web programming: experiences with non-zope frameworks?

[Paul Rubin]

Brendan O'Connor <brendano at stanford.edu> writes:
> Can anyone make comparisons among the different frameworks?  What
> combinations of packages do people use?  Are *any* of them substantially
> more popular than any other?

There have been a few other comparisons done.  That shootout page you
mentioned isn't bad.  Zope is the most established but is its own world.
Twisted to me shows the most determination to do things correctly, but
its learning curve is steep, and there's a lot that it doesn't do for
you.  Basically none of these systems impresses me as really being
ready for prime time.

> I think it would be nice to have not another list of several dozen one-man
> projects, but rather a collection of practical knowledge to narrow a
> python web programmer's options to the realistic and mature choices.

The closest thing to a realistic and mature choice is Zope, and yet
it's not really satisfying.  I'll give some heretical advice: if
you're doing a big project, set aside some of the development time to
evaluate what's out there and adopt or develop something that's best
for your specific needs, with the understanding that you're going to
have to maintain it yourself.  If you're doing a small project and
can't afford to set aside that much time, then hold your nose and
write in PHP or even Perl (HTML::Mason is an impressive package if you
don't mind the cancer that is Perl, so it would be great if someone
wrote something like it for Python).

Another approach: some friends of mine did a hybrid system with a web
interface in PHP and backend functions in Python, and were very happy
with the results.  My reaction is that if Python and PHP both had big
enough shortcomings to justify the cost of the two-interpreter,
two-language approach, then then neither of them really deserves
advocacy.  

Python is certainly a better implementation language than PHP, but if
you're doing web applications in it, you really need a pioneer spirit.
After you get through choosing and evaluating a web framework, you
next have to choose and evaluate a database interface--sheesh.  Python
is nowhere near as mature for out-of-the-box quick web development as
PHP is.  Of course that may change in the future.  However, that's the
state of things today.