[Web-SIG] More prior art, less experimentation

[Ian Bicking]

I'm feeling a little uncomfortable with the way some of these 
suggestions are moving.  I feel like people are trying to make another 
framework, which I don't think is the appropriate goal for web-sig or 
for the standard library.  Python doesn't need another framework, and I 
don't think it's reasonable or particularly polite to try to trump the 
work that a lot of people have done over the years, using some sort of 
back door to perceived authority that web-sig might provide.

Nothing we're talking about is anything that hasn't been discussed 
before in the context of other projects.  Nothing we are considering 
implementing (at least server-side) is something that hasn't been 
implemented before.

We *do* have the opportunity to create something that can unify the 
Python web experience and provide the basis for more adoption of Python 
for web programming.  To do that we will have to repeat the work done 
many times before.  We should aspire to quality, but I think we need to 
hold ourselves back from aesthetic experimentation, and respect 
convention above our own preferences.  We can still indulge our own 
fancies outside of the standard library, and building on the standard 
library -- nothing we do should preclude your individual preferences 
toward web programming, but it should not preclude other people's 
preference either.  But most of all it should provide the foundation 
upon which the mature, *existing* frameworks can build.

--
Ian Bicking | ianb at colorstudy.com | http://blog.ianbicking.org