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

[Robert Leftwich]

Shannon -jj Behrens wrote:
> When I came to IronPort, I had to act as such a benevolent dictator,
> or rather, a benevolent concensus builder...Note, I'm not trying to force
> Aquarium on *anybody*.  I wrote it because I needed it.  I open
> sourced it because I like sharing.
> 

To add to JJ's background on Aquarium, note that IronPort's backing not only 
includes a commitment to using Aquarium in at least 7 different divisions of the 
company but also paying him to work on Aquarium part time. In conversations with 
JJ, I learnt that this commitment did not come lightly, but instead as a result 
of an internal comparison of the leading Python web frameworks. The comparison 
was biased a little against Aquarium by having the initial thought that it 
would/could not be the best solution and given the calibre of the people at 
IronPort and the quality of the competition the result is no mean feat.

Recently, I've implemented fundamentally the same web application in
Quixote, Subway and Aquarium and found that I much prefer to work with Aquarium.
One major reason for this is the 'tools, not policy' approach that Aquarium
takes. Another plus is that it leverages the full power of Cheetah, handling the 
issue of compilation of templates totally seamlessly. This eliminates any manual 
recompilation as well as the need to continually stop and restart the server, 
which, while not a huge problem, is surprisingly beneficial to the 'flow' of 
hacking away at a solution.

The mailing list support from all projects has been fantastic, but I must
highlight the dedication of JJ, making himself available on a number of 
occasions well into the early hours of the morning answering questions and 
debugging issues that were uncovered when running Aquarium in a Windows environment.

I strongly recommend that people take a serious look at the Aquarium project and 
  while it may not have the same prescriptive nature and the depth of backup 
material as RoR (yet) it is  a good place to start a search for the right tool 
for the job and for a project to become involved in.

Robert

PS I'm newly subscribed to the list so I apologise if, in my enthusiasm, I'm a 
little too 'project specific'.