WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:09.480 I everyone, I'm T-Bo, my pronouns are he, him, and just want to start by saying thank 00:09.480 --> 00:13.920 you to my partner who is looking after our kids while I get to be here. 00:13.920 --> 00:14.920 So thank you Deborah. 00:14.920 --> 00:18.280 I couldn't be here if you were to do this for me. 00:18.280 --> 00:22.560 And yeah, we had to talk about Django, are really happy to be here. 00:22.560 --> 00:27.960 I've changed the plan for my talk quite a bit because in December of last year I became 00:27.960 --> 00:30.800 the president of the Django software foundation. 00:30.800 --> 00:35.960 So I thought I might as well use the platform and talk about generally how we do decision 00:35.960 --> 00:41.280 making for Django and the DSF things that work, things that don't, we'll talk about 00:41.280 --> 00:44.920 the exhibits, but yeah, just so you're aware. 00:44.920 --> 00:49.440 Slides are live right now, you're very welcome to go in there, at comments right now if you 00:49.440 --> 00:51.320 feel like it's just follow along. 00:51.320 --> 00:56.040 And yeah, it's very experimental, I'm using Google Docs for slides, so see how it goes. 00:56.040 --> 00:57.040 Django. 00:57.120 --> 00:59.120 How many people here at No Django? 00:59.120 --> 01:05.200 Yeah, quite a few, but you know Python these days is gigantic, definitely lots don't. 01:05.200 --> 01:09.440 The web framework for virtualists with deadlines, that's our tagline. 01:09.440 --> 01:13.760 You might not know that Django turns 20 years old in 2025. 01:13.760 --> 01:18.960 It's been around for a while and for such a big and early project, it's really cool that 01:18.960 --> 01:25.120 it's a project that's very community run and run by a non-profits foundation since 2008. 01:25.200 --> 01:28.880 They were very early in doing this in that kind of style. 01:28.880 --> 01:34.320 Other projects from the same era, then to be still my more cooperates. 01:34.320 --> 01:40.560 And yeah, no PDF else since 2014, one of the things we definitely struggle with is decision-making 01:40.560 --> 01:44.720 is kind of more community-driven, consensus-driven way. 01:44.720 --> 01:50.720 And yeah, it's a big project, my estimation is we have on the order of 500,000 to a million 01:50.800 --> 01:56.560 Django projects are there that I live in production and on the order of half a million to two million 01:56.560 --> 01:58.640 developers are there that use Django. 01:58.640 --> 02:05.200 And it's full stack, by the reason included, by the reason included, has no RM, has routine. 02:05.200 --> 02:09.040 I know some of those bits as a coder, definitely not all of them. 02:09.040 --> 02:14.640 If you've not tried Django yet, there's free things I want to plug, Django girls tutorial. 02:14.640 --> 02:19.200 The Django girls, plus tutorial, the recently renamed, it's an amazing resource. 02:19.200 --> 02:20.880 So happy that we have them. 02:20.880 --> 02:25.280 Right there is what I do as a day job, it's a CMS built on Django. 02:25.280 --> 02:29.680 It's not just me, it's a big company behind it and lots of contributors in other companies as well. 02:30.480 --> 02:32.160 More opinions than the Django. 02:32.880 --> 02:39.440 And our conference coming up in Dublin this year, where I will celebrate that 20 years perfectly. 02:40.320 --> 02:43.280 Some of my history, I'm definitely a dev first and foremost. 02:43.280 --> 02:46.400 I've been in the country to Django for quite a while and the whole, you know, 02:46.400 --> 02:51.040 presidency thing governance thing that's quite early for me. 02:51.040 --> 02:54.640 I'm only doing this for this year, so definitely that's one of the challenges. 02:54.640 --> 02:59.600 In my mind, front and center is contributors turnover over time. 02:59.600 --> 03:03.280 And people like me who step in for a year or two, and then they might not have the capacity 03:03.280 --> 03:05.680 necessarily to keep up. 03:05.680 --> 03:09.360 But yeah, that's me, that's the history, that's Django. 