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.NET vs Django: What are the differences?
.NET and Django are two popular frameworks used for web development. Let's explore the key differences between them.
Programming Language: The primary difference between .NET and Django lies in the programming languages they are built on. .NET is based on Microsoft's C# language, which is a statically-typed language that provides strong type checking and high performance. On the other hand, Django is built with Python, which is a dynamically-typed language known for its simplicity and readability. The choice of programming language can impact the ease of development and the performance of the web application.
Architecture: Another significant difference lies in the architecture of .NET and Django. .NET follows a component-based architecture, where applications can be divided into reusable components. It provides a rich set of libraries and frameworks that support building scalable and modular applications. In contrast, Django follows a Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture, which separates the application logic into three components. This approach promotes code organization and makes it easier to maintain and extend the application.
Community Support: Both .NET and Django have active and vibrant communities that contribute to their growth and development. However, the size and diversity of the communities differ. .NET has a larger and more diverse community, thanks to its association with Microsoft. This results in a vast pool of resources, documentation, and third-party libraries available for .NET developers. Django, though smaller in size, has a passionate community that focuses on Python developers, offering a rich ecosystem of Django-specific packages and plugins.
Development Environment: The development environment for .NET and Django can vary depending on the tools and frameworks used. For .NET development, Microsoft provides Visual Studio, an integrated development environment (IDE) equipped with powerful tools for building and debugging .NET applications. Django, being based on Python, can be developed using various Python editors or IDEs such as PyCharm or Visual Studio Code. The choice of development environment can impact productivity, debugging capabilities, and ease of collaboration.
Deployment Options: .NET and Django offer different choices for deploying web applications. .NET applications can be deployed on Windows servers using Internet Information Services (IIS) or through containerization technologies like Docker. Additionally, .NET Core, a cross-platform version of .NET, allows deployment on Linux and macOS. Django, being a Python-based framework, can be easily deployed on any platform that supports Python, including Linux, Windows, and macOS. The choice of deployment options can be influenced by factors such as the target platform and infrastructure requirements.
Scalability and Performance: Scalability and performance are crucial factors to consider when choosing a framework. .NET, with its strong typing and compiled nature, offers good performance and scalability. It leverages features like just-in-time compilation and caching to optimize application performance. Django, being dynamically typed, may have a slightly lower performance compared to .NET. However, Django provides various caching mechanisms and optimization techniques to improve scalability and performance.
In summary, .NET, developed by Microsoft, is a versatile framework offering support for multiple programming languages such as C#, F#, and Visual Basic, with extensive tooling and integration with Microsoft technologies. Django, written in Python, is known for its simplicity, rapid development capabilities, and rich ecosystem of third-party packages, making it favored for building web applications quickly and efficiently.
So currently I have experience in Node.js, but just to expand my stack knowledge and for getting backend developer roles, I thought of learning another backend-related language/framework. I have heard about Django, Golang, and Spring. I am mostly trying for backend API roles, and far as I've heard, Django REST framework can be a pain to work with. I've heard there are issues with Golang for package management (like how recently the Gorilla web toolkit is archived) and as for Spring, it's a vast ecosystem to learn so not sure if it's worth investing in. I would like to know which tool/framework to learn, which can help me get high-paying jobs and has a lot of scopes, and also which is great for making REST APIs. Any other tool that can do the job better than these three is also welcome!
Try thats, is really lightweight and little bit similar like node, before you jump on djanggo stuff, hopefully it's helpful https://fastapi.tiangolo.com/
Hello, I am trying to learn a backend framework besides Node.js. I am not sure what to pick between ASP.NET Core (C#) and Spring Boot (Java). Any advice, any suggestion is highly appreciated. I am planning to build only Web APIs (no desktop applications or something like that). One thing to mention is that I have no experience in Java or C#. I am trying to learn one of those 2 and stick to it.
UPDATE: The project I am trying to build is a SaaS using microservices that supports multi tenancy.
