Open Source Is Really About Documentation – Twisted vs. Tornado
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Re: Open Source Is Really About Documentation – Twisted vs. Tornado
#2As usual, a simple "this versus that" comparison is only useful as an intellectual exercise.
Tornado is a web framework, in many ways closer to Django than Twisted. Beyond that the underlying approaches are different - Tornado does not use deferreds.
There are a number of great projects that use Twisted. Soon many new projects will use Tornado. But the frameworks' respective documentation does not tell the story.
Re: Open Source Is Really About Documentation – Twisted vs. Tornado
#3I have built several twisted apps which are in use in production environments, including web and jabber/xmpp apps. I love twisted, and use it whenever possible...
...and I agree completely with the op.
Twisted is powerful, flexible, well architected, and reliable. It is also damn near impossible to get over the steep learning curve and to actually USE it.
Show me a competent Twisted developer, and I'll show you someone who had a gun jammed roughly in their mouth, and was FORCED to learn it at some point. We are all glad we know it _now_, but that learning process SUCKED.
Re: Open Source Is Really About Documentation – Twisted vs. Tornado
#4It's obvious, documentation is always important. It's even more important for proprietary software, since you can't even study the source. But it seems that neither of this two projects has good and extensive docs/tutorials.
You could argue that if Twisted was better documented the FriedFeed guys wouldn't have started their own project. I don't buy it. There could have been many (technical and non-technical) reasons to do this anyway.
I (mostly) agree with a comment on the blog: This is just pure NIH syndrome. It happened because it’s easier to write code than to read it, and it’s more fun to create than to fix.
Re: Open Source Is Really About Documentation – Twisted vs. Tornado
#5Not all of Twisted's documentation is bad. And if folks can't figure out the docs, Jean-Paul and Glyph are available to help in IRC and know everything about Twisted (since as far as I know they represent 90%+ of the current contribution and maintenance).
Besides, Tornado can afford to have (seemingly) more comprehensive documentation because it is far smaller in scope and support. Twisted has a large number of robust libraries for doing all sorts of things asynchronously, from web servers to ORMs to SSH and everything in between. It's like comparing an orange to a bushel of apples and it's silly. Twisted has never supplied a web framework, which is exactly what Tornado supplies.
The Twisted docs are lacking in many ways, I just don't understand how Tornado is objectively better because it doesn't currently have that problem -- they aren't the same thing!
Re: Open Source Is Really About Documentation – Twisted vs. Tornado
#6I think a bit of friendly competition will help both projects.
The Twisted devs may have some hurt feelings, but I think they can learn a lot from this.
Re: Open Source Is Really About Documentation – Twisted vs. Tornado
#7Not all of Twisted's documentation is bad. And if folks can't figure out the docs, Jean-Paul and Glyph are available to help in IRC and know everything about Twisted (since as far as I know they represent 90%+ of the current contribution and maintenance). Besides, Tornado can afford to have (seemingly) more comprehensive documentation because it is far smaller in scope and support. Twisted has a large number of robus…
(Disclaimer - I wrote the blog post)
"The Twisted docs are lacking in many ways, I just don't understand how Tornado is objectively better because it doesn't currently have that problem -- they aren't the same thing!"
Of course it's the same thing. If your documentation is lacking, don't complain when people point it out. It's awesome that Jean-Paul (who commented on the blog post) is available to help people...but if there was more documentation then the simple questions disappear and you are left answering the really tough ones. Easier said then done, obiously.
Upon reflection, this is really a comparison of Twisted.web with Tornado. The rest of Twisted got dragged into it, perhaps unfairly.
Re: Open Source Is Really About Documentation – Twisted vs. Tornado
#8I have built several twisted apps which are in use in production environments, including web and jabber/xmpp apps. I love twisted, and use it whenever possible... ...and I agree completely with the op. Twisted is powerful, flexible, well architected, and reliable. It is also damn near impossible to get over the steep learning curve and to actually USE it. Show me a competent Twisted developer, and I'll show you someo…
Definitely agree on the learning curve. I'm using twisted for a distributed computing framework that is custom tailored for our requirements (looked into Hadoop, disco, etc. but decided against for valid technical and/or logistical reasons).
I go to a lot of pains so that clients of my framework never have to touch or even see twisted though it is under the hood. I think I spent about a week in the beginning really wrestling with Twisted and what was the appropriate way to transcribe my ideas into the "deferred" model. Once it clicked it was relatively smooth sailing (all in all, Twisted is a pretty sweet framework but not without its gotchas that you have to learn the hard way). A week spent learning a new framework isn't much time, but when clients want to get their app up and running ASAP it is an eternity and ultimately would prevent their adoption of my framework.
Re: Open Source Is Really About Documentation – Twisted vs. Tornado
#9I have built several twisted apps which are in use in production environments, including web and jabber/xmpp apps. I love twisted, and use it whenever possible... ...and I agree completely with the op. Twisted is powerful, flexible, well architected, and reliable. It is also damn near impossible to get over the steep learning curve and to actually USE it. Show me a competent Twisted developer, and I'll show you someo…
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Re: Open Source Is Really About Documentation – Twisted vs. Tornado
#10I have built several twisted apps which are in use in production environments, including web and jabber/xmpp apps. I love twisted, and use it whenever possible... ...and I agree completely with the op. Twisted is powerful, flexible, well architected, and reliable. It is also damn near impossible to get over the steep learning curve and to actually USE it. Show me a competent Twisted developer, and I'll show you someo…
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I'd rather struggle with difficulty of concept than difficulty in finding information.