03:09.920 --> 03:15.600 And I thought I'd give a started thinking about, you know, keeping Django relevant on why people 03:15.680 --> 03:21.680 come to Django to start with as contributors, not as users, as contributors first of all. 03:21.680 --> 03:26.720 And for me, in my mind, it's a matter of making an impact with the work you do. 03:26.720 --> 03:30.960 So this is the kind of question that I tend to encourage people to ask themselves, 03:30.960 --> 03:34.800 why do you contribute, what kind of impacts are you hoping to have? 03:34.800 --> 03:38.160 And this chart here won't go into the details. 03:38.160 --> 03:43.840 My job is accessibility first and foremost, and when I see this chart, when I see Django, 03:43.920 --> 03:47.760 having a lower score than next, I guess, it's just not acceptable. 03:47.760 --> 03:50.640 And the only correct answer is a perfect score. 03:50.640 --> 03:56.160 And you know, becoming driven, it's hard for us to have the resources to beat those better frameworks. 03:56.160 --> 03:59.280 But that's why we here, that's why I'm talking to you, so you make them. 03:59.280 --> 04:03.440 So yeah, accessibility, I'm hoping way to improve, that's why I got involved to start with 04:04.240 --> 04:07.200 more graphs. I'll skip right over this one, it's not so useful. 04:07.200 --> 04:11.040 And yeah, more recently, I guess it's worth mentioning at the scale of Django. 04:12.000 --> 04:14.720 I don't know how many people here will have seen this chart before. 04:14.720 --> 04:18.800 The climate impact of technology, we have to think about long and hard. 04:20.000 --> 04:26.720 Yeah, I'll keep this brief, but definitely if you think of 500,000 websites or projects with APIs, 04:27.440 --> 04:33.200 that's 500,000 servers, that's tens of millions, maybe billions of users out there 04:33.200 --> 04:37.200 are using Django websites that load them in their browser, that takes lots of energy. 04:37.200 --> 04:43.760 So any improvement we can make to the carbon footprint of Django projects that adds up really fast. 04:44.720 --> 04:50.080 The NHS in UK uses Django, they have like on the other of a billion page views per year. 04:51.040 --> 04:54.800 So yeah, just that's why I'm here, don't have to agree with that. 04:54.800 --> 04:58.400 That's just sharing context on how this came to be. 04:58.400 --> 05:03.440 And yeah, so from a governance standpoint, I also like, again, like stepping through the roles, 05:03.440 --> 05:10.880 the contributors ladder, to think of what keeps the community healthy and encourage us to consider 05:10.880 --> 05:15.680 those challenges we might be having. I don't know here, like how long people have been Django 05:15.680 --> 05:21.200 notes for, definitely there are some people that love it, have loved it forever, and are very 05:21.200 --> 05:26.480 happy with it. And I talk about the existential threats to Django a bit, I definitely want to 05:26.480 --> 05:30.720 make clear, Django is going to stick around forever. It's so big of a project, it has so much 05:30.800 --> 05:35.280 momentum in Russia that it's not a concern whether Django will be there tomorrow or not. 05:35.840 --> 05:40.240 It's just so stable, and that's one of the reasons why people go for it. 05:41.120 --> 05:46.080 But it does still mean we have to worry about longer term, how it can keep it evolving, 05:46.080 --> 05:52.000 and not just rely on this in Russia, but whether it's accessibility and the carbon footprint, 05:52.000 --> 05:57.360 whether it's diversity of contributors or users that we're heading in direct direction. 05:58.160 --> 06:02.080 So yeah, how do you know whether you're heading in direct direction? Well, in my mind, 06:02.080 --> 06:08.640 best place to start is to compare your projects with other projects. This right here is the 06:08.640 --> 06:16.320 best way I found to compare any two tech projects out there. This is the ranking of those projects 06:16.320 --> 06:21.920 websites in a specific data set called Tranko. Basically, if the line goes down, it means the 06:21.920 --> 06:28.720 project is getting more and more popular. So walk around the bits. This very bottom is very 06:28.720 --> 06:35.040 safe tools that will never disappear. Django is the big black line right there. Right here, 06:35.040 --> 06:41.040 we have flask. Again, very popular Python tool. That is, I don't know how you feel about flask. 