

Ask HN: Python for a webapp? - JCB_K

What do you guys think, is it a good idea to write a full web-app in Python+Django? Most people seem to be using Ruby (on Rails) these days, but I just started to learn Python, and I like it quite a lot. I've seen some apps written in Python, they seemed quite cool, but I wonder what the limitations are.
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rguzman
Full disclosure: I'm a django developer and have never written an app in
rails.

People like to say that python+django is equivalent to ruby+rails. I largely
agree, but that's only a first order approximation.

The rails community is larger than the django community. This means that
whatever you are trying to do, you are more likely to find someone who has
done it before in the rails community (along with the discussion, tools). This
also means that the power tools for web-apps will be very good and plentiful.
Due to that, rails > django. (Heroku is an example of this -- there is no
equivalent for django that is so well established as being awesome).
However...

The python community is larger and more diverse than the ruby community. This
means that if you deviate from the usual track, there will still be a
community to support you.

Python is popularly used in a variety of fields with very different needs.
This leads to a very diverse ecosystem in python, both in terms of areas of
specialization for developers and tools available. python > ruby. This makes
me prefer python+django.

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jdietrich
Any sufficiently complex web app eventually outgrows its framework. Frameworks
are a really useful tool to jump-start a project, but eventually you'll be
writing (and re-writing) things from scratch, be it for reasons of
flexibility, performance or maintainability.

On that basis, I think you're much better off choosing a framework based on
the underlying language rather than vice-versa. If you're happy with Python,
pick a Python framework.

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gaustin
Use what you like and are comfortable with. It's pretty much a matter of
taste.

There's nothing you can do in Django that you can't do in Rails.

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iuguy
I use Django and Python for a lot of stuff. I have used rails in the past, but
not for a long time. I prefer python to ruby, and that's ultimately what made
me switch (as I write non-web stuff in Python).

Perhaps the two biggest differences between Django and Rails are where you
save time. With Rails you get scaffolding, so you have CRUD functions for
everything more or less straight off the bat.

With Django you get an admin interface which is great if you want a backend,
but you still have to write your own frontend pages.

Rails has built in Ajax and Schema migration. Django has external projects for
it.

In some respects Django is a bit like Arch Linux and Rails is more like
Ubuntu. If you like your frameworks to have everything bundled in and like
Ruby then Rails is better for you. If you like things to be the way you want
or you prefer python, consider Django and Pylons (and web.py).

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Polichism
I was first a PHP developer (I still can be), but I'm working with
python+django for 2 years now. The reason why I began to user django is the
time-winning. In my opinion it's faster to make a webapp in python+django than
PHP+(Kohana, Codigniter, Zend)

And what yuvadam sais: Django and Rails are pretty much equivalent.

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yuvadam
Django and Rails are pretty much equivalent.

Use whatever tool that will make you the most productive.

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runjake
You can't go wrong with either. And Django isn't the only Python web framework
out there (Pylons, web.py, Google App Engine). Nor is Rails the only Ruby web
framework (Sinatra is nice).

Both can be made to cleanly scale for whatever world-dominating project you
have in mind.

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jparicka
I love Django to bits - this is the app I written in Django
<http://beepl.com/jan> Hoping to go public in March this year..

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mrlase
In addition to django, you might consider taking a look at the pylons
framework.

~~~
JCB_K
and what about web.py?

EDIT: according to Pylon's homepage it's used by Reddit...I thought they
released web.py?

