Why should I not always pass a Django request context in a view?

Question

According to the relevant Django documentation, a request context offers more than a normal context in that it merges request data into the context.

It is hence necessary for views that perform form submission in Django.

However, I am wondering why one cannot just always pass a request context for every view. After all, a request context offers more than a normal context.

Why not create a helper function called, say, render() that automatically passes a request context? Is there a performance disadvantage?

Answer 1

There is a performance disadvantage. It should be faster to render a template with an small context than with big context (i.e. the request context).