Will my Python Django Web App Scale?

Python Django is the most popular Python web development framework. Many great web apps have been created with Django.

In this video, I go over some common concerns people have about choosing a programming language or framework, and provide some context and a solution, so you don't have to worry about it.

.... So don't worry about it!! :)

Thanks!

Stef

[BenyThePooh]

I'm a self-taught tech entrepreneur who was lucky enough to succeed on the internet. I cannot stress how wise and true the words of Stefan are. To many young coders overthink the choice of language or framework. Your ability to ship products and create value for the end user will always beat 'multi-threaded polymorphic' frameworks. Keep the amazing work at your videos!

[somename]

Django/Python can scale massively, which is why a site like Instagram can run on it with 400 million active users per day (and note Instagram for the most part actually runs on Python, unlike certain other sites that are claimed to run on language X).

There are lots of ways to improve the performance in Python to make scaling easier, for example you can go the asynchronous route with aiohttp, asyncio, etc.

Or you can also switch to PyPy which is a version of Python (built with RPython) that has a JIT compiler and runs about 5 times as fast as normal Python (CPython)...

Or if that is not enough you can rewrite any low performance parts of your app in Cython (not to be confused with CPython), which compiles down to C (bar a small part of it) and can then be imported in your app like any python module, . So akin to how in some languages devs on large sites offload the heavy lifting in some area to a c/c++ library they have written, the nice thing is though, as Cython is a superset of Python so you don't have to know c/c++ to be able to do this, just Python (with a few extensions).

Worrying about scaling is a newbie mistake, the number of apps where the impact of performance / resource use would actually be of a meaningful level to need to consider something like Golang over something like Python is absolutely tiny, and then even at the scale as Instagram show there are still often more overriding considerations.

Python is probably the best example of this, no one disputes its baseline performance is 'slow', yet if you look at programming language indexes it generally appears as one of the top 5 languages, because there are other considerations beyond raw performance (which in 99% cases is negligible), such as how productive people are with it, how easy it is to find people with skills in that language, etc.

Which is why Python is so popular, it is very productive, it is concise, easy to learn, designed well (for the most part), very easy to read and has joined Java as a default teaching language at universities, which is partly why is heavily used in many areas like machine learning, robotics, data analysis, automation, etc.

[arch]

Hello there Stefan, love your insights and guides out there. I have one non-this-video related question.. What you think about Quality assurance as some kind of entry/starting point in IT industry, one guy i've spoken to told me about that, that it might be one of "easier" ways to start your IT career and after awhile move to front/back-end dev or something else.. So i guess my question is.. What you think about it, what skills QA guy should have(he told me SQL, but most jobs listings there doesnt have sql required), and would you rather go for that, or put in more time and effort and learn Front-end as your entry point. Thank you for great videos.

[hayatbiralem]

Thank you so much! Your perspective made me feel more comfortable :)

[techarachnid]

Thanks for the video, great job as always! I would love to be in that position myself :D. Question: Since you were able to reduce the load on the server are you able to reduce the server resources and save yourself a couple bucks?

[yahyayusufchazali]

very helpful video, i am worried about a social network project working on a scaling problem.

[FlavorOfTheMonthChannel]

You could probably get a lot of views on a video explaning: "What causes servers to crash" at a high level, showing how different things like too many user requests or loading too much SQL data for too many users at once can cause your server to crash. I watched your vid "Web App Load Balancing Strategies", which touched on some specific fixes, but I think if you did an overview of the various reasons that handling a lot of users at once adds complexity, it'd be helpful.

[ibraheemkolawole]

Instagram uses Django, google uses loads of Django, Disqus uses Django, Pinterest uses Django, NASA uses Django, WashingtonPost uses Django etc etc. Those mentioned sites handle shitload of traffic on daily basis, if you aren't competent enough in the language, that's when you start asking these type of questions. Plus your devops has to be tight....

[PakelisViniu]

Hey, Stefan, I am currently learning Django with Python (been doing various scripts with Python for a while now). I've just ordered your book Web Design: Start here to help me with HTML and CSS. Are the concepts in the book still relevant today? Has something changed that I should know about? Thanks.

[levontopalakian]

i wana ask you one question comes in my mind why i must prefer learn django and python to offer the client a solution (automated app) what if is say i can easily do it with app called file maker (made by apple) what i suppose to tell him ?

[MrBubbagump]

Thanks. I needed another "Bob's your Uncle" quote from you.

[syahnur]

is there any video where you talk on optimising a website's performance?

[sulavdeepuprety]

I have a question. I have built websites using Wordpress (PHP). Should i learn building website using Django Framework using Python?

[aishwaryavaradharaj]

Hi... On what langauge autodesk maya runs? Im tryin to create a extension in it...

[MikeDest]

People worry too much about scale. I had a client with a PHP spaghetti-code adult tube site getting over 4 million page views a day and was handing it just fine with the videos being served from a CDN along with Memcached.

[marvinxulu]

can I integrate video and streaming and imaging to a Django website like youtube, skype etc?

[JA-urob]

Long story short: If Django won't scale, what will?!

[kafeltz]

We use django and I can tell you that it is kinda heavy. I think if I could change something about it, would throw django away. Here it is shrinking bit by bit from monolite architeture to microservices, so, more and more django here is fading away. It's like Ruby on Rails, without Rails, there is no point using Ruby, it was all because the framework, and the framework ideia has changed.

Now, about python, it's cool language. But we are moving toward golang and nodejs.

[successfulpeople]

Nice video again. The audio quality wasn't good though. Please fix that before your next video. Thanks

[Cognitoman]

I’d like to learn Django, but not many jobs :(