Can Django be used for a high traffic website with lots of writes to the database?

Most web frameworks are fine and scalable if you put enough resources, you just have to make a decision and pick one that you are able to find people for. Given that you seems to be just starting, for you it's going to be a people-resource problem and not a technology problem.

It sounds like the different developers you spoke with know nothing about Python / Django. It is very scalable. There is admittedly greater overhead when using a framework such as Django or Rails, but they can definitely scale. For that matter, most technologies are scalable if you know how to use them properly.

I've done both in production, both will work at scale. It's more of a question of the data load. If it's frequent writes you'll have to look into which database is the most appropriate, e.g. redis, mongo, cassandra, mysql etc.  Which will be the real bottle neck as the server shouldn't really be storing anything persistently.

Django is pretty well put together, and as a web framework, fine for complicated web sites, when you hire a django developer you'll likely get a closer set of standards than in the javascript world.

Node.js is better for real time websocket things, and newer cooler but way more chaotic, like there aren't that many standard node.js developers, as there are a zillion libraries that reflect different incompatible philosophies. Even the appeal of using javascript on both client and server really isn't quite applicable, as client side has to deal with older browsers, and node can use experimental features of the language.

Hi Dmitry, yes of cause (although I'll paraphrase due to time constraints):

Top line: Django on App Engine works and works pretty well. It's not without its issues but the combination of python/Django/Google offers a very stable and scalable solution for a decent slice of startups. There are of cause, cases where Django its self is not the right choice (see other comments in this thread) and there will be special cases where even if Django is the best web application framework, Google App Engine won't be the right deployment option.

In a bit more detail:

General Development
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Worth noting that App Engine *does not* support Django1.7 which could be a huge pain as 1.7 is a great iteration. That said, 1.5 is supported and was (and still is) a very good choice for rapid web application development.

In addition, dependency management is non intuitive as App Engine does not support virtualenv or pip - workarounds are well documented.

Apart from that, you can get a pretty decent dev workflow for your team up and running pretty quickly including local env's (we didn't roll vagrant but I hear there is a project providing this), developer specific hosted AppEngine accounts and Dev and Staging etc.

CI
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While App Engine suggests it supports github integration and push to deploy we never got this working and instead went for a Jenkins setup on a Google Cloud VM with Github integration running testing, per dev deployment and shared dev and staging integration. Nothing really specific here to app engine, just worth nothing that Jenkins is still the best choice in this area (in our experience).

Database
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We went for Google Cloud Datastore using django appengine and after a few teething issues were impressed with the flexibility (no migration if managed correctly) and performance offered. We rolled our own management and BI console so I can't speak for the django admin site but I from previous experience, Django toolbox sorts out all but the most crazy no-sql things you can do with models.

Worth a quick aside to mention that fixtures are not (really) supported so if you have a ton of pre-fill data for the database you need to be inventive on how to get it loaded up.

Dev Ops
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This is the real winner and the reason why AppEngine and Google Cloud is so hot. They have SO many dev ops features built into AppEngine that you really can have one of your good dev's running dev ops as a side project. You still have to be techy to get the best out of the dev ops suite but once setup, the exec/founder level reporting and monitoring is really good.

Integration
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Worth noting that using App Engine makes it very easy to use and pay for Google services (maps, auth etc etc) if this is part of your stack then this can be a big win, especially if you just starting out as dev time can be shortened.

Conclusion
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There are always cases for and against any tech. IMHO, Django over Google App Engine is great for statups that want to benefit from the scale that Google brings to play (and the pricing is pretty fair) and the huge win in Dev Ops. Yes you'll have issues integrating with App Engine (especially if moving from AWS etc) but thats not specific to App Engine :)

As always, PM me if you want to chat about any of this on a call etc.

Google App Engine makes Django easy to use and learn -- it's one of the first full web stacks supported by GAE. If your new CTO knows any Python (and they all should by now) then they can pick up Django very easily. 

Hi Lane,

I would second Tory's comments on the standards around Django. Its a pretty (very) mature framework that is super well supported and which promotes a pretty standard way of doing things. This can be a huge benefit when trying to bring on developers and can make it easy for you to assess potential developer competences etc. We (MetaLayer) have used Django for project of all scale with very little issue. Not to mention the fact that it comes with a host of community project for things like monitoring, A/B testing, social sign on etc etc.

That said, there are things that Django is not as good at that a tech like Node.js is. Some of this can be overcome with the correct choice of database engine (Django over Mongo works as does Django on Google Cloud over Google Datastore), but this won't be enough for some very specific cases (reach out if you want to chat about this).

In short, if you have a great tech co-founder then they will likely know the right mix of tech to delivery your USP, if not, then a choice like Django (or RoR etc) can save a non-tech exec a load of trouble.

I'll add to the chorus. Django works great in production for us, with a high transaction volume and low latency. The biggest issue about running web applications at scale is (a) how stable they are in terms of memory usage, (b) how well your web server works (here, I prefer nginx to apache), and (c) how well you optimize their function (and Django has a number of great ways to profile applications to reduce database queries and use caches).

Disqus ran through some hoops to get Django to scale a number of years ago. It really comes down to backend for the data and some updates to the code. The code has come forward quite a bit now so I imagine many of their hoops are no longer necessary. 

If you're evaluating Node.js versus Django, methinks you're missing -- or not highlighting here -- the core issue. Certainly Node.js is something to avoid with CPU-heavy operations, like image processing. But it's great for things such as Single Page Applications (SPAs), working with distributed Web service APIs, etc.

There's no simple right or wrong answer here. It entirely depends on what application you're building and the environment it operates within. Which means any opinions here are going to be extremely limited without that background, unfortunately.