I'd recommend to learn Spring as it is very widespread in the industry and provides a lot of easy integration into most of the common backend tech stacks. Rather than learning Java you could look into Kotlin. It's a very consistent, stable and well-thought language in my opinion and not as verbose as Java. Many problems can be solved with Kotlin in a clear and elegant way while also always having the option to use data structures and libs in JVM. It is also has a very good support in Spring.
I have worked in a Spring environment for many years and I still love working with it. Super quick to get a base application running and get coding, thanks to Spring Boot's easy and straight forward integration with Tomcat. However, I will try and answer this question from another perspective: look at topics such as popularity of the language, average statistics on community contribution to their repositories and hiring availability from companies. If you are going down the API route for backend, leverege on your experience in the Node world by looking into ExpressJS (or even NestJS). The JavaScript world is really excellerating at a lightning speed, and I could recommend exploring those worlds a bit more, should it be a comfort level for you. However, my biased answer is tryout Java, followed by Spring afterwards. No disrespect to any .NET developers out there, as there are a few topics in there which are fantastically implemented.
I'm really interested in building minimalistic web products with extra stuff like Stripe, MongoDB, solidity, WebAssembly and three.js.
Want to choose my backend lang but am unable to choose, my requirement is:
- fast dev
- minimal
- easy to learn
- good for saas
- huge community
- scalable
- fast and interactive
- good job market (not important)
If you want an ’easy-to-learn’ and ‘fast dev’ environment I would go with React.js, Node.js, and Firebase. This is probably one of the easiest tech stacks to develop and offers great scalability without creating a complicated database structure. Furthermore, it’s almost hard to develop a react application that isn’t lightning fast.
Should I continue learning Django or take this Spring opportunity? I have been coding in python for about 2 years. I am currently learning Django and I am enjoying it. I also have some knowledge of data science libraries (Pandas, NumPy, scikit-learn, PyTorch). I am currently enhancing my web development and software engineering skills and may shift later into data science since I came from a medical background. The issue is that I am offered now a very trustworthy 9 months program teaching Java/Spring. The graduates of this program work directly in well know tech companies. Although I have been planning to continue with my Python, the other opportunity makes me hesitant since it will put me to work in a specific roadmap with deadlines and mentors. I also found on glassdoor that Spring jobs are way more than Django. Should I apply for this program or continue my journey?
I would recommend you change and get the easy path, but there's no easy path. When you are working in something like development you have to learn every day, stick with a specific niche, learn from others to apply to yours, and improve to be a specialist. If Spring and Java are technologies you're not enjoying, why are you going to waste your time with them? If you check the market, the higher salaries are in the specialization. For example, I was sticking with Erlang and Elixir in high volume, high availability, and concurrent systems. Don't check the number of works about Python, Java, or whatever else, you only need one job, and you have no idea about the quality of these. Most of the demanding jobs for Java, Python, and PHP are usually not covered because they request a lot and pay too less. Believe me, there are not a lot of Erlang and Elixir jobs and I always found one. And finally, don't expect too much from big companies, they are all glamorous from the outside, but they are usually a deception when you start working for them.
Hi Mohamed, I love Django for its "batteries included" philosophy, meaning that you get the backend for free and a lot of stuff for database abstraction. But often you just need some kind of webserver backend logic and Django is oversized for that purpose. In that case I go with Flask which has a modular approach so that you need to gather the parts yourself that you need. If you come from a Python background I think there is a lot to explore with Python for the web and it very well into the data science landscape.
Hi everyone! I'm starting a personal project that I've been postponing for a little while and I need a bit of advice. I thought that it will be a bit of a challenge but I figure the best way to learn is by doing!
The plan is to build an app with loads of automation build in for reporting which would make it very easy to perform tasks, The plan is to build something similar to an HR app using microservice architecture, separating services e.g. employee data, payroll (including calculations based on easily entered info like tax %), employee services (vacation, sick day allowance booking and tabulation) and automated reporting on a pre-defined schedule (bi-weekly, monthly).
