If Django were created today, which batteries would you expect to be included in core?

  • A clear build step for static assets that can be hooked into with custom code. It doesn’t need to do anything by default, but there should be one obvious place to run esbuild or whatever. Right now, I’m running build steps outside of Django’s framework, but I would prefer it if Django knew to call the build step in the right places. A lot of the Django extensions are too opinionated when it comes to compiling static assets, all I want is a hook for a build step and I’ll write its code myself. (If this feature already exists, I’ve somehow failed to discover it.)
  • I would love more strict Django templates that don’t silently fail when variables are missing or when there are typos in variable names
  • Anything to make first-time deployments easier

I also heartily agree with some of these other suggestions, including: whitenoise by default and background tasks.

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