28 comments

• 

  nogunner

  1 year ago

  thanks for sharing! Very interesting post, I like how you present factual data and your personal thought. Very inspirational.
  
  This is a very good demonstration that for any project, one should take some time to think of the best tool to use (not necessarily the one we're used to).
• 

  dude

  1 year ago

  PLEASE look at Merb, Ruby will make you so happy!
• 

  Massimo

  1 year ago

  I can tell you have done your homeworks and I came to the same conclusions one year ego. Nevertheless I would love to hear your opinion about web2py.
• 

  Dhananjay Nene

  1 year ago

  @Massimo Given the broad range of languages I covered, it simply was not feasible to look at every single framework. web2py was not something I looked at so would be unable to formulate an opinion. However what I did like about django was its modular and layered design, fairly broad feature coverage, performance metrics, community size, the various independently developed contrib modules / djangosnippets.org and the substantial yet efficient use of metaprogramming in its db.model and admin modules. If I do get around to checking out web2py I shall most certainly ping you on the same.
• 

  elhumano

  1 year ago

  I do understand when you say:” Rails however seemed limited to simpler use cases” and that is ActiveRecord fault, maybe you shod try using Datamapper or Sequel for your model layer, that will give you some more flexibility specialty in legacy data models, the normal way to evaluate them is using Merb frame work.
• 

  jt

  1 year ago

  I can understand one of your concerns about Ruby and doing justice to the language, getting caught in re-factoring, etc. Actually, I think we all go through that with Ruby by its very nature. However, its expressiveness and meta strengths keep us. We all need to exercise a little self-discipline...
  
  Rails may "seem" limited, but I don't think it is and coupled with Ruby, the sky's the limit. You can mix-out pretty much anything and there are many other libraries which meet needs and "roll right in".
  
  Nice post. Thanks!
• 

  smacko

  1 year ago

  I'm going through a similar language/platform selection process now - with many of the same constraints as you had. I too was leaning toward Python. One very significant hurdle with Python is that my application will be heavily text search driven and I haven't yet found a search toolkit with even close to the power that Java Lucene has. Using PyLucene would introduce the same resource problems as using Java for the web framework. In my case, the cost of more expensive hosting may be less than the cost of using a non-Lucene search option.
• 

  Finebanana

  1 year ago

  Whatever happened to Pylons?
• 

  michael

  1 year ago

  smacko, Xapian might be an option. It's C, so you still might have problems on a hosted machine, but it should be comparable to Lucene and has a *very* nice Python wrapper with xappy.
• 

  Dhananjay Nene

  1 year ago

  This comment is from cies. Unable to extract it from its resting place at my is_human wordpress plugin. Hence reposting on original author's behalf. (Just enabled the new plugin - need to figure out what to do in such cases).
  
  By cies on June 9th, 2008
  
  i\'d like to second the \'dude\' poster.. maybe you want to look at merb + datamapper. it is addmittedly not as tested as django but the setup of this framework makes a lot of sence (re-using ruby\'s gem framework for it\'s components and plugins, very loosly coupled, you can choose stuff like HAML and fly, many deployment options (including mod_passenger now more to come (jruby?)), ruby syntax all the way, super small mem footprint, eventbased, thread safe, ok i stop now) anyway, django looks nice as well nice write up.
• 

  Asu

  1 year ago

  I gave a hard look at Ruby on Rails for a latest project. It sounded cool but then there is a huge learning curve and finally had to settle with my well known territory, .NET
• 

  rogerdpack

  1 year ago

  Good write up. Yeah I unfortunately have come to the same conclusions. With Python + Django you'll be writing an app with potential for high speed AND high productivity. Not as cute as ruby, but without the deathly magic of rails, and faster. So it wins, as much as I hate to say it [and I love Ruby and work on it all day!]
  Maybe maglev will change all this. Hope so :)
  -R
• 

  Rich

  1 year ago

  Hi there,
  I recently went through a very similar process, coming from a Java background. I also settled on Python and Django for similar reasons.
  
  If you are interested, I wrote it up here:
  http://jetfar.com/django-python-frameworks-and-...
  
  Although perhaps not as succinctly as yourself.
  
  BTW: I'm very happy with the outcome.
• 

  Dhananjay Nene

  1 year ago

  @jt
  
  
  {I can understand one of your concerns about Ruby and doing justice to the language, getting caught in re-factoring, etc. Actually, I think we all go through that with Ruby by its very nature. However, its expressiveness and meta strengths keep us. We all need to exercise a little self-discipline…}
  
  I just might be able to get the self-discipline ... if only I had the time to get there :). As I move towards dynamic languages - python seemed more manageable a shift in the given time frames than Ruby. I loved Ruby syntax and especially all its nifty features but found Python easier to read.
  
  
  {Rails may “seem” limited, but I don’t think it is and coupled with Ruby, the sky’s the limit. You can mix-out pretty much anything and there are many other libraries which meet needs and “roll right in”.}
  
  My assessment was that everything was doable .. but the cost factor here was much higher compared to hacking through django.
  
