0 Rails and Django: Designer's Perspective
Working in both Rails and Django I notice very similar patterns in work flow and philosophies. However that are a couple gleaming differences.
Implicit vs Explicit
Rails is implicit. Django is explicit. Period. Rails gives you everything you need with no clear explanation of what it means for a given task. For example if I want to authenticate before adding records to my database. There are plug-ins. However there is nothing in the docs that say, “hey this is how authentication is done right!” Django on the other hand is very different (obviously). Django says, “this is how you do this task the right way, here are ways to make it better, shorter yet!”
But as a designer
Personally I prefer the explicit side of things. There is nothing I hate more than 20 google results offering 15-20 different ways to do a specific task. Best practice is the only practice in my opinion and Django does a great job of making sure their developers (new and old) are using best practices.
However, I learned rails right around the time it was starting to get really hot (2005/2006). So I have a small bias towards all things Ruby on Rails, however if I could do it all over again with what I know about Django, I can’t say that I’d have the same bias towards Ruby on Rails.
To other designers
If you’re a designer, learn Django for the programming chops and then learn Rails to pay bills. Rails developers need good UI designers who understand Rails and aren’t afraid of the back-end.