06:41.040 --> 06:44.720 I don't know it too well myself. It's definitely going to stick around forever. And right there, 06:44.720 --> 06:48.880 we have first API. I don't have much data for those, so that's why I just added the two points. 06:49.600 --> 06:54.400 And yeah, lots of JS frameworks going like, because they have way more marketing resources 06:54.400 --> 07:00.640 than the rest of us. And also, folks like HTML, blue line in the top right corner, definitely 07:00.640 --> 07:06.160 getting adoption pricey fast. So that's the type of trends I think we should all learn to look at 07:06.160 --> 07:13.280 as community minded open source people to understand why options are out there. What are the 07:13.280 --> 07:19.280 people outside this room in a wider pool of 2 million developers considering as far as tech? 07:19.280 --> 07:24.400 And what do they like? Basically, I want to steal all the good ideas from all those different frameworks. 07:26.320 --> 07:32.160 And yeah, I think we're seeing this tells us those tools are being used. This tells us Django, 07:32.160 --> 07:37.440 people use it. Doesn't tell us that people actually like Django, which, you know, are kind of like 07:37.440 --> 07:42.800 for that to still be the case, too. So here we turn to the Stack Overflow developer survey that 07:42.800 --> 07:50.240 has really solid numbers on developer sentiment towards framework year over year. And it's a big 07:50.240 --> 07:56.480 table, I guess the sad news is numbers aren't looking so good for Django. So that's definitely why I'm 07:56.480 --> 08:02.640 here is making it clear that it's not all rosy. And we need to take a good hard look at this type of 08:02.640 --> 08:08.240 data and think of maybe not just how we evolve Django technically, but how we market it as well. 08:08.240 --> 08:14.400 So people evaluate for the good bits and help us address the bits that need improvement. So I guess 08:14.400 --> 08:20.000 here in particular, the wants to start using line people who wants to start using Django, 08:20.560 --> 08:25.600 definitely getting lower. But it's not, it's not necessarily also bad. So I think something 08:25.680 --> 08:32.400 I want to make clear is this survey only tracks a group of like 10, 20 frameworks. So quite 08:32.400 --> 08:37.280 naturally as new frameworks come about, they won't be in the survey and people will start using them. 08:37.280 --> 08:41.200 So this kind of downwards trend that we've so before is there for all frameworks. 08:42.080 --> 08:48.880 If we look at year over year numbers, so essentially whether usage is increasing or decreasing, 08:48.880 --> 08:53.920 the figures aren't so bad. And I guess this restaurant in particular, people who want to 08:53.920 --> 08:59.600 stop using Django, it's only ever gone down. So that does mean that the people who start using Django 08:59.600 --> 09:07.120 take the time to learn such a big framework, appreciate it. So talking about DX, maybe some of the 09:07.120 --> 09:12.720 more modern aspects of the Python ecosystem aren't their yet in Django, but the people who take 09:12.720 --> 09:17.680 the time to invest into it, they like the long-term maintenance, they like the repeatable releases, 09:17.680 --> 09:22.640 they like knowing that for example, we have multiple maintenance, quite a bit of fluency. 09:22.640 --> 09:29.440 It's not driven by a solo person. Yeah, just again to harm your viewpoint home. So as a 09:29.440 --> 09:37.920 chart, what I want you to focus on here is the fact that the adoption in blue, that isn't growing so 09:37.920 --> 09:43.520 much. Here is compared to again compared to the other frameworks in that data set. So Django still 09:43.520 --> 09:49.120 definitely is growing by virtue of the Python ecosystem growing. But what that means is we're not 09:49.120 --> 09:55.040 finding this theory as many new people as we might like. People like Django or if people keep using 09:55.040 --> 10:04.240 it, but I'd like us to look a bit further forward than this. And yeah, let's look at the trends 10:04.240 --> 10:08.320 in the Python world. I'm sure you know them already, but definitely useful in my