The next version of the most widely used Python web framework Django will see a new release in a few short weeks. With this new release comes many pleasing features, including many needed updates to the ORM to improve it's overall performance. If you haven't already, go and read the Django 1.5 release notes. One of the most exciting features is Python 3 support(finally). One of the features I am most looking forward to is the customizable User model, so Askbot can finally stop doing the crazy incompatible stuff it has been doing with the User model, although upgrading their code isn't going to be pretty. This is a great example on why you shouldn't twist the framework to do things it was never meant to do at that point in time, as you will regret it later when the framework finally adds that much needed functionality... Just surprised it took Django so long, sure we got a UserProfile model to add some customizations to, but this adds a new query to the database(and it's recommended to cache this object because of this). Having a central model to store everything related to a user makes more sense then spreading it out into separate apps.
What do you guys think of the next release of Django? What are you most excited about?
It is the Python 3 support of course. Me is tired of excuses/reasons like "will switch when Django does", even though it is labelled "experimental".
The built-in caching of related objects, so they are not fetched multiple times. 
Wow, so before 1.5 django required an extension of a base User class, rather than just allowing for ducktyping for built-in extensions (auth, say) on it? I haven't touched Django before (mostly because, there are smaller things I can learn for my purposes), but that seems like a large oversight... glad they fixed it!
Wow, so before 1.5 django required an extension of a base User class, rather than just allowing for ducktyping for built-in extensions (auth, say) on it?
Python 3 :-)