Django made its way into my life in 2012 as the answer to what was frankly a pitiful, PHP-driven, personal website. Accustomed to writing one-off SQL statements and frequent FTP transfers to keep the site running, Django was a breath of fresh air. After setting up an Amazon Web Services EC2 instance and a GitHub repository, I was ready to bite the bullet and bring my web development skills into the 2010s.

To this day I consider the move a mild success. I’m able to make changes quickly and flexibly, often leveraging Django features to get things done. Careful thought has gone into this framework, which is reflected in its 1K+ contributors and adoption by industry leaders such as Instagram and Robinhood. What started as a management system for news and media companies has expanded well beyond that scope into a key tool for web developers in a variety of fields.