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I work professionally in Django. Django is nicer starting out, but it's starting to chafe. I'd rails, even if it is a "grass greener" type situation.
I've gone through the same so I'm wondering if we are running in to the same kind of issues.
I work professionally in Django. Django is nicer starting out, but it's starting to chafe. I'd rails, even if it is a "grass greener" type situation.
- everything is an object, so you can e.g. store code in a Proc to execute it later or add new methods to Numbers (e.g. 1.kilobyte => 1024)
- very clean syntax and expressive method names means you don't need to document much, it's pretty obvious most of the time (e.g. 3.times do print "ho" * 3 end => "hohoho")
- very flexible, allows nice DSLs that read a lot like english (e.g. Rails or RSpec)
- interesting community with lots of free material (e.g. _why's poignant guide, railscasts.com, therubyshow.com, ...)
I'm sure Python is pretty cool as well, but from all I've heard (I had the same question a while ago) Ruby seems to fit me better with its "more fun and freedom" philosophy.
Whether you pick Python or Ruby, you should try to avoid diving right into Django or Rails. Work through Mark Pilgrim's "Dive Into Python" or _why's "Poignant Guide to Ruby". If you want to write a web app, start with Google AppEngine w/ it's webapp framework, or Heroku w/ Sinatra.
You can move to Rails once you got the basics of Ruby down -- Rails will make a lot more sense then.
I work professionally in Django. Django is nicer starting out, but it's starting to chafe. I'd rails, even if it is a "grass greener" type situation.
Django != Python and Rails != Ruby. There are other solutions in either language that might suit your project better.
What I use at work isn't up to me. I'm paid to work, not whine and whinge about the spade in my hand.
I work professionally in Django. Django is nicer starting out, but it's starting to chafe. I'd rails, even if it is a "grass greener" type situation.
What are your hangups with Django? I've gone through the same so I'm wondering if we are running in to the same kind of issues.
Only reusable modelforms + generic views really redeem them in my eyes.
The ORM is enjoyable but terrible for doing mass migrations. I've had to do some pretty ridiculous backflips just to get migrations to finish on our VPS.
The utter lack of real migrations. For. Fuck's. Sake. Makes it impossible to make any rapid changes to your models without thinking, "OH GOD WHAT AM I GOING TO BREAK!?!"
There are random and strange install-specific errors that will crop up and we'll either have to reinstall python/django, the OS, or ignore it and trudge on.
And there won't be any mentions of said problems on the mailing list to speak of either. (These kinds of things have occurred on OS X and Win32 both, so don't start pointing fingers.)
The incredible awkwardness of AJAX in Django. Utterly useless. It apparently suited Jacob and Adrian to pretend javascript didn't exist in their world.
It's opaque, doesn't support multiple databases, doesn't support non-relational databases, and it's nearly impossible to modify/rip out any given portion of the framework. It's the epitome of what people hate about full'ish stack frameworks.
I'm to the point where I no longer feel Django is saving me any time. The crippling of templates doesn't create a substantial separation of duties at work because I work with incompetents. Instead I'm left with crippled templates and whiny coworkers.
I'd rather work with Werkzeug/Web.py/Sinatra/Rails at this point. At least Rails was designed to be modular, allowing me to rip the parts I don't like out.
I work professionally in Django. Django is nicer starting out, but it's starting to chafe. I'd rails, even if it is a "grass greener" type situation.
Thanks for the honest insight.
Python
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What are your hangups with Django? I've gone through the same so I'm wondering if we are running in to the same kind of issues.
Forms are a fragile waste of time 80% of the time. Only reusable modelforms + generic views really redeem them in my eyes. The ORM is enjoyable but terrible for doing mass migrations. I've had to do some pretty ridiculous backflips just to get migrations to finish on our VPS. The utter lack of real migrations. For. Fuck's. Sake. Makes it impossible to make any rapid changes to your models without thinking, "OH GOD WH…
I spotted werkzeug ('tool' in German) a while ago and it definitely looked very good.
I've built 3 sites in Django now, two small ones and one larger one. The small ones worked fine, the larger one Django immediately turned from 'enabler' in to 'straightjacket'.
I hand coded the forms so they're not even part of the frustration, the ORM is definitely a limiting factor, agreed with the AJAX oversights, even the simplest stuff and you're immediately out of django in to 'roll your own' mode.
Not having multiple db connections was one of the first things I was wondering about how serious this package really was, after all almost all non-trivial setups will access multiple dbs, even if not at the same time then sequentally.
Import wasn't much of a problem for me because I did the import by talking to the DB exclusively, I had the 'export' in exactly the right format for import into the mysql django tables. But it would have been nice to have a tool handy to do that.
The admin is fine until you have more than just a toy dataset, and the way in which you configure the admin has altogether too many little 'magic' steps in it.
So far it's been a mixed bag. For small sites probably a good fit, for larger ones probably not.
Fully agreed on the template limitations, and the lame excuses around not having some basic functionality in there are really trying my patience.
But I haven't seen anything yet that I felt really was a step up from the rest.
I'll keep looking though.