

Django’s objective was not reusable application development, but rapid development of websites, one by one.

Django current context

The objectives evolved because Django development team hopefully pays attention to its user and developer community, while keeping its primary objective: rapid website development.

Because Django’s community is constantly growing, the variety of needs that Djang solves faster enlarges, in addition to publishing: social networks, e-commerce, blogging, custom developments … Who knows if it will ever end?

The current situation is very interesting for freelance developers: many reusable applications are available and Django tends to encourage it, not only by growing its contrib repository, but also by making fascinating releases.

What’s the issue?

The issue is that Django community don’t want to solve the same problems twice, hackers keep releasing reusable applications although Django was not designed for producing websites based on so many different micro applications that solve such a variety of needs!

This is the strength and the weakness of Django: it was made to produce fast, but not that fast; thus the current need for INSTALLED_APPS refactor.

A constructive approach

The objective of this blog is to help the readers to produce higher quality reusable applications, trying to make sure that problems won’t have to be solved twice by sharing some Django user experience, particularely my own errors.

Credits

Cheers for Django, the creators and the community. Thanks a lot for maintening this great project and this great apps.