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

[Martijn Faassen]

Greg Wilson wrote:
>  > Jeremy Hylton wrote:
>> 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?

The stuff started as an external package first, and still is an external 
package (PyXML). In my opinion the whole XML in the core story sucks. 
Not because the code in the core is bad, but because there's another 
package, PyXML, that completely overrides it in a non-bug-compatible 
way, meaning you now need to test your code that uses the XML core-code 
both with and without (various versions of..) PyXML installed. If this 
is to be done for any hypothetical web framework, let's please not do it 
the XML way... This is not due to a mistake; at the time the core was 
deliberately made to look for PyXML.

There are a ton of non-core XML frameworks around for Python, enjoying 
considerate popularity. The python 'xml' package is not the "one true 
way" to do XML with Python, and certainly doesn't enjoy anything near 
the popularity and buzz of Ruby on Rails, say. I don't see why the 
situation for any higher-level web framework should be different in this 
respect.

>> 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...

What is exactly problem? That Ruby on Rails is taking mindshare away 
from Python? And so's PHP, and ASP, and Java, and so is Python from 
Java, and Zope from PHP, and so on. Could you explain why you consider 
Ruby on Rails to be different? Evidently you are of this opinion.

I do see a problem with Python web frameworks, but it's got little to do 
with Ruby on Rails, though I do think we can learn from its marketing 
success. My problem is that of islands; people are often sitting in the 
island of their own framework and making it hard for people on their 
islands to work together. I think there's far more code we can share 
between frameworks than we've been doing in the past. More sharing code 
and integrate various bits using standard ways is good as it allows us 
to join forces and not waste time reinventing wheels.

I think encouraging sharing, and setting up the circumstances to make 
sharing more easy (such as WSGI) is the only realistic way to reduce the 
confusion between Python web frameworks and make them start to evolve 
towards each other, which should also help marketing and reduce 
developer confusion during uptake.

In the Zope world, we've got islands too, in the form of CMSes built on 
top of Zope, such as Plone, CPS and Silva. We're currently in the 
process of trying to get off our islands and converge, helped by the 
transition to Zope 3 component technologies. I've been helping with that 
  process, and it's fairly hopeful. So now I've started to set my sights 
a bit further and I'm trying to help Zope itself become less of an 
island within the Python world.

Regards,

Martijn