Companies and apps that use Python/Django

Intro

At this point, you may know perfectly what Python is and the main characteristics of its most popular framework, Django.

It’s time we look at the best use cases for this tandem and skim through the most prominent companies and applications that decided to use this language and framework.

What are Python and Django?

To be sure - here is a rapid recap of what they are. Let’s simply follow the definition taken from Wikipedia:

Python is a high-level, general-purpose programming language. Its design philosophy emphasizes code readability with significant indentation. Python is dynamically-typed and garbage-collected. It supports multiple programming paradigms.

Django, on the other hand, is not a language. It’s a framework that uses Python. It is a free, open-source, Python-based web framework that follows the model–template–views architectural pattern. It is maintained by the Django Software Foundation, an independent organization established in the US as a 501 non-profit.

When to choose Python/Django?

Let’s take a look at the main reasons for choosing this combination:

• Security

Security features are already built into this framework. It has protection for some main security issues, such as cross-site scripting, request forgery, clickjacking, and SQL injection. What’s more - because a large community supports Django, they are releasing new updates whenever vulnerabilities are discovered - this allows you to focus on building your product and not worry much about security.

• Easy to learn

As you probably already know, Python is relatively easy to learn, so the same applies to Django. This is good news because finding people to work on your system in the future shouldn’t be challenging - and this is a truly important factor.

• Built-in modules

Django has a lot of valuable modules built-in, like ORM, forms, Authentication, URL routing, session management support, Middlewares, HTTP libraries, Multi-site support, template engine, etc.

• Community

Python has a vast community which means many materials and people are willing to help or have already solved the issue you might have. This also means many modules are out there, bringing me to the next point.

• Cross-platform

Django is a portable framework, that’s why it can run on any platform, making the development process easy and system-independent. In addition, you can easily migrate the project to any different database, thanks to ORM.

• ORM

Django offers an Object-Relational Mapper module that allows you to use any database you want without pain. What’s more - you can even work with multiple databases simultaneously. Switching between databases is also easy, so that you can use different ones on production and staging.

• Scalability

Django is perfect for building small applications that grow exponentially in time. You can enable or disable additional modules. Most cloud providers do whatever they can to make the deployment smooth and easy. And you probably know that having the ability to scale the app quickly is extremely important.

• Admin Panel UI

Another cool feature of Django is its fully equipped, customizable admin panel UI for the app you’re creating. You can naturally modify it with third-party solutions to suit your individual needs.

It also has an authentication and permissions module, so you can save a LOT of time when building your app with Django.

• Documentation

Last but not least is the documentation. Because of the huge community and time that has passed since the first release, Django is exceptionally well documented, with real-life examples. This, again, makes the whole development process quicker and more reliable.

Once you look through the points above, it will become pretty obvious what are the best use cases of applications that (in my opinion) should be built using Python/Django:

1. Content management systems
2. Social networking applications
3. E-commerce
4. Booking Engines
5. Fintech applications
6. CRMs (custom-built)
7. Mobile applications that are based on web applications

And, of course, many more, but in the end, you should always consult a specialist to go through your requirements and make the best decision.

Companies and applications that are using Django/Python

Now that we have quickly gathered essential features that make Django a perfect choice for web applications, let's look at who is using it and for which application.

1. Stripe

Stripe is a well-known payment processing platform used by most prominent companies. This fintech used Python to build its API interface.

2. Netflix

They use Python for their CDN, data analysis, Animation, experimentation (a/b testing), or Demand Engineering.

3. Amazon

4. Google

Google uses python, C++, Java, and GO as its server-side languages. It’s used, for example, in Youtube applications.

5. Instagram

Instagram uses Python to facilitate a big part of its business logic of the application.

6. Reddit

They are heavily using python - the reason is simple - mainly because of the vast amount of libraries available.

7. NASA

They use Python in their Workflow Automation System (WAS) for shuttle mission planning and data management, as well as open-source projects that can be found on their website.

8. Spotify

The sponsor of one of the biggest python conferences - PyCon and EuroPython - is using this language for backend services and data analysis.

9. Facebook

Facebook uses python for its production engineering. It’s a part of the company that combines systems and production engineering.

10. Quora

11. PayPal

Python is used throughout the company infrastructure. Their engineering team also wrote a famous article - 10 Myths of Enterprise Python

12. Dropbox

13. Uber

Uber uses Tornado - A Python framework, alongside Node.JS, go, and Java.

14. Lyft

As you can see, the wide variety of applications proves that Python is a perfect choice for almost any industry and application size.

Final remarks

At Sunscrapers, we believe Python can quickly solve many problems, delivering great business value. So if you have questions about using Python in your project (be it an existing or new one), please do not hesitate to shout.

Read more

1. Who can use Python? - part 4

2. Top 5 Python Applications - part 2

3. 7 reasons why Python is the best programming language for AI

4. Here's why Python is so popular in Machine Learning

5. When to use Django? 3 examples and benefits for different industries