Great open source software almost always comes about because one or more clever developers had a problem to solve and no viable or cost effective solution available. Django is no exception. Adrian and Jacob have long since "retired" from the project, but the fundamentals of what drove them to create Django lives on. It is this solid base of real-world experience that has made Django as successful as it is. In recognition of their contribution, I think it best we let them introduce Django in their own words (edited and reformatted from the original book). By Adrian Holovaty and Jacob Kaplan-Moss - December 2009; "In the early days, Web developers wrote every page by hand. Updating a Website meant editing HTML; a "redesign" involved redoing every single page, one at a time. As Web sites grew and became more ambitious, it quickly became obvious that that approach was tedious, time-consuming, and ultimately untenable".