What is Pinax?
Pinax is an open-source ecosystem of reusable Django starter projects, apps, and themes for building websites.
Ways to Use Pinax
Because Pinax is made with the open-source programming language Python and web development framework Django, Pinax is fully-customizable.
Here are some ways that you might use Pinax:
- A Pinax starter project as is, with small customizations
- A Pinax starter project with additional Pinax or third-party apps added
- A non-Pinax Django project with Pinax app(s) added
Python, Django, and Pinax History
Python History
In 1989, Guido van Rossum was looking for a "hobby" programming project to work on around the week of Christmas. He decided to write an interpreter for a new language that would be a descendent of another language he had helped create called ABC. Guido had learned some lessons from ABC language that he was eager to improve upon in a new language. As a big fan of Monty Python's Flying Circus, Guido chose the name Python for this new language.
The language would be open-sourced and a Python community would form. Over the years, the popularity of Python grew extraordinarily. This is in part due to Python's versatility. Today, Python is used for automation, web development, and Data Science.
Django History
In the fall of 2003, Adrian Holovaty and Simon Willison, web developers at the Lawrence Journal-World newspaper, began using Python to create a web development framework. The framework was named Django after the jazz musician Django Rheinardt and would be open-sourced in July 2005.
Pinax History
In 2007, web developer James Tauber found himself reusing some of the same code patterns while building websites with Django. After PyCon 2007, a group called "Hotclub of France" (named after Django Rheinhardt's band) formed and discussion began about creating what would become the Pinax ecosystem.
On Memorial Day weekend 2008, James and other "Hotclub of France" members Brian Rosner, Jannis Leidel, and Eric Florenzano began to abstract these patterns into reusable Pinax starter projects, apps, and themes.
You can read more about the history of Pinax in the Pinax History section at the end of this tutorial.