mind to be aware 10:08.320 --> 10:14.160 that there is lots of data on this stuff. We don't have to guess. And the big trend is data science, 10:14.160 --> 10:20.720 and I guess the popularity of web frameworks among people who do data science or maybe AI 10:20.720 --> 10:28.320 with Python. Well, this is a tough one to read. So I'll talk to the numbers. So we're looking at 10:28.320 --> 10:33.760 two bar charts per framework. The white one is popularity of the frameworks with people who are 10:33.760 --> 10:40.720 in a data science space. And the brown yellow one is what developments. And what's really interesting 10:40.800 --> 10:46.800 to me here is to see how many data science people are using those web frameworks. But how big 10:46.800 --> 10:52.560 the gap is in numbers of people using Django that are in the data science space and web developments. 10:52.560 --> 10:57.440 So to me right here, there's an opportunity for Django, maybe by changing which API as it has, 10:57.440 --> 11:03.920 by changing its marketing simply speaking to be popular with that crowd. Again, I don't want 11:03.920 --> 11:09.040 to make it sound like you have to use Django as the best thing for everything. But I do think 11:09.040 --> 11:15.360 that whether it's flask or Django or fast API, it's useful for those frameworks to be aware 11:15.360 --> 11:21.680 of the trends and to adjust their documentation or their features accordingly. And again, 11:21.680 --> 11:27.520 just to be clear, fast API flask to definitely the right to hold a job in lots of scenarios. So 11:27.520 --> 11:32.800 not saying that it's one or the other. And we have to last to learn from those frameworks. 11:33.040 --> 11:40.640 So just looking at this data a bit more again, we see the trend looking at survey results 11:40.640 --> 11:48.160 year over year, where there is some growth in usage for some frameworks. But definitely I like 11:48.160 --> 11:55.760 us to reflect on what those trends are driven by basically. And this survey comes from JetBrains. 11:55.760 --> 12:00.640 JetBrains are amazing supporters of the Python community. You know, they have their ID, 12:00.640 --> 12:05.200 they have good lots of good reasons to do this. But they still don't let show up and sponsor the 12:05.200 --> 12:11.040 foundation and make things happen. And they even packed this forest where they say the jump in 12:11.040 --> 12:17.280 popularity for fast API. They put it on performance, developer economics, so dx and type hinting. 12:17.840 --> 12:23.600 And that seems quite on the money to me. So definitely something so where I know that's the 12:23.600 --> 12:28.320 DSF as far taken on decision making, which traveled a bit in making about mind and having a good 12:28.400 --> 12:32.880 story around this. And I don't necessarily think that Django is bad at those things, but I definitely 12:32.880 --> 12:40.240 think we need to make it clear what our vision is for those things. And yeah, just, you know, 12:40.240 --> 12:46.080 iterates, be open about our struggles and make those gradual improvements that people appreciate 12:46.080 --> 12:50.800 in the rest of the Python ecosystem. It's amazing that Python is evolving, I want Django to follow 12:50.800 --> 12:57.680 along. And so yeah, again, existential threats, small challenges really, because Django is not going 12:57.760 --> 13:05.120 anywhere. People love the stability and it's right and tested. I thought I'd look at some 13:05.120 --> 13:12.160 internet comments on what people think of Django. I find it amazing that people take the time to 13:12.160 --> 13:16.000 share their thoughts on the framework that definitely helps us to the community grow and I want 13:16.000 --> 13:21.440 to encourage more of that. I'll read some bits of this that I think are really relevant. So 13:21.440 --> 13:26.000 the like and the pace of evolution is definitely something where I think we have to have a good answer. 