Despite what you may tend to think, capstone projects are not always the presentation of developed skills honed over the course of time. In fact, some capstone projects may require tools and frameworks which are wholly unfamiliar to the student developer.
Django is a web development framework which is intended to make full stack development a much more streamlined process. In order to accomplish this, Django utilizes an ORM (Object Relational Mapper) which transforms your Python code via the use of Django Models into structures for various relational databases such as MySQL and PostgreSQL. Each class within a model maps to a table and the attributes of the class correspond to fields within the table. With this new layer of abstraction, developers are able to manage their backend by creating, reading, updating and deleting data with Pythonic syntax through Django.
Other benefits of Django is the use of urls, templates, forms and views to quickly and *easily map and render web pages to users.
After having completed two Pluralsight courses on Django and creating a handful of practice projects, I can say that it is deceptively easy. Depending on what you want to accomplish it may even be downright easy, but as soon as you go off script you realize this is a complex tool with significant depth.
As with most of life’s endeavors worth completing, practice eventually makes easy. Django is a web development framework worth learning and one I will certainly become more practiced with as CS467 continues.
Until next time space cowboy.
( For those interested in a great beginner Django course I would recommend “Getting Started by Reindert-Jan Ekker” https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/django-getting-started )