I am considering Django (as I currently know a bit of Python) and Symfony (as a friend who is a developer recommended it) but I am well aware there are other (and probably better) tools out there for the job (like maybe ExpressJS/Node.js for the backend and React/Vue.js for the front).
Background:
I have got knowledge as a DevOps, Site Reliability and Cloud engineer so once the app is built I'm very comfortable taking it to deployment.
Thank you all for your help and responses.
Hi. I guess it all depends on what your goal is. If you wanna make fast prototyping Django or ExpressJNodeJS might be really good candidates. You can write your services quickly and easily by using anyone of them. Maybe we can also put Laravel in the same category.
Symfony is also another application framework that comes with many reusable components. It provides great flexibility with the configuration and dependency management solutions. So that you can inject or override anything, anytime without doing something hack-ish. You don't have to depend on any components that come with the framework and, replace them with whatever you prefer unless encounter any integration issues. I can say that Laravel also provides most of the Symfony futures as it uses its components under the hood. However, my personal experience with Laravel was not so good because it made me feel like I use a modernized version of Codeigniter. But anyway. :) So if I have to choose one of them, I would choose Symfony.
From the backend perspective, all of those have some pros and cons. For example, If strict type declaration is important for you and you don't like code magics like monkey patching etc., maybe Python and NodeJS might not be good candidates and maybe you could choose Symfony/php. However, in this case, you'll be missed out on the most powerful future of NodeJS which is non-blocking io. if you plan to do IO-intensive works, I think it would be a big loss.
So, maybe I can recommend you to have a look at typescript + NestJS also. https://nestjs.com/ The futures that NestJS provides might be a good balance between the strengths of Symfony and NodeJS.
As I'm backend dev., I haven't work too many frontend projects but from my personal experience, I loved ReactJS more than Vue although Vue was simpler. Maybe a front-end developer can give us more helpful details about those.
Hope it helps.
I am wondering which language would you guys suggest learning if productivity & "future-proofing" is the focus?
I have now 2 years of experience with React Native & Firebase and 3 years of experience with Next.js and ExpressJS. As I like the idea of separating backend & frontend I think as a solo developer the MVC approach will get you way further and overall I started second guessing the whole js ecosystem and its quality.
What I am currently considering the most is Django, even if I am giving up major productivity I think the opportunities Python offers with AI/ML & scrapping are way superior then Rails. I would like to know how much productivity would get lost by deciding on Django.
Python is simple to read. Easy to use and import libraries. It is widely used in many different application domains. It is very easy to learn compared to other languages.
Considering your background is in front end technology; why not try some other language that can help you become more well rounded? Besides, there are always more and more python jobs.
Django is very easy to learn. If you use Django, I recommend the Django-Rest-Framework. This will save you a lot of time. But you need to understand some Python first. I think Python is as simple as: interpreted, dynamically typed language where you use lists and dictionaries a lot.
I need advice. Am currently building a real estate marketplace mobile app using Flutter for frontend. I am not sure which backend solution to use, and thinking of using Firebase, Django or Laravel for backend and MongoDB/MariaDB for the database. I want to build an API backend and then use RESTful API calls for the frontend.
I think you should first choose either a database or server side programming language then you can streamline your other choices based on that, but I think if you are building a big project then going with django + firebase / mongodb would be a good choice else choose laravel + firebase.
Hey everyone, I am a backend developer who specializes in Java and Spring Boot having an experience of 4 years. And due to my shift in the project, now I need to deal with the .NET Core technology, as a Java developer before I need to know where to start in order to support the project and build REST API.
Can I get advice on how to move on to the new backend stack and what to learn and how to get hands-on with the .NET?
IMHO I think it is the best framework to build software on. Since you are coming from Java, It should not be too difficult to adjust to C#. NET Core has come a long way. NET6 is just amazing. With the minimal API, https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/fundamentals/minimal-apis?view=aspnetcore-6.0 REST API should be very easy work for starters. When you settle in, you can go more advanced.
