Python web development that resembles PHP or classic ASP

[erik.oosterwaal at gmail.com]

Hi All,

I have been developing websites in classic asp using VB script for a
long while now. Due to the fact that I also took a detour to
developing ColdFusion, and the fact the companies I work(ed) for never
had time or money for courses, I am now in the awkward position that I
am -still- developing classic ASP.

In it, I have become quite resourceful, I wrote a framework using WSC
(windows scripting components) to separate logic from presentation,
and my display pages use almost no logic, except for the loops and
variables I need to build my pages. I have a three-tier setup and all
business logic is in separate WSC files. The framework even uses an
ORM for access to the tables of my database. This works like a charm.
It makes classic ASP code maintainable, it makes working in classic
ASP very pleasant actually and it makes our customers very happy.

The problem is that classic asp is now a dead language, I need to
modernize and fast! Although the arguments some people make against it
are not valid for me (spaghetti code, unmaintainable, slow), I still
see that there is little to no support for it anymore.

The most logical way to "update" my knowledge to something more
modern, would be to dive into ASP.NET. I considered that for a long
time, but there are some problems with this:

1. I love the control I have over my html using inline, template-based
vbscript. ASP.NET's web forms really sound like a very bad idea, also
the approach Microsoft takes in trying to make a stateless web-app
seem like a statefull application is IMHO a burden. I think webapps
are inherently different than desktop apps, and should be programmed
as such.

2. Who says Microsoft isn't going to pull the plug on VB.NET in a
while or make a drastic change like they did from asp to asp.net
again, some time in the future?

3. I like the rapid development I can do in a dynamic, loosely typed
language like vbscript. The performance-bottleneck of a site is mostly
in the database-access and the http-calls and I think writing all of
the declarations and types for a strong-typed language is overkill for
a webapp.

So that's when I started looking at other dynamic languages for
webdevelopment. I looked at Ruby on Rails and at the different web-
frameworks that are available for Python. The biggest problem there
for me is that the MVC type frameworks that are currently very popular
are also not what I'm looking for.

I like having my directory tree conform to the structure of my
website, so the "Controller" part of the MVC style of development is
something I wouldn't want. What I -would- like is a separation of code
and display logic (so being able to include libraries in a page) and
being able to intermix code directly into the HTML.

As Python would be the language I prefer over Ruby, I thought I'd ask
here to see if anyone in the Python community knows if such a
development-framework exists in Python. For example, does IronPython
also use the same web forms approach as asp.net using VB? The
frameworks I looked at (Django, Pylons) seem to be able to use
different templating engines, does that mean it's just a question of
finding the right one?

Also, for Python there is also the problem of meaningful indentation.
I'm not even sure if it's possible to use Python directly inside HTML,
because indentation would be at the very least tricky to maintain. I'm
kind of hoping here that there are some solutions to these problems
available in Python.

 Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Kind regards,

Erik