You work for me, Computer

I'm going through using Django (1.2) coming fr...

2012-01-06T12:39:48.377-08:00

I'm going through using Django (1.2) coming from Rails to maintain and extend a legacy web app. Generally I find Django more limited and painful than the Rails equivalent. Maybe it's the way we create apps or just personal preference.

I think it really depends what kind of web application you're building as to what works out well.

Most of the web apps we deploy have pretty limited usage and are closer to the prototype side of things. They are niche, custom, broadly educational-market things that have a lot of customized UI flourishes, but underneath everything are more or less standard data driven forms-type apps.

The indentation of Python that some people fuss about doesn't bother me at all since I indent correctly anyway. Python's methods often feel misplaced with the wrong objects to me, though.

The Ruby 'end' statements take a bit more space but Ruby optimizes in other ways such as with blocks and things that make the code shorter in other ways. It's more or less a wash as far as I can tell for code brevity.

A lot of people I know and respect love Python and Django. I can't tell them they're wrong, but I'm personally much more productive in Ruby even after getting used to Python for a number of months.

Python performance is better than Ruby's, but Rails 3.1/Ruby 1.9.2 feels much faster than previous older versions of Ruby and Rails to me.

I don't think there is a clear winner for all situations in the Ruby vs. Python and Rails vs. Django religious wars, but I know I prefer and work much better with Rails than with Django even after some significant ramp-up time.

If you are annoyed by your slow test times you sho...

2011-09-24T18:19:08.040-07:00

If you are annoyed by your slow test times you should watch this presentation by Corey Haines at gogaruco
http://confreaks.net/videos/641-gogaruco2011-fast-rails-tests

Are you kidding? MS couldn't even get the ...

2011-04-04T11:42:51.252-07:00
Are you kidding? MS couldn't even get the simplest thing right. Their "compare-object" is supposed to be their "equivalent" to diff. Not so. Not even close. Try comparing these two files:

file 1:
a
b
c
d

file 2:
d
c
b
a

Unix diff correctly shows how they are different. MS compare-objects says they are the same. Why? Because the latter doesn't care about order.

Microsoft is not "very smart". They are demented.

2011-02-22T13:49:47.030-08:00
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

@William: I followed the advice in comment #10 he...

2010-09-20T00:28:12.152-07:00
@William: I followed the advice in comment #10 here: http://railscasts.com/episodes/209-introducing-devise

I tend to want to customize pretty much everything heavily :-) Also, I also explicitly did not want any views/templates/etc done for me. However, I didn't look at Devise closely. If I ever revisit our authentication, I'll reinvestigate it.

Looking forward to those new features too. Thanks!

I'd recommend devise over authlogic. Devises i...

2010-09-19T20:23:24.083-07:00
I'd recommend devise over authlogic. Devises is build around warden which is kind of an authentication framework of sorts. Allows for pluggable auth strategies and already has a lot of extras(fb, twitter, imap, cas, openid). Also in rails 3.1, you'll be able to flush the buffer before the page is done rendering, which should greatly increase load times. It will also come with a built in sprite system and css compression

You probably does not know web2py. web2py has eve...

2010-09-19T10:25:59.289-07:00
You probably does not know web2py.

web2py has everything you mentioned in that list.

http://www.web2py.com/book

Horses for courses. Python frameworks have
2010-09-19T04:50:58.429-07:00
Horses for courses. Python frameworks have their fanbois too!

Great list of reasons to love rails (may I add: mi...

2010-09-17T14:32:53.422-07:00
Great list of reasons to love rails (may I add: migrations, UJS defaults, and restful controllers). The "python ecosystem" is a appropriate phrase and the whole "comparing framework to language" debate is out of context for this article. It is clear you taking the various frameworks and I-can-glue-this-library-to-this-one solutions into account in your support of the rails framework.

As far as rails doing too much work for the developer, that is the point. That is the whole point.

@Brandon ... sorry for the accusation! I've w...

2010-09-17T13:42:47.091-07:00
@Brandon ... sorry for the accusation! I've watched far too many baseless arguments between the Ruby and Python groups, so maybe I'm a bit sensitive.

In any case, the example you gave is exactly the type of information I was expecting to find in the article. It's very valuable to get the kind of comparative information you provide in your comment.