13:26.640 --> 13:31.280 And this person, they've been replied to by someone else who says, no big corporations, 13:31.280 --> 13:36.800 we've tons of money back in Django. I don't know who knows how much versatile the makers of 13:36.800 --> 13:44.480 next JS have in venture capital funding. It's 150 million. So the DSF, our yearly budget, 13:44.480 --> 13:52.560 is $25,000 and 95% of that goes towards paying people full-time to maintain Django. So the 13:52.640 --> 14:00.560 marketing budget at the DSF is $5,000. So yeah, so we need people and we need to be 14:00.560 --> 14:04.400 better at fundraising as well as definitely an argument there and we need a better story. 14:05.840 --> 14:10.080 And yes, at this last point, why don't you have to use private packages to create a rest 14:10.080 --> 14:16.880 API in 2023? Definitely a concern with our Django package ecosystem, whether it's too fragmented or 14:16.880 --> 14:22.400 not and which batteries should be in core. And again, I want to make it clear, like if all 14:22.400 --> 14:29.440 need a rest API, maybe you don't need a full stack, such feature, full framework. Maybe you're 14:29.440 --> 14:34.160 very happy with other ones, but I definitely want people who are happy with Django to be able 14:34.160 --> 14:39.920 to take it in more use cases. Not for me to say as the president, but you know, I want to 14:40.640 --> 14:45.760 help the framework grow whichever direction. So yeah, more opinions on the on the internet. 14:47.760 --> 14:52.080 I'll focus on this bit that I haven't highlighted. It's not very exciting to be a Django developer 14:52.080 --> 14:59.280 today. I mean, I love the JS ecosystem and I love JavaScript, but if you want excitement, 14:59.280 --> 15:07.760 like for sure, you know, going for React upgrades year over year, switching from Redux to MobX to Zustand, 15:07.760 --> 15:12.720 like you can have lots of excitement over there. And we're not about that, that's for sure. 15:13.360 --> 15:18.480 There are definitely trends. I hope we we integrate in Django, but yeah, 15:18.480 --> 15:23.440 excitement definitely, like that's not our ethos. But again, I want to make it clear, like this 15:23.440 --> 15:28.000 type of feedback in my mind, amazing for us. And I want, I want this kind of criticism. 15:30.720 --> 15:36.480 Yeah, so it's not all doom and gloom. I have linked to those past if you want to make time to 15:36.480 --> 15:42.400 look at what people have to say. I've left the technical aspects of our Django hard type 15:42.400 --> 15:46.080 hints. Should Django have a built in API story. Should Django have a single file, 15:46.640 --> 15:51.040 options. Should Django have better docs. In my mind, all those things sound great, 15:51.040 --> 15:55.280 but definitely the right people to make those calls in our given as model. They are our steering 15:55.280 --> 16:00.480 counsel. It's a group that's we've struggled with maintaining over the years. We have new steering 16:00.480 --> 16:06.480 counsel members as of a few weeks ago. One of them, MRIs in this room. Thank you for being here, 16:06.480 --> 16:12.880 MR. And I hope that they help us as a community figure out which of the technical challenges 16:12.880 --> 16:23.600 to address and make it happen with our community competitors. So yeah, the challenges and in my 16:23.600 --> 16:28.160 mind, which things we need to be changing are encouraging more diverse contributions, 16:28.720 --> 16:34.320 definitely a framework that's 20 years old. You don't improvise keeping people around for that 16:34.320 --> 16:39.920 long. Even keeping people around for a year or two is hard. So 20, there's just no way. You have to 16:39.920 --> 16:46.560 have a plan for how you unlock people into the projects and retention. So keeping them. So just a 16:46.560 --> 16:52.160 quick shout out here to the Django Note space program. They're an amazing program. Just like Django 16:52.160 --> 16:58.480 Girls Plus that have to find new people that want to take on this type of tech work with Django 16:58.480 --> 17:06.560 and their focus on contributors to the framework in particular. And yeah, so governance definitely 17:06.560 --> 17:11.840 long-term technological direction by volunteers working in the open. That is a lot to ask 17:11.840 --> 17:16.960 out of volunteers. And when we compare ourselves with other frameworks, we have to keep in mind 17:16.960 --> 17:21.280 all the engineering resources they have, not just