Python's "Answer" to Ruby on Rails?
At PyCon 2005 there was a lot of buzz about Ruby on Rails and why Python doesn't have a single default or recommended web framework. To some extent the answer is that Python has a much bigger community of developers that worked on web frameworks starting much earlier in the history of the web. To another extent, it might be that Python and everything based on Python is perpetually (and to me frustratingly) under-hyped or under-promoted compared to just about everything else in the world of commercial and even open source software. Python is, like, the epicenter of low key technology.
In any case, lately I keep running into Django and Turbogears, two mega-frameworks for web development with Python.
See this post on the Boston Python Interest Group mailing list and also this blog entry.
I admit I know next to nothing about this, but I will certainly check them out the next time I start a new web development project.
posted by Unknown @ 7:22 PM
7 Comments:
"it might be that Python and everything based on Python is perpetually (and to me frustratingly) under-hyped or under-promoted compared to just about everything else in the world of commercial and even open source software. Python is, like, the epicenter of low key technology." - Stephan Deibel
Why is that? Are Python programmers too busy enjoying writing Python code to hype their creations? Python is as capable as Perl and Ruby.(IMHO better) A co-worker who loves Perl frequently mentions CPAN and various modules he uses. Although they aren't in a central repository, I've told him that I nearly always find Python equivalents. If I can't find it using Google, I can ask on the python mail list.
I can't really explain it but Python seems to attract people that are strongly pragmatic and prefer to live in a friendly low-key meritocracy, which is somewhat alien to marketing or self-promotion. Frankly, I like that, although it's sometimes at odds with my business interests.
The long-standing lack of a CPAN equivalent may in fact reflect that pragmatic slant -- as you say a Google search or consulting the mailing list does the trick and at least to me it's a much less scary way to obtain the modules that I need.
Lack of statically declared data types is similar -- the people closest to Python know that it's just not needed so it doesn't get much priority.
Both probably will appear but their slowness in coming seems to me to come from a pragmatism that doesn't care about the fact that both are somewhat of a PR problem for Python.
Well, the good news on the python.org front is that there is a redesign in progress that is being sponsored by the Python Software Foundation. It's being prepared for deployment, but I don't know yet how long that will take.
And the Python equivalent to CPAN is up and running now;
http://cheeseshop.python.org/pypi
Hmm, I dunno -- pypi is part of what CPAN does but lacks the updating/module download features so it's not really an equivalent as far as I understand it.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Post a Comment
<< Home