  {Nice post. Thanks!}
  
  All the encouragement helps. Thanks.
• 

  Dhananjay Nene

  1 year ago

  @Finebanana
  
  Ahh ! I skipped that bit about Pylons - didn't I ? I didn't find anything worrisome about Pylons - but what I knew for certain was that I would need an extended admin interface and would need to hack through the models. Pylons does not really get into those spaces much. Django offered a more comprehensive set of capabilities all nicely interdependent on each other (especially admin and models).
• 

  Dhananjay Nene

  1 year ago

  @elhumano
  
  I preferred the everything in one box capability of django. I would like to keep framework changes to the minimum, and rather than having to study multiple frameworks and figure out how to change these in an appropriately interdependent way - made sense to have a single framework with all capabilities. Just makes it a little easier I guess.
• 

  Dhananjay Nene

  1 year ago

  @Rich
  
  Nice post. The contrasting between mod_python and fastcgi in the context of hosting environments is quite helpful. Glad to know you liked the post.
• 

  more

  1 year ago

  You might consider either Jython or IronPython (the latter runs Django too). Who says you can't have your cake and get full.
• 

  Nick Dundee

  1 year ago

  You want complexity in your app, but at the same time want to use the rather primitive admin?
  
  SQLAlchemy is by far the weapon of choice for serious applications, and Pylons is as pythonic as you can get when it comes to frameworks.
  
  These two together offer a control and explicitness which far surpasses the rest.
• 

  Dhananjay Nene

  1 year ago

  @Nick
  
  And pray what would be the non-primitive UI that would be on offer from Pylons and/or SQLAlchemy ? Maybe I need to be educated but I did not see a another good UI forms tool in python which helps automatically generate forms (even if primitive per your characterisation) from the object model.
  
  No disrespect to other frameworks - but isn't it just too naive to disregard something for being primitive when that at least helps you get half way. I am grateful for everything that helps me move forward and I try to move further down the road myself from that point onwards.
• 

  michael

  1 year ago

  Nice comparison, I especially like the reasons given.
  
  Most interesting is that the "traditional" web-language (PHP) seems no longer leading the pack of NEW apps by a great lead, and instead is constantly challenged by both python and ruby.
• 

  smacko

  1 year ago

  @michael
  Thanks, I'll check out Xapian.
• 

  Naresh

  1 year ago

  Danny...its been a long time I have gotten into multiple evaluations/adoptions. This was a very good compilation of analysis and view points. Definitely enjoyed reading it. :)
• 

  Arun

  1 year ago

  Hi there,
  
  A very interesting peek into the thought process of arriving at the choice of tools for a particular implementation. This must be the same even if it is your first site or the latest one because these frameworks are bing actively developed. I noticed many people are thinking of using pylons and web.py, I hope my recent writeup on Python Web programming frameworks might help: http://www.arunrocks.com/blog/archives/2008/06/...
  
  Cheers
• 

  alphadog

  1 year ago

  I agree with Nick.
  
  I very recently underwent a very similar process to Dhananjay and ended up on Python/Pylons.
  
  Django was cut out because it simply isn't built with the same philosophy as Pylons. This difference does matter to me and the complex applications I build. Basically, Django = Rails and Pylons = Merb. If your app is truly complex, Pylons loosely-coupled architecture of components will be quite a plus. Django's pluggability is useful to get to market quicker if you aren't doing anything innovative. If you want to whip a site up for blogging, just plug it in.
  
  Lastly and more specifically, for most complex online apps I build, the idea of "automatically generate...forms from the object model" happens rarely. Often, the UI is as complex as the underlying layers and automated form generation is simply not feasible except on a few CRUDish pages on the fringe of the app. My guess is you may think your app is complex, but it actually isn't, from the UI POV. (The underlying layer(s) may be, but then Django's admin cruft doesn't matter.)
• 

  Dhananjay Nene

  1 year ago

  @alphadog,
  
  In the days since I realised more some of the issues you've pointed out wrt django and pylons a little bit more.
  
  wrt the gui, I have in the past had the opportunity to build a complex gui on top of an object model. Its an exceptionally complex task. Which is why I do not believe django as is is going to work at all ... what I was saying is that django gives me a much stronger starting point to start introducing all the additional complexity.
• 

  Ramdas

  11 months ago

  Dhananjay,
  
  You have got it right!
• 

  Alfred J Fazio

  11 months ago

  I've been programming PHP on the job for 6 years... and I hate every day of it. I picked up Python for my personal projects 2 years ago, comparing it with what was available at the time. A friend of mine uses Ruby/Rails exclusively at his workplace (pretty rare), and has the same sentiment as the post's author. Mainly, it has very simple use cases, and more complexity in the application requires a lot of work-a-rounds and hacks in Rails.
  
  I performed a fairly thorough evaluation of the Python web frameworks and also concluded that Django would be best for a particular project I've been working on. This project required a comprehensive and powerful full-text search engine, as well as a javascript/ajax driven pdf-like browser. Hardly any of it used simple plug-ins (no blog drop-ins here.) Django very easily handled all of the "extra" stuff I threw at it. For example, there is nothing in Django's ORM that natively handles PostgreSQL's tsearch2 full-text engine. But writing the code inside of the Django framework to make this work was intuitive and easy.
  
  I'm delighted with my choice, and look forward to using Python/Django for most future web applications. BTW, writing this application in Python with Django took FAR less time, code, and complexity than would have been necessary with PHP. My code is actually a pleasure to read! (for me, anyways ;)
  
  Thanks for the post!!