Python web development, really

[Paul Rubin]

Afanasiy <abelikov72 at hotmail.com> writes:
> I was not aware Python required trade-offs involving memory or cpu use in
> order to compete with PHP. In my experience Python is much much faster for
> basic scripting. I hoped that speed could be put to use on a web platform.

Benchmarks I've seen indicate PHP is considerably faster than Python.
That's not too surprising, since PHP is a simpler language and doesn't
have to do nearly so many dynamic lookups.

> I am looking for suggestions on a platform which might provide all of
> these things. A platform, using Python, which can compete well with PHP.

I suppose that's true, but PHP does a lot for you "out of the box"
that Python doesn't do unless you write or locate suitable add-on
modules, not only for HTML template expansion but also for things like
database access.  A lot of such modules have of course already been
written and are floating around various places.

I would say Python is a far superior programming language to PHP and
is preferable for complicated software development.  PHP, though, is
better suited for getting a basic site going with minimal fuss.  I
know of some people who use PHP to implement the HTML front end of a
web application, and Python to do the backend logic.  That seems
like a good approach, if you don't mind developing in two languages.