Completely agree with this. After a lot of tweaking I could get Apache (w/ the worker MPM) pretty close to the speed of NGINX, but the difference in configuration files was enough to convert me.
And with NGINX I understand _every_ line in the configuration files, with Apache it was almost like configuring by coincidence.
Most of the Django projects I've worked on, people tended to make their own admin panels with things like Bootstrap and Foundation. Django's core team have made their goals clear for the next admin, extensibility and adaptability. https://github.com/twoscoops/django-admin2
I agree, but this is something I've found resistance to in the past. For example, last year I was building an automated shipping system for a client and I wanted to spend a few days in the shipping department - this was flat out refused as the management didn't see it how it would be useful, since the process was fully documented. Turns out, much had to be rewritten because the shipping staff were (predictably) doing 'undocumented' things to speed up their workflow, the new shipping system messed this up and made them slower.
I've been using Linode for almost two years now and can't fault them; they're the best hosting company I've dealt with. You create and bootup “Linodes”, which are VPS's (Xen based) running your choice of Linux.
Other recommendations if you have a bit more slack in your budget: Amazon's AWS or Hetzner (not UK based, but it's hard to notice – ping their servers).
The first guy was quite ‘techy’ to begin with and had dabbled in web development beforehand (PHP). The other two had absolutely no experience, surprisingly (for me) they have picked up things much faster – maybe because they have no prior notions or assumptions about how it all works but I'm not sure. They continuously mention how they can't believe how simple a lot of things are. Whereas the first guy seems to have already formed opinions about how difficult something is before actually trying it. He also procrastinates quite a bit (I believe it's because he thinks things are harder/bigger than they really are) – the challenge with him has been to break his misconceptions (“Git is difficult”, “The command line shouldn't be used” etc.) and to just get on with it.
Oh and a bit off topic, but just to mention that one of the other ‘guys’ is a girl… and after a few months of seeing her code, I think every team should be comprised of as many women as there are men (and be more diverse in general). It might just be her, but she approaches some problems in a completely different way to the rest of the team and her perspective has saved us from banging our heads against the wall many times. She also notices things that the rest of us are oblivious to. One day I'll get around to writing a blog post about it, haha.
In short, I would love to have the resources and time to train more people up from scratch – I never considered it before, it's all been positive so far. But, for most of the heavy lifting I'm still relying on either myself or freelancers. As for finding interns, I just asked around friends and family… it turns out there's a _lot_ of people that have thought about web development at some point but don't have a clue where to start – for some reason they thought they had to be good at maths or art.
Edit: just to clarify, they aren't interns… at the moment it's sort of informal class. We have a project that we work on over weekends (and a little bit during the week) . At the rate they're going, I would hire them in 6 or so months though.
I read this as “Hiring is well 'ard” and thought Catherine Tate had found HN.
I started looking for my first hire a few months ago, and it hasn't been easy. But in that time I've come across plenty of people that don't have the skills or experience I require… they do however have a lot of motivation. I'm currently helping three people learn the fundamentals of web development, and every day I'm surprised at how fast they pick things up. In-house training is the way forward for me.
I ran a similar, although not so scientific experiment a few years ago. I tried to pick up girls in clubs with and without gestures when I was talking to them. This was over a one month period. The actual numbers are classified, but gestures won.
I was there with my Zenbook (running Arch). A few guys with macs made comments about it, “ahh, I see you've got the Macbook Air ripoff.” in a condescending tone.
A witty retort eluded me, so I said "Yup." like a plank.
And with NGINX I understand _every_ line in the configuration files, with Apache it was almost like configuring by coincidence.