Are Python-based web frameworks reliable enough?

[Bruno Desthuilliers]

Gilles Ganault a écrit :
> Hello
> 
> 	Until now, the modest web apps I wrote were all in PHP because it's
> available on just about any hosted server.
> 
> I now have a couple of ideas for applications where I would deploy my
> own servers, so that I'd rather write them in Python because I find
> the language more pleasant to write with.
> 
> I read that the traction for the mod_python module isn't as strong as
> mod_php, so I guess I should consider the alternative, which is
> writing a long-running process with some framework like TurboGears or
> Django.
> 
> To make an informed choice, I'd like your feedback on this:
> 
> 1. Is mod_python a bad choice today? If yes, are there other PHP-like
> modules available, ie. the Python code is hosted in pages that are
> loaded every time a user calls them?

I indeed wouldn't use mod_python for web app development, unless I need 
really strong integration with apache and don't care for portability (=> 
  deploying on other web servers).

And while we're at it, the server page model (PHP etc) is just braindead 
for anything more complicated than a simple personal home page. FWIW, 
even PHP coders tend to go away from it and turn to more "structured" 
frameworks like Symfony or CakePHP - which look much more like Django, 
TG, Pylons or (for CakePHP) Ruby On Rails.

> 2. If you think I should consider long-running processes, are the
> frameworks reliable enough so that I shouldn't fear crashes every so
> often?

My experience is that they are usually much more reliable than most PHP 
code around.

> 3. What about performance as compared to equivalent PHP/MySQL apps?

The right question here would be "what about performances as compared to 
equivalent PHP apps of equivalent quality written using similar 
frameworks, deployed on equivalent web servers and getting equivalent 
loads".

Ok, to make a long story short: I never had any performance issues so 
far with app written in Django, and never heard of anyone reporting such 
issues. <troll>I whish I could say the same about Zope/Plone...</troll>