[btilly]

If the people who designed the web didn't want information about the application code to show up as a status code, we wouldn't have status 500.

Originally, anything with a path was meant to simulate a directory tree of static files. We build it dynamically because that's easier to maintain. But making it look and act the same by returning 404s is historically correct.

Of course things evolve and move on. You're free to do as you wish. But to me you're making a bizarrely arbitrary distinction about what part of the application is allowed to return a 404 (routing code in the framework) and what aren't (your own code). Or did you not realize that a framework like Django isn't actually part of the webserver?