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

[Greg Wilson]

Hi Jeremy; thanks for your post.

 > Jeremy Hylton wrote:
> 
> I don't think this is a good idea for several reasons.  Let's imagine
> we could go back in time four years and tell the Ruby community the
> same thing:  Appoint someone to research a popular new way of building
> web applications and add that to the next release of Ruby.

I'm not proposing that the BDFWFOY do research, or develop a new 
framework; I think we'd all agree we have enough already ;-).  I *do* 
think that having someone facilitate (and referee) discussion aimed at 
pulling together a "no third step" combination of existing tools would 
be more useful than what we're doing right now.

> I don't think a large web programming toolkit belongs in the Python
> distribution.  If anything, go the other way around and package a
> particular version of Python with this web toolkit.

Sure, both models have been successful in the past: PIL and Numeric are 
examples of "external, but only one" that have worked well.

Perhaps someone who took part in the discussion about what XML tools to 
include in the core Python distro could chime in with a little history?

> I'm also skeptical of a plan that sets out to build the one right way
> that everyone will use.

Well, then it's a good thing that's not what I'm asking for, isn't it? 
;-)  I think there's a place for entry-level (i.e., smaller than Zope) 
web app frameworks; the current confusion is about as helpful as having 
eight competing regular expression libraries, or six different 
"standards" for connecting to databases.  Appointing a BDFWFOY is one
way to solve the problem (though admittedly less popular than denying it 
exists ;-). I'd welcome others...

Thanks,
Greg

p.s. BDFWFOY = Benevolent Dictator For the Web For One Year