Although this is dated - https://download.microsoft.com/download/D/E/E/DEE91FC0-7AA9-4F6E-9FFA-8658AA0FA080/CSharp%20for%20Java%20Developers%20-%20Cheat%20Sheet.pdf it provides you side by side comparison of syntax. Another cool read is - https://betterprogramming.pub/java-to-c-c-to-java-f766c9f659c4
Feel free to reach out if you need any assistance.
Welcome aboard
You will find that the transition from Java to C# is pretty smooth. Working with .NET has become much more intuitive and has a lot to offer. I highly recommend using Visual Studio as your IDE. It makes things much easier and is not too different than other IDEs like IntelliJ. There are also Visual Studio templates for web APIs that make it really easy to get up and running. Microsoft has good documentation and tutorials to help you get familiar with the technology. I would start there.
I would recommend that you become familiar with the C# language. J. Albahari's reference book is suitable for this. To learn rest api development, read Andrew Lock's book "Asp Net Core in Action"
Hi all. I want to rewrite my system. I was a complete newbie 4 years ago and have developed a comprehensive business / finance web application that has been running successfully for 3 years (I am a business person and not a developer primarily although it seems I have become a developer). Front-end is written in native PHP (no framework) and jQuery with backend and where many processes run in MySQL. Hosted on Linux and also sends emails with attachments etc. The system logic is great and the business has grown and the system is creaking and needs to be modernised. I feel I would stick with MySql as DB and update / use Django / Spring or Laravel (because its php which I understand). To me, PHP feels old fashioned. I don't mind learning new things and also I want to set the system up that it can be easily migrated to Android/iOS app with SQLite. I would probably employ an experienced developer while also doing some myself. Please provide advice -- from my research it seems Spring/Java is the way to go ... not sure. Thanks
PhP might be old fashionned but Laravel is really great. I've tried nodeJs backend with express, python with flask and a little bit of serverless, and quite frankly, laravel was by far the best in my opinion. It has a lot of official packages that speeds up development (from authentification to serverless deployement), it also uses Eloquent ORM that support Mysql databases. Finally it works great with VueJs for the front end development.
I recommend ExpressJS or NestJS as BackEnd and React as Front-End and PostgreSQL as the database. The reason is as follows. First of all, since it is a financial system, various services will exist, and each service must be well connected and combined with each other. The organic combination of small services that work very well is the foundation of a great system. For this, it is best to use Node.js based, and I think ExpressJS or NestJS is the best choice. We recommend choosing React or Vue as the FrontEnd. PostgreSQL is currently the best performing database. These three combinations have many examples, and their superiority has been confirmed by my implementation in many projects already. If you are interested in my advice and have any questions, please feel free to contact me.
On my end for me it's better to choose Laravel. It has very good documentation and easy to code. The framework supports MVC and you can create either monolithic or API only. The community is also big. If you combined a Domain Driven Development (DDD) and Test Driven Development (TDD) on Laravel then it will be a superb.
Since you are using PHP more natural is Python - it can handle high traffic - Python is very effective in coding. Python is superset of Java and C++ - True Object Oriented and have very clear syntax (Spring is hard to learn and debug - you can be confused many times). It is human readable you can code 2-4 times faster with small speed sacrifice. Jinja2 is more faster/flexible Django - whatever Django is better with ORM. Flask is just proposal - many other options of web servers.
Hi everyone, I have a new venture project, we do frontend development mainly with Tailwind CSS, JavaScript, CSS, HTML, and React. This project will run on a cloud platform and it will be a web platform with data analysis. At Backend, we can't decide which technology to continue with. We will necessarily use Python for data analysis and algorithms, but should the backend be written with Django or C# .NET, can I get your suggestions within the cloud platform? Price performance is our priority.
If you are already committed to Python for the data analysis then it would make sense to use Django for the framework and stick with Python throughout. In general the fewer technologies you use (unless there is real justification) will improve process and long term costs.