As noted by Ixmatus, I find both the frameworks to have their quirks ... it's the learning curve that you're paying for when using either.

So I generally recommend TurboGears to people that already know Python and Ruby with Ruby on Rails for those that want to learn a 4th generation scripting language and use it with a RAD web framework. RoR definitely has the media hype and resulting community (or it could be the other way around).

@lxmatus: I am quite aware of the distinctions bet...

2010-09-17T13:34:47.117-07:00
@lxmatus: I am quite aware of the distinctions between a language and a framework. Thanks.

In this case, I am genuinely making the case that the Python web-development ecosystem as a whole has a story to tell which is less coherent and less attractive than the single framework: Rails.

I make this argument because I was able to use everything in this article without having to write a lot of glue code. I spent *months* researching and experimenting with Python libraries. Then I spent a week using Rails. Each of these things worked beautifully together without any heavy setup. The resulting complete stack aligned very closely with my preferences. And I'm a picky bastard: I tried a huuuge list of Python libraries before I found a stack I liked and I'm still not totally satisfied.

You can say "TurboGears has these" or "You should try Web.py" but that's precisely the problem. If I install Ruby, install Rails, and then visit http://ruby-toolbox.com/ and choose the most popular plugin for each thing I need: I've got a highly pleasant, well integrated, stack in hours instead of months.

This is a poorly researched article. You're co...

2010-09-17T13:02:17.417-07:00
This is a poorly researched article. You're comparing the language Python and it's vast sea of tools to Rails the framework written in Ruby.

Pylons (which is also the foundation for TurboGears 2) provides all you have listed above, if not more. I've also noticed a strong tendency for Rails, Django, CakePHP, and many other "kitchen sink" frameworks to do much of the work for the developer and if I wanted to get around it - it becomes a day long hackathon of digging through docs, source code, and IRC logs.

Pylons, has its own quirks and dirty sides too; but I highly prefer having to spend a lot of up-front time programming/configuring my own framework environment "flavor" (and being able to use it across many different projects) then having it just be "Rails".

Next time you post something like this, compare Rails to Django, or TurboGears, or Pylons; not just "Python".

I removed the previous comment because the author ...

2010-09-17T12:23:59.266-07:00
I removed the previous comment because the author deleted it himself which left a vestigial block in the comment stream saying that the post was deleted.

He wrote "Why would you compare a framework to a programming language?" to which the answer is: because I've tried dozens of libraries and several frameworks in Python. Then I tried Rails. Python as an ecosystem lost out to Rails as a particular framework community for my needs.

To your comment: I don't really think TurboGears does. Or at least, they are not first class citizens. For example, the documentation on form handling presents several options include FormEncode, ToscaWidgets, etc. It requires that I create an additional schema class where I declare widgets outside of the templates -- or awkward @validate decorators.

You'll probably remove this too (at least you ...

2010-09-17T12:12:57.304-07:00
You'll probably remove this too (at least you read like a fan-boy) but ... you don't show where Python is lacking at all in this article. I'm not going to start a war but TurboGears has an equivalent to almost everything you listed there (Although I'm not so sure about Rake), and I was looking forward to the "comparisons" your title implies.

@TT: I took advantage of the fact that many people...

2010-09-15T06:38:08.212-07:00
@TT: I took advantage of the fact that many people switch to or from Python. I searched for phrases like "python's foo in ruby". Ruby is so similar to Python, it was pretty easy to just pretend it's the same and go back for cleanup as you learn the idiomatic approaches.

Also, I generally just have an interest in programming languages. I'm pretty fluent with about a half dozen languages, so each marginal new language is that much easier to pick up.

As an aside: the "end" keyword is just sooo unnecessary!

Awesome post! I've been comfortable with Djang...

2010-09-15T06:27:02.152-07:00
Awesome post! I've been comfortable with Django though I am dabbling into Rails but I'm having trouble with getting to grips with Ruby. Would you recommend anything you've read that allowed you build a working prototype? I'm curious about how you managed to learn it so quickly. Thanks!

@kevin: I've written a bunch of watchers in th...

2010-09-14T16:30:14.361-07:00
@kevin: I've written a bunch of watchers in the past. Each had their pros and cons.

