Even in that case, I'm not experiencing any temptation to go to Flask. Two django websites right now with pretty big codebases. One of them has huge backend non-django codebase (which I keep in a separate git repo). Since there's still a need for templates, authentication, rdbms, permission systems, and so on, I still use django and create apps to act as a front-end for the libraries.
> Since it don't try to be responsible for everything from ORM to HTTP, it actually is capable of serving as a thin web layer for existing non-web functionality. At least in theory.
Yep, that's what my intuition was, formerly. Then I realized I needed an ORM since the website needed auth (whether or not it was a legacy db, "unmanaged" in django parlance). Then those users only should have rights to view/update/create certain things - so that means permissions.
> Unfortunately, Flask's extension ecosystem seems to focus more on reinventing Django than supporting its unique strengths as a microframework.
What do you mean by this?
Inevitably most web development tasks will have the developer reinventing Django.
The issue is, at least in my experience, these libraries that just need a quick and dirty front-end, have never stayed that way, heh. Let's just use that slice as an example. Still, in the event that included web interface became non-trivial, the benefit of using Flask quickly turns to reinventing stuff that'd be done easily with Django.
My bigger issue is, the microframework dream hasn't worked for me in PHP or Python. Except once: When I was doing Facebook Page campaigns at Social Amp. Those campaigns were ephemeral, and since they were just designed to be thrown out after a month, a microframework worked quite well.