All things being equal the fact you would not have less (likely no) licensing costs with a Python based solution will overall reduce your long term costs.
If you will be doing data analysis and complex algorithms Django is best suited for this because of it' maturity and the huge communities providing lots of Python libraries for data analysis and more.
Graphul is an Express inspired web framework using a powerful extractor system. Designed to improve, speed, and scale your microservices with a friendly syntax, Graphul is built with Rust. that means Graphul gets memory safety, reliability, concurrency, and performance for free. helping to save money on infrastructure.
A developer and project manager from our team X says the following about our use of Rails at i22:
"We use Rails to build stable and flexible backend systems. Rails is extremely good for managing data structures and quickly setting up new systems. It is the perfect base for most use cases."
I asked the same Team X member why the team prefers to work with Ruby on Rails, rather than Python and Django:
"Because Python is a scripting language and from my point of view not suitable for building stable web services. Python is for me rather good for scripts and fast small tools. Not for stable business applications. And if I want it fast I prefer Go."
Node Js have worked incredible great for me on every project I had. It is fast enough to support big and small apps, you do not have to worry about performance, because it is very capable of building a big REST API.
One advantage is that the learning curve is lower when you have used javascript on web browser as frontend, so, it is easy to migrate from Frontend to Backend with node.
Node Package Manager (NPM) has an incredible amount of packages from many developers, so you can use them on your project as you need them.
Code is easy to support, way different than Java Legacy code.
I inherited a large Python Django application as part of a corporate re-structure. After careful analysis, working with the new team, we decided to break the monolith into a microservices architecture. While doing so, we managed to port some of those microservices into Spring boot. Better performance and widely available expertise within my current team made me make this decision.
I was considering focusing on learning RoR and looking for a work that uses those techs.
After some investigation, I decided to stay with C# .NET:
It is more requested on job positions (7 to 1 in my personal searches average).
It's been around for longer.
it has better documentation and community.
One of Ruby advantages (its amazing community gems, that allows to quickly build parts of your systems by merely putting together third party components) gets quite complicated to use and maintain in huge applications, where building and reusing your own components may become a better approach.
Rail's front end support is starting to waver.
C# .NET code is far easier to understand, debug and maintain. Although certainly not easier to learn from scratch.
Though Rails has an excellent programming speed, C# tends to get the upper hand in long term projects.
I would avise to stick to rails when building small projects, and switching to C# for more long term ones.
Opinions are welcome!
We’re a new startup so we need to be able to deliver quick changes as we find our product market fit. We’ve also got to ensure that we’re moving money safely, and keeping perfect records. The technologies we’ve chosen mix mature but well maintained frameworks like Django, with modern web-first and api-first front ends like GraphQL, NextJS, and Chakra. We use a little Golang sparingly in our backend to ensure that when we interact with financial services, we do so with statically compiled, strongly typed, and strictly limited and reviewed code.
You can read all about it in our linked blog post.
This website was originally written in Yii as PHP was my main language back then. After learning Django, I realized just how quickly you could build a web app with less lines. So I migrated my website to Django in a week or two and managed to cut down the lines of code by half. Some of the lines saving came from the models, the views, and the expressiveness of Python. Django requires like config for the models and they provide many generic views that abstracts away common patterns.
I am planning to develop project management system SAAS based. Can any one help me with selection of platforms from Django or Laravel and for database MongoDB or Firebase/Firestore or MySql? On front end I am going to use Quasar Framework (VueJS). Note : project will be Webapp, Mobile app and desktop app.
We will use Django
to set up our backend and Django REST Framework
(DRF) for our API creation. The easiness of performing development tasks (eg. user authentication, URL routing, and schema migration) attracts our attention. Also, Django with PostgreSQL provides many benefits:
1. Some data types in Django will only work with PostgreSQL;
2. Django offers django.contrib.postgres to operate on PostgreSQL;
3. Django supports many features of PostgreSQL.
Moreover, Django is compatible with Redis.
