Django and Patterns

In this chapter, we will talk about the following topics:

• Why Django?
• The story of Django
• How does Django work?
• What is a pattern?
• Well-known pattern collections
• Patterns in Django

According to Bowei Gai's World Startup Report, there were more than 136,000 internet firms across the world in 2013, with more than 60,000 in America alone. Of these, 87 US companies are valued at more than $1 billion. Another study says that of 12,000 people aged between 18 years and 30 years in 27 countries, more than two-thirds see opportunities to become an entrepreneur.

This entrepreneurial boom in digital startups is primarily due to the tools and technologies of startups becoming cheap and ubiquitous. Creating a full-fledged web application takes a lot less time and skill than it used to, thanks to powerful frameworks.

Physicists, educators, artists, and many others without a software engineering background are creating useful applications that are significantly advancing their domains. However, they may not be aware of the software engineering design principles needed to construct large and maintainable software.

A study of four different implementations of a web-based application in Norway showed implementations with known code smells and design anti-patterns to be directly associated with the difficulties in maintenance. Poorly designed software might work just as well but can be difficult to adapt to evolving requirements in a fast-changing world.

Beginners often discover design issues late in their project. Soon, they would attempt to solve the same problems others have faced again and again. This is where understanding patterns can really help save their time.