I'm starting to appreciate that programming has more similarities to Jazz than just the project naming conventions encouraged by Django.
When I started the Hot Club of France mailing list (named for Django Reinhardt's Quintet du Hot Club de France) I explicitly mentioned it was about writing reusable apps that "jam" well together. But I'm realising that it's as much about the developers jamming as the code itself.
Ever since the inception of the Hot Club project, I've thought about cloning Web 2.0 websites using reusable Django projects. I noticed at the time that this is sort of like the "contrafact" approach of early Jazz where you would improvise new songs using the chord progressions of existing songs. The analogy isn't perfect but I do think the term "contrafact" is a great one to use for the programming practice.
Things are really starting to come together with Pinax and the conversations I've been having recently with other Django developers keen to jam with me on it reminds me a lot of stories I've read of the bebop years. You check out someone's work, think it will work well with your own style and start doing some improv together. Awesome stuff!
Things are really starting to come together at http://pinax.hotcluboffrance.com/
Just call me yardbird :-)
The original post was in the categories: django software_craftsmanship pinax but I'm still in the process of migrating categories over.