[Tutor] python web documentation ( without frameworks?)

[Patrick]

Thanks guys for responding to my post.

I did buy a book on turbogears today and I am watching some screencasts 
as well, I don't want to be ignorant of frameworks.

I don't think anyone could argue that working without a framework is 
better for the majority of people, I can clearly see the value of 
frameworks. However the idea of having a bunch of directories that I 
don't understand does not appeal to me, and learning a framework 
specific way of working with MySql, Postgresql etc rather then their 
native manner won't help me to transfer that knowledge into other areas 
such as desktop applications or other languages such as C.

I have been working with PHP and I don't really like it. However there 
is tons of code out there that I can copy, paste and modify, I don't 
need to re-invent the wheel, just modify it for my own needs. This does 
not seem to be the case with mod_python code.

Would it be logical for me to take python cgi code and rework it for 
mod_python? The two don't seem that different, am I wrong about this?

Kent was saying that working without a framework would be fairly 
primitive, are there features I just can't get without a framework? If 
so why is this? Is a framework not just a collection of off the shelf 
technologies bundled into a slick package? Can I not access the same 
features without a framework?

Am I the only one who wants an end-to-end understanding of my web app? 
Am I crazy? I am feeling a bit alienated here-Patrick


ALAN GAULD wrote:
> Forwarding to list.
> Please use Reply All when reponding to posts.
>
> ----- Forwarded Message ----
> From: Jeff Johnson <jeff at dcsoftware.com>
> To: Alan Gauld <alan.gauld at btinternet.com>
> Sent: Wednesday, 25 June, 2008 9:51:33 PM
> Subject: Re: [Tutor] python web documentation ( without frameworks?)
>
> This was crazy.  The presenter at our Python user group last night left 
> everything at home.  So he proceeded to borrow someone's laptop, 
> download and install Python and web.py (http://webpy.org/) and we all 
> went through building the demo which displayed records in an SQLite 
> table and allowed you to add one and redisplay.  I have used Django and 
> web.py works pretty much the same way using templates and all, but 
> web.py is significantly "lighter".
>
> You might want to install web.py and go through the demo.  Put it in a 
> folder called "deleteme" and you can just delete the folder if you're 
> not interested.
>
> Alan Gauld wrote:
>   
>> "Patrick" <optomatic at rogers.com> wrote
>>
>>     
>>> cherrypy, django and turbogears but for some reason I just don't want 
>>> to use a framework. Are there any current books you could recommend 
>>> for general python web programming? Most of the general web 
>>> programming books seem to be from 2004 or before.
>>>       
>> There's a good reason for that! Vanilla CGI - the most basic web
>> programming mechanism available is a rsource hog, non scaleable
>> and very hard to maintain beyiond small trivial projects. So people
>> have moved to Frameworks which offer better performance,
>> easier implementation and far better maintainablility. All Frameworks
>> aim to achieve that, the choice is pretty much a personal prefernce.
>>
>> The good news is that if you want to continuously reinvent the wheel
>> by using vanilla CGI the books from 2004 will all pretty much still work.
>> CGI hasn't changed much and neither have the core web modules in
>> Python.
>>
>> HTH,
>>     
>
>