I have used both the tools . Both of them are super awesome , very reliable and their learning curve is also super easy. But, the reason I choose Ruby on Rails over Django is the fact that the dependency injection is super easy in Rails than Django. What I mean is the fact that, Django requires a lot of import statement to do a lot of work, which remembering is not so easy and even after that you may need to write a lot of code. But Ruby on Rails uses gem to add addition feature or dependency in the project. Which requires just copying the gem statement from github and pasting it in the Gemfile, then running bundle install(these days just bundle works super fine). And there you are with the new feature in your app. You can see this with the example of Authentication, where in Django you require several steps like adding class based views and many more, but in rails it's just as easy as installing the 'devise' gem . And if you want to make it beautiful use bootstrap_template gem to make it look prettier. Now with Rails 6 , Rails is a total developer's fervent friend because it has come up with features like Action Mail and Action Text.
Pros of Django
- Rapid development673
- Open source488
- Great community425
- Easy to learn379
- Mvc277
- Beautiful code232
- Elegant223
- Free207
- Great packages203
- Great libraries194
- Comes with auth and crud admin panel80
- Restful79
- Powerful78
- Great documentation76
- Great for web72
- Python57
- Great orm43
- Great for api41
- All included32
- Fast29
- Web Apps25
- Clean23
- Easy setup23
- Used by top startups21
- Sexy19
- ORM19
- The Django community15
- Allows for very rapid development with great libraries14
- Convention over configuration14
- King of backend world11
- Full stack10
- Great MVC and templating engine10
- Mvt8
- Fast prototyping8
- Its elegant and practical7
- Easy to develop end to end AI Models7
- Batteries included7
- Cross-Platform6
- Very quick to get something up and running6
- Have not found anything that it can't do6
- Zero code burden to change databases5
- Great peformance5
- Python community5
- Easy Structure , useful inbuilt library5
- Easy to use4
- Map4
- Easy to change database manager4
- Full-Text Search4
- Just the right level of abstraction4
- Many libraries4
- Modular4
- Easy4
- Scaffold3
- Node js1
- Built in common security1
- Great default admin panel1
- Scalable1
- Gigante ta1
- Cons1
- Fastapi1
- Rails0
Pros of .NET
- Tight integration with visual studio272
- Stable code261
- Great community190
- Reliable and strongly typed server side language.182
- Microsoft140
- Fantastic documentation119
- Great 3rd party libraries89
- Speedy80
- Great azure integration71
- Great support63
- Highly productive34
- Linq34
- C#34
- High Performance31
- Great programming languages (C#, VB)28
- Open source26
- Powerful Web application framework (ASP.NET MVC)19
- Fast16
- Clean markup with razor16
- Powerful ORM (EntityFramework)15
- Dependency injection14
- Visual studio + Resharper = <310
- Constantly improving to keep up with new trends10
- High-Performance9
- TFS8
- Security8
- Job opportunities7
- Integrated and Reliable7
- Huge ecosystem and communities7
- Light-weight6
- Lovely6
- {get; set;}5
- Variations5
- Asynchrony5
- Scaffolding4
- Support and SImplicity4
- Default Debuging tools4
- Concurrent4
- Useful IoC4
- Entity framework4
- Nuget package manager3
- Blazor3
- F♯2
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Cons of Django
- Underpowered templating26
- Autoreload restarts whole server22
- Underpowered ORM22
- URL dispatcher ignores HTTP method15
- Internal subcomponents coupling10
- Not nodejs8
- Configuration hell8
- Admin7
- Not as clean and nice documentation like Laravel5
- Python4
- Not typed3
- Bloated admin panel included3
- Overwhelming folder structure2
- InEffective Multithreading2
- Not type safe1
Cons of .NET
- C#13
- Too expensive to deploy and maintain12
- Microsoft dependable systems8
- Microsoft itself8
- Hard learning curve5
- Tight integration with visual studio3
- Not have a full fledged visual studio for linux3
- Microsoft itself 🤡🥲1