> But unfortunately it has been slowly declining for a long time…
That could be a sign of “stability”.
I’m personally using Django since two years ago and have the same feeling as yours, there are nothing exciting happening in this area, but after two years of use I came to the conclusion that it’s features are too stable, so nothing new need to happen in the first place.
It’s a common myth that software should be always updating and introducing new features. No, it’s not, if it can solve the problem great it doesn’t need to change at all.
JS/TS/Rust are still in their exploration phase, new ideas, new exprimentations, new frameworks come and go everyday, and that’ the reason they look vibrant.
Before settle down with Django, for years I’ve used bleeding edge tech like Meteorjs/React/Nextjs/Vue/Nuxtjs/Svelte/SvelteKit/… in real world, or try to rewrite real world app with them, and the biggest problem of all of them is that they all have their quirks and things in JavaScript area are changing too often and too much, I’m so tired to chase all these fancy new ideas.
For 90% web apps Django+Htmx+AlpineJS can serve me good and do all the things that new tech can do easily, at the same time keep incredible stability.
I believe Rails or Laraval are same here, you don’t need to switch in 90% cases, just relex and appreciate the stability they bring.
Thank you for your feedbacks on Django. I agree Django is maybe a boring but solid framework. I never used it so I can’t speak about it’s dev experience but it looks great. I see Python kind of like Java but for dynamic languages. It’s not shiny it’s not the hype. But what can’t you do with it? Usually when a new tool comes out you have Java and Python as clients. Before you used to have Ruby too. Now not so much.
For Rails the thing is that it’s not just one lib among a huge ecosystem like Python but more or less Ruby = Ruby on Rails. Sure you have Sinatra which is the Flask of Ruby but that’s it. While in Python you can do so many other things from devops to ML to eBPF…
That could be a sign of “stability”.
I’m personally using Django since two years ago and have the same feeling as yours, there are nothing exciting happening in this area, but after two years of use I came to the conclusion that it’s features are too stable, so nothing new need to happen in the first place.
It’s a common myth that software should be always updating and introducing new features. No, it’s not, if it can solve the problem great it doesn’t need to change at all.
JS/TS/Rust are still in their exploration phase, new ideas, new exprimentations, new frameworks come and go everyday, and that’ the reason they look vibrant.
Before settle down with Django, for years I’ve used bleeding edge tech like Meteorjs/React/Nextjs/Vue/Nuxtjs/Svelte/SvelteKit/… in real world, or try to rewrite real world app with them, and the biggest problem of all of them is that they all have their quirks and things in JavaScript area are changing too often and too much, I’m so tired to chase all these fancy new ideas.
For 90% web apps Django+Htmx+AlpineJS can serve me good and do all the things that new tech can do easily, at the same time keep incredible stability.
I believe Rails or Laraval are same here, you don’t need to switch in 90% cases, just relex and appreciate the stability they bring.