[Web-SIG] Re: Just lost another one to Rails

[Brendan O'Connor]

Amen. I don't mean to slam the work of any web framework developers, but you 
can't overestimate how much it helps just-beginning web developers to see a 
unified framework, or at least a good website that directs them to one 
particular way to do things. The python frameworks are all too small to 
support much of a user community. I personally had to pick PHP over Python a 
while back, partly for reasons of documentation and support -- if the 
community unified more around one or just a few frameworks, documentation 
and support would start to be solved better.

-Brendan

On 4/15/05, Greg Wilson <gvwilson at cs.utoronto.ca> wrote:
> 
> It's been a week now since my "Just lost another one to Rails" post,
> in which I said that a buddy of mine down in the States was switching
> to Ruby, after using Python for two years, because he and his
> colleagues needed a lightweight, ready-out-of-the-box web app
> framework. Responses so far seem to fall into several camps:
> 
> - "I agree completely, that's why I'm adding yet another framework to
> the mix!" (I'm waiting for someone to stand up at PyCon and say,
> "Web App People's Front? We're the People's Front of Web Apps!")
> 
> - Sneering: "Bah---Rails is impure! Unclean! We must keep our Python
> pure and elegant!" (Yeah... look how well that worked for Scheme.
> In my experience, most programmers value usefulness over elegance.)
> 
> - Whistling in the dark. For example, Ian Bicking said, "...diversity
> isn't so bad if we can just make a compelling infrastructure
> experience." I respectfully disagree: right now, the diversity in
> this area is preventing any of the frameworks from becoming mature
> enough to be credible among the "I need to get it done now"
> developers I talk to. (Quick, how many copies of "Programming
> WebWare/Twisted/CherryPy/whatever" or "The WW/T/CP/whatever
> Cookbook" are on pre-order? Probably 3500 less than the equivalent
> RonR books.)
> 
> It also gives the impression of confusion and bickering, which is
> lethal when you're trying to persuade someone in the commercial
> world to adopt something that doesn't come with a 1-800 customer
> support line.
> 
> - Frank acknowledgment of RonR's strengths (e.g. Peter Hunt's very
> welcome post --- Peter, I would have thanked you directly, but I
> didn't have an email address).
> 
> RonR is proof that new web app frameworks can displace existing tools
> like PHP. It's also proof that the existence of a lightweight ready-
> out-of-the-box don't-have-to-install-eleven-packages-to-make-it-work
> yes-the-tutorials-are-up-to-date no-you-don't-have-to-write-lots-of-
> idiosyncratic-XML-templates-or-configuration-files framework is
> important enough that large numbers of programmers will choose (or
> switch) their language on that basis alone.
> 
> So, any bets we'll still be moaning about this after PyCon'06?
> 
> Greg
> 
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