Question

We are a small team (4 guys) building an ERP SaaS application for Schools. We are Java programmers but I know python and like Django. No one else in our team has worked on Django before. We’ve MongoDB as back-end and planning to use AWS.

I need to know which fares better, Django or Play! in terms of:

1. Ease of development
2. Scaling
3. performance (Response time, Speed etc)

I respect both the communities (Play! and Django) and have high regards for their great work. I do not intend to start a flame-war and just need an objective comparison between these two excellent frameworks.

Thanks,

YM

Answer 1

I feel this is too open of a question, but I would say the choice depends on:

1. How many experts in Python do you have? (Real experts, not “I can Google it”)
2. How many experts do you have in Java/Scala?

About performance, Play is fast, Play with Japid or Scala blazzing fast. I can’t compare to Django. But for an ERP I doubt the differences will matter so much.

On scalability, Play uses a stateless model which facilitates it. I’m not sure if Django it’s stateless, but for what I know scalability is not a huge issue (just put more servers).

So it ends up being a choice of languages. You’ll be up to speed quicker in a language that you know AND like. Check the overall skills on your team, or at least of the part of the team that will work on backend (html, javascript, etc will be the same for both platforms).

If that’s Python, go Django. If that’s Java or Scala, go Play.

Oh, and a hint: don’t try to learn a new language while doing the project. Like, trying to learn Scala to develop this. As a geek it will be really fun and you’ll learn a lot. But most likely your project will fail or be incredibly delayed. Go for the safe path 😉