Steve has a simple Python script here: http://stevekrenzel.com/articles/autoreload

However, in this case I used FSSM: http://github.com/ttilley/fssm
FSSM has the advantage that it uses the platform's native file notification mechanism, so it tends to respond more quickly (no polling delay).

Could you expand on your file watcher script? Run...

2010-09-14T16:18:58.897-07:00
Could you expand on your file watcher script? Running a background process (e.g. re-compile) on change is a common pattern that I haven't found a tidy solution to...

Hi, Next time you need to authentication, try Dev...

2010-09-14T06:45:15.957-07:00
Hi,

Next time you need to authentication, try Devise instead of Authlogic, and check Ruby Toolbox for more interesting Ruby tools.

http://github.com/plataformatec/devise
http://ruby-toolbox.com/

Cheers

Well in my case I am way more productive in Python...

2010-09-14T00:28:01.108-07:00
Well in my case I am way more productive in Python, especially when prototyping with Django. It all depends on the mastering level of the tool. One point I will give to rails is haml tho. We need a proper equivalent well integrated in Django/Python.

@brokenladder: Hell yes.

2010-09-13T21:31:16.842-07:00
@brokenladder: Hell yes.

Semantic indenting is far and away the best thing ...

2010-09-13T20:44:08.272-07:00
Semantic indenting is far and away the best thing about Python, and Haml/Sass prove Ruby should adopt it too.

@Brandon Given your article I thought your would ...

2010-09-13T20:30:42.157-07:00
@Brandon

Given your article I thought your would like the fact that in web2py everything has a default. For example is you just type:

db.define_table('post',Field('body'))

web2py creates the table (if it does not exist, or alters it as necessary), a web based database administrative interface, and crud.create, crud.update, crud.read, crud.select, crud.search forms that you can insert in your app like

{{=crud.create(db.post)}}

It also includes role based access control out of the box with pluggable authentication mechanisms.

Web2py also has a component/plugin architecture that is best described by this video http://vimeo.com/13485916

Since you are coming from Python, I though you may be interested. Anyway, I too really like Rails and web2py was originally designed to be in Python but closer to Rails than other Python frameworks.

I think the real lesson here is to find the right ...

2010-09-13T18:16:41.258-07:00
I think the real lesson here is to find the right tool for the right job. Both Rails and Django are pretty strong pieces of framework, allowing you to do a lot in a little amount of time.

I had a similar experience, where I quickly prototyped a website in Rails. I showed it off and said, "see...this is pretty much done." And then developers on my team felt the need to rebuild the site in PHP since that's what our company 'officially supports.' :)

On another project, I was able to quickly use the Django ORM to introspect an existing MySQL database, and build an admin interface for some of our internal users. That was a HUGE win for me to be able to quickly make the admin site.

So, the right tool for the right job...

I originally began programming in Python with Djan...

2010-09-13T17:25:05.923-07:00
I originally began programming in Python with Django myself, but I saw Rails and immediately went.. WTF!? to Django and Python in general.

You work for me, Computer

I'm going through using Django (1.2) coming fr...

If you are annoyed by your slow test times you sho...

Are you kidding? MS couldn't even get the ...

@William: I followed the advice in comment #10 he...

I'd recommend devise over authlogic. Devises i...

You probably does not know web2py. web2py has eve...

Horses for courses. Python frameworks have 2010-09-19T04:50:58.429-07:00 Horses for courses. Python frameworks have their fanbois too!

Great list of reasons to love rails (may I add: mi...

@Brandon ... sorry for the accusation! I've w...

@lxmatus: I am quite aware of the distinctions bet...

This is a poorly researched article. You're co...

I removed the previous comment because the author ...

You'll probably remove this too (at least you ...

@TT: I took advantage of the fact that many people...

Awesome post! I've been comfortable with Djang...

@kevin: I've written a bunch of watchers in th...

Could you expand on your file watcher script? Run...

Hi, Next time you need to authentication, try Dev...

Well in my case I am way more productive in Python...

@brokenladder: Hell yes.

Semantic indenting is far and away the best thing ...

@Brandon Given your article I thought your would ...

I think the real lesson here is to find the right ...

I originally began programming in Python with Djan...

Horses for courses. Python frameworks have
2010-09-19T04:50:58.429-07:00
Horses for courses. Python frameworks have their fanbois too!