[python-advocacy] The python way to write web applications

[Nicola Larosa]

Tennessee Leeuwenburg wrote:
> I've got a problem. Please, hear me out in case I've got it jumbled.
> Then feel free to criticize my understanding of things -- I declare
> Crocker's rules.

Who's Crocker? What rules? :-)


> If I'm happy to constrain my
> widget set, I can use some javascript toolkits to hide away the
> javascript to some extent, but certainly for my purposes, and probably
> for all purposes, I just know I'll be up to my elboys in javascript in
> no time.

Yes, RIA applications pretty much entail Javascript expertise nowadays. But
Javascript is becoming more and more Pythonic: :-)
<http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roadmap/archives/2006/02/js_and_python_news.html>


> I could try swigging mozilla and interacting with the browser directly,
> but this is a jungle of old documentation and is clearly not a
> well-supported process.

There is (was?) work going on to embed Python in Mozilla, but nothing
usable. However, you can use PyXPCOM
<http://www.mozilla.org/catalog/architecture/xpcom/pyxpcom/>.


> The premier web toolkits like GWT and YUT appear to be totally
> Java-oriented.

The Python equivalent of GWT would be Pyjamas <http://pyjamas.pyworks.org/>.

What's YUT? Did you mean YUI? In that case, I'll plug my favorite
Javascript library: ExtJS <http://extjs.com/>.


> There just doesn't seem to be a Python solution to a modern web
> application. The best I can now imagine is a decoupled system with
> Python on the backend.

Something similar is Athena, part of Divmod Nevow
<http://divmod.org/trac/wiki/DivmodNevow/Athena>.


-- 
Nicola Larosa - http://www.tekNico.net/

Mozilla is leaning towards Python. Adoption of Python at Google is
growing. Heck, the OLPC project picked Python. Ruby is getting all the
press, but it seems that it's Python that people are really picking up.
 -- Aristotle Pagaltzis, May 2007