Deskography

Share photos of your desk — Monday, 2nd February, 2009

Seeing how other people work is something that seems to be of interest to most developers. Whether it's because they want to become better workers themselves or because they're somewhat voyeuristic is open to debate - either way, Django-powered website Deskography is a well-designed social desk-sharing website. This week, I spoke to Gustaf Sjöberg of Distrop to find out why they chose Django to power Deskography, and what they've learned since launching.

Vital Stats

The Down-Low

Deskography is one of the first projects to come out of recently started web development company Distrop, made up of Swedish developers Gustaf Sjöberg and Johan Dahlberg. Although they were founded with the intention to assist startups with the means to realise their ideas, Distrop have also worked on their own small projects including Deskography.

With it's simple yet pleasant design, Deskography is a website where users share and browse photos of the desks and workplaces of other users. The main idea is that it's fun to show people where you you work, and for people to see where and how others do their thing: whether it's their idols, peers in their industry, or just anybody with an inspiring desk. The idea came about 6 years ago when Gustaf created a WordPress blog posting photos of celebrity designers' offices. In 2005, the website was taken offline and sat dormant until recently, when it was relaunched as the Django-powered Deskography.

There are already a decent number of users, including Django BDFL Jacob Kaplan-Moss, TWID host and 'newforms-admin' guru Brian Rosner, jQuery creator John Resig and other prominent web users.

The Django and Python code behind the website is relatively small, taking only 20 hours to complete. Comprised of only a few hundred lines of model-related and view code, Gustaf and Johan relied heavily on reusable applications from both their own collection and from open-source applications such as sorl-thumbnail and django-voting.

Having used Python for most of his development career, Gustaf has always tried to simply life with frameworks. "I've been using a framework of some kind for almost as long as I can remember" he says, recalling his days using a collection of PHP and Python scripts to fast-track projects. In late 2004, he stopped using PHP and began with a mix of Java and Ruby. Soon after, a framework in his favourite language appeared. "I downloaded Django and immediately fell in love with it... I started my first Django-based project a few days after initial contact and never looked back. Django was miles ahead of other frameworks."

Although slightly unhappy with the way the User model is extended in Django, it's clear skies most of the way. Being written in Python "makes me want to code", says Gustaf fondly. The well-written code is almost self-documenting, and the reusable application ecosystem is a big plus side. The URL to view routing system has made his life easier, as has the built-in testing framework that makes it easier for test-drivent development to take place.

At Distrop, the team have built their solutions on the suite of open-source software that seems to be quite popular amongst Django developers: key pieces of the puzzle include nginx, PostgreSQL, flup and jQuery.

Currently helping four startups launch their products with limited resources, Gustaf says that Distrop are "still getting our feet wet". With more projects in the pipeline including their own productivity suite and more enhancements to Deskography, Django will "absolutely" be an important piece of the web development stack for future projects.

Thanks

Special thanks go to Gustaf Sjöberg for this interview.

Deskography can be visited at http://www.deskography.org/. It is also listed at DjangoSites.org.

Comments Comments

Posted by ger

1:09 a.m. on Tuesday, 3rd February, 2009

Is the source code available?

Posted by Rapidshare SE

6:50 p.m. on Friday, 26th February, 2010

Nice idea! It can really help. You know modelling otheres is a powerful thing.

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