I think you'll find that the stuff Django does behind the scenes is quite clear, with very few exceptions. The basic parsing of HTTP requests is dead simple, and although the code for the ORM is hairy in places, what really matters is the SQL it generates, which is pretty clean. And like somebody else said, there's nothing that says you have to use the Django ORM.

One of the nice things about Django is that it's just Python. You can always look at the import statements in a module to see exactly what code is being run and where it's coming from. I've never used Ruby on Rails, but I have the impression it can be opaque in this area. ("Just create a file named makeasite.rb and put the single word 'create' in it, and Rails will do the rest!")

Personally, I'm vehemently against "magic" in a framework / programming environment, which is one of the reasons I love Python -- and one of the reasons we don't have a lot of magic in Django.

Let me know if you have any specific questions.

Adrian (Django cocreator / core developer)