the marketing. And how much of that is in the 17:21.360 --> 17:26.240 background where it's much easier for them to fight over things, still be friends, 17:26.240 --> 17:32.640 whereas for us it's all public. And yeah, it's challenging. And yeah, I guess the last one here 17:32.640 --> 17:36.560 as far as governance is having a clearer vision for the future of Django. So right now we have a 17:36.560 --> 17:41.840 vision as particularly for what Django is at this point in time. I don't think necessarily have one 17:41.840 --> 17:49.040 for how we want it to evolve. And maybe that's what takes it from 20 years old to 40. And so yeah, 17:49.120 --> 17:53.360 opportunities, the vision I just mentioned, having a roadmap for Django, 17:54.080 --> 18:00.400 this document right there is my experiments from a year ago before I was president and also 18:00.400 --> 18:06.080 before I was a bald member. And I definitely think that's such a great win for Django. If we 18:06.080 --> 18:12.400 could have a public, okay, here is for the next release. Five to two coming out in a few weeks. 18:12.400 --> 18:17.040 Here is what we had plans, here is what we delivered. Definitely tested out if you haven't yet. 18:17.120 --> 18:21.840 For the release after 6.0, here is what we have planned and so on. Not necessarily for our 18:21.840 --> 18:27.680 users, but also for the contributors to a line on the changes that need to happen. And yeah, 18:27.680 --> 18:33.440 having more professional foundation, again, like, I do this kind of stuff for a living for 18:33.440 --> 18:39.440 wacktale, wacktale is a much smaller project with much fewer contributors to coordinates. 18:39.440 --> 18:44.240 Django is on the other of the thousand contributors per year. I'll let you imagine, like, I don't 18:44.320 --> 18:49.680 even, I can't even know them all by name. And yeah, those thousand contributors, 18:49.680 --> 18:56.880 that's representing maybe 10,000 people engaged in going to conferences, 100,000 to a million 18:56.880 --> 19:01.600 devs are there that are using good day today. So finding better ways to engage with those people, 19:01.600 --> 19:06.000 again, in my mind, essential. I don't want to learn just from those other frameworks and trends. 19:06.000 --> 19:13.200 I'm not learned from what people in those kinds of rooms talk about and value. And yeah, 19:13.840 --> 19:17.920 we have about five minutes for questions. I believe. I'll be right outside these 19:17.920 --> 19:20.960 doors to talk about Django for the rest of the afternoon. Thank you for having me. 19:30.640 --> 19:31.680 Do you have any questions? 19:32.320 --> 19:45.840 Yes, thank you. You have mentioned the ecosystem of part packages, which some people believe 19:45.840 --> 19:54.320 are necessary to turn Django into a usable web API. It's very planning a short medium term to 19:54.320 --> 19:58.880 try to maybe reach out with people, collaborate with them to see if some features can be 19:59.760 --> 20:04.720 put into very bad project or is it not the direction which is considered right now? 20:04.720 --> 20:10.480 Yeah, yeah, great question. There is definitely a plan with in touch with as many package 20:10.480 --> 20:15.040 materials as we can. And we've been in touch with those people that, you know, the DRF's and the 20:15.040 --> 20:22.160 Ninja's of the world for want to say almost years now. The problem with phase is that, again, 20:22.160 --> 20:27.360 like the DSF is quite a small entity, it's not super sustainable for us to move things as big as 20:27.360 --> 20:33.520 packages in core. So we have to think very carefully of keeping our cost of maintenance, 20:33.520 --> 20:38.160 low enough that is sustainable while bringing this innovation. So in the case of those APIs, 20:38.160 --> 20:42.960 to me, again, as a technical distributor, not as the president, the answer would be, 20:42.960 --> 20:47.840 making sure we review the story from a developers perspective, looking for those options 20:47.840 --> 20:52.640 in deciding, and maybe it's just a matter of listing the top five of those packages in 20:52.640 --> 20:57.680 that specific space in our docks rather than people having to go and hunt for them.