Well, anyone can still write crap code with Django, it doesn't require an enterprise C# language to produce crap. Django templates still have logic that needs to be tested & debugged so the template filter functions don't alleviate all the pain either. Plus, the concept of template filter functions is available in pretty much all web frameworks out there, but it's more painful to use if the templating language forces one to write a filter function every time you need to wield the python language.