What's wrong with “magic”?

Question

I\'m trying to decide whether to use a Rails or a Django guru to create a web app for me. I\'ve been recommended to use Django because it uses less \"magic\". From my perspe

Answer 1

The primary problem occurs when you don't understand the magic. This can lead to anything from applications that are badly neutered all the way to sporadic, fatal crashes.

Answer 2

The problem with the "magic" is that it hides a lot of things from you, and IMO makes it harder to track down problems or know what to do/optimize once you start thinking "outside the box" and end up in a "dead magic zone" (i.e. part where the magic doesn't help you).

IMO this is the major problem with Ruby on Rails (and don't get me wrong, I really like Ruby on Rails); it's far too easy to get started with it, and then once you run into a snag where Rails doesn't do the work for you, or where Rails' conventions don't fit... you're pretty much screwed unless you're a Ruby guru because you can't rely on the magic anymore and because it abstracted everything from you, you have no clue how to do it the "hard way"

Answer 3

When using magic... to ensure understanding of one piece of the system you must understand the whole thing. Since it's difficult to determine if no magic is affecting the piece you're examining.

It's like reading a story and having the author leave out relevant plot twists, because they're repetitive.

Shazam