What is Django?

Django is a high-level, open-source Python web framework that encourages rapid development and clean, pragmatic design. Created in 2003 by Adrian Holovaty and Simon Willison at the Lawrence Journal-World newspaper, it was open-sourced in 2005. Django follows the "batteries included" philosophy — it ships with nearly everything developers might want out of the box: an ORM, authentication, admin panel, URL routing, template engine, form handling, security features, and more. Key principles: DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) — reuse code components; Convention over Configuration — sensible defaults reduce decision fatigue; MVT Architecture — Model, View, Template pattern. Django powers Instagram, Pinterest, Disqus, Mozilla, National Geographic, and many other high-traffic sites. It includes built-in protection against CSRF, XSS, SQL injection, and clickjacking. Django's ORM handles database access across PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite, and Oracle without writing raw SQL. The Django admin interface provides a free, fully functional CRUD interface for your models out of the box.