As odd as it may seem we often prototype something we need to test using web.py even though our primary development language is php (using Zend). I recently did this to test a REST API. This has also been part of our process of 'flirting' with using a python web framework for some of our applications (looking at pylons).
Poll: Pythonic startups: what web framework do you use?
21–30 of 76 posts
Re: Poll: Pythonic startups: what web framework do you use?
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
Django scales just like any other web framework. The plan to scale Django is roughly the same as the plan to scale any app. Are there any issues in particular you're concerned about?
Have you listened to Cal Henderson's friendly rant against Django from a scalability perspective? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6Fr65PFqfk For example, did you modify the source to support multiple databases for read/write? Or is that not an issue and it's OK that it's coming later in the framework's roadmap?
As I see it, if we get enough traffic to be worried about scaling issues we'll deal with it then. Django isn't terribly designed and going in and hacking multi-db and sharding in should take less than a week from a competent developer.
Discussing this before starting a startup sort of feels like trying to figure out how to do salary for hundreds of employees before getting your first one.
Re: Poll: Pythonic startups: what web framework do you use?
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you listened to Cal Henderson's friendly rant against Django from a scalability perspective? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6Fr65PFqfk For example, did you modify the source to support multiple databases for read/write? Or is that not an issue and it's OK that it's coming later in the framework's roadmap?
The framework may not offer it as part of the framework, but there is nothing stopping you from doing it yourself. It's python, it's a database, what's the difficulty here? Django is not the type of framework where you run deep within it and you cannot break out - nothing stops you from doing anything you want to do.
Of course you're right. Then it's just a matter of assessing the cost of modifying Django vs. another framework.
Re: Poll: Pythonic startups: what web framework do you use?
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, 2007, for me. But I built it over web.py, so I upped both. (Edit: and I've since mostly switched to PHP)
Heresy! j/k. I'm actually curious why you switched from python to php. Was it your choice or forced upon you? If your choice, can you explain? I usually meet people going the other direction.
Well, I was running a small business at the time, supporting other small businesses and small sites. Virtually all of the ones I hadn't written were using PHP, so as I fixed problems and added features I found that I was building a library of PHP even though I built all "my software" in Python, Common Lisp, and a few other one offs. As I contemplated getting out of the business, it dawned on me that it was going to be terribly difficult and expensive for all these small businesses to find someone to support and extend the apps written in various languages I'd used, and there wasn't anything really novel or language-dependent in the CRUD apps I was writing (mostly because my clients were almost all mainly focused on the look of the site and graphics, which was all handled outside the main code via templating, and which I didn't do myself). So I began to write new things in PHP with an eye to divesting myself of the client base and getting a "real job", as my friends and parents would say. This led, in a very straightforward manner, to my getting PHP positions when I folded the business and moved to the DC area, last year. This turns out to have been fortuitous, since PHP and Java are the main languages represented in web development, at least around here.
Perhaps that was a longer answer than you wanted. :)
Re: Poll: Pythonic startups: what web framework do you use?
#25Wait... there are people who wrote their own framework... in the year 2009?
it's very easy to write your own framework in python, that does excactly what you need it to do and nothing more. therefore is: scaleable the way you need it for your application. not in your way of doing things. easier to debug. it's a bit of development overhead in the beginning, but pays of in the long run.
I tend to be the same way.
If I'm just coding up a small app I don't want the overhead of a framework. I might want a bit of routing, possibly some automated mvc and that's about it. Everything else in a framework I usually care little about and just slows stuff down for no benefit to me.
Coding up a "framework" that does only the very little I actually need is fast and very little development overhead considering the number of times I've done it and the fact that I've got code I can re-use.
This isn't business advice however, it's just my own personal project preference. If you're running a business you want to be able to replace developers if they quit so it's often a better idea to go with something more mainstream like a well known framework so that ramp-up time is minimized.
Re: Poll: Pythonic startups: what web framework do you use?
#26Would someone that up'd Django please outline their plans to scale?
Ellington, which is a Django based CMS runs the Washington Post web site: http://www.ellingtoncms.com/
I don't have doubts about Django scaling.
The caching framework is really cool. I did a test a couple of weeks ago, and I got a 10x performance boost, simply by sprinkling 3-4 lines of caching code to my site. That was justing the local memory caching: http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.0/topics/cache/#local-mem...
I'd imagine that using a caching back end like memcache would probably give another huge performance boost. It's really pretty straight-forward and usable out of the box.
Re: Poll: Pythonic startups: what web framework do you use?
#27Wait... there are people who wrote their own framework... in the year 2009?
Why is that surprising? General purpose frameworks are always suboptimal, and overly general. There's extra cruft you'd never need, parts you might need optimized aren't, etc etc.
Writing your own is often less work than trying to tailor something existing to your own needs.
Re: Poll: Pythonic startups: what web framework do you use?
#28Am I the only one who likes CherryPy?
Re: Poll: Pythonic startups: what web framework do you use?
#29Am I the only one who likes CherryPy?
no
Re: Poll: Pythonic startups: what web framework do you use?
#30I swear by werkzeug.pocoo.org -- not a framework, just a neat abstraction over WSGI with lots of web-related utilities and HTTP internals support inside that keep coming in oh-so-handy.
Our stuff in python is all on top of werkzeug :)