DSF member of the month - Cory Zue

For March 2025, we welcome Cory Zue (@coryzue.com) as our DSF member of the month! ⭐

Cory Zue has been Django developer for many years. He is currently a member of the DSF Social Media Working Group and he has been a DSF member since October 2022.
You can learn more about Cory by checking out his website or visiting Cory's GitHub Profile.

Let’s spend some time getting to know Cory better!

Can you tell us a little about yourself (hobbies, education, etc)

I'm a programmer-turned-manager-turned-entrepreneur and currently run a portfolio of businesses on my own (using Django of course!).

I grew up in Massachusetts and studied Computer Science at MIT where I met the founders of Dimagi, where I ended up as CTO for 10 years before starting my own businesses. In 2016, I moved to Cape Town, South Africa for a "temporary" relocation, and have been here ever since. These days my main hobbies include surfing, trail running, and exploring nature with my wife and two boys.

How did you start using Django?

My first major Django project was working on an SMS-based system that helped with the distribution of millions of bednets in Nigeria. It was built on top of a Django-based platform called RapidSMS that was initially developed by UNICEF. After that I worked on several other RapidSMS systems before eventually leading Dimagi's CommCare server team. CommCare eventually became -- to my knowledge -- the largest open source Django codebase in terms of contributions/commits.

What other framework do you know and if there is anything you would like to have in Django if you had magical powers?

I still love Django and use it for most projects that need a backend. That said, I find Django's "hands off" approach to modern front end development to be a big barrier for people who aren't already familiar with the framework.

If I had magical powers I would convince the Django community that it is worth providing some out-of-the-box support for modern front end tooling like TailwindCSS or a JavaScript bundler. I'd also try to get official "starter projects" built into the framework that show how you can use Django with some of the more popular front end options like React and HTMX.

What projects are you working on now?

My main project right now is SaaS Pegasus, which is a Django codebase creator that helps you spin up new projects more efficiently by bundling in even more batteries than Django itself. This includes things like configuring auth, front end, and deployment, but also has some more powerful features like multi-tenancy and billing baked in.

One of the great things about running Pegasus is that I can justify building new Django apps as dogfooding the product. So I always have other Django projects I'm working on. Right now the biggest one is a RAG chat-with-your-data LLM project called Scriv.ai.

Within the Django community my main contributions are in the form of writing in-depth guides to using Django, as well as pitching in on the Social Media working group to help grow Django's audience.

Which Django libraries are your favorite (core or 3rd party)?

It's hard to go with anything other than the ORM (and migrations framework), which I still feel is Django's greatest and most important feature. It just fits my brain much better than SQLAlchemy or other options I've used.

One lesser-known library I'll shout out that I have been enjoying lately is django-cotton, which provides a nice little layer of syntactic sugar and tooling that makes working with components in Django templates much nicer.

What are the top three things in Django that you like?

1. The ORM + migrations.

2. The community.

3. That nearly every backend use case I have already has a feature that's been built to accommodate it (e.g. middleware, messages, i18n, etc.). I feel like the modern JavaScript frameworks I've used are way behind on this front.

What would you recommend to someone who wants to start out as an entrepreneur like you?

I have an entire talk/article about this!

But if I were to emphasize the most important part that worked for me, it was creating enough space in my life for deep, uninterrupted work and structuring it in a way that I never ran out of money or energy while I was trying (by working part time while I was getting started). In general, the path to success usually takes a long time, so giving yourself plenty of time is really important. The tactics you can figure out as you go, but the space and time to do it is the most important thing to have in place. Your main goal is not to quit.

Is there anything else you'd like to say?

Thank you for including me in this series!

Thank you for doing the interview, Cory!