Few notes about Django
One more Python web framework recently appeared. There is quite some buzz around it. Others pythonistas start playing with it and that's fine.
I thought i'd give a look too and give my 2 cents of feedback and impressions. First off all the Django's setup relies on the excellent Peak's setuptools (think easy_install django) which is a good point (when will it be available in standard library ?). Second point, the dependencies list is quite tiny (which is relevant when you don't host the website on a machine where you can install anything you want). You simply need Python, a database (mysql or pg) adapter (and python bindings), Apache and mod_python.
After installation i started reading the (only) tutorial. It's as simple as creating a project, adding an application to it and start data modeling. Django comes with a light Object-Relational Mapper. It's quite simple to use, but i would have preferred SQLObject, though i'm aware of the "yet one more dependency" issue.
Once the data model is designed, the database can be initialized (of course there is ad-hoc solution for that) and the application be started.
From the web developer point of view, Django has some killer features such as automatic admin interface generation. This is really handy, i think Ruby on Rails has also a mechanism like that (i don't know it much, only seen the videos like the others . Anyway one drawback is that there is only one "deployment" model supported (mod_python). Though the Django developpers are working on a WSCGI implementation. I'd like to develop with Django as i do with Quixote, testing/debugging the application via a Medusa server, and deploy the final website using SCGI or mod_python.
The templating system won't be a big deal if you already know Cheetah because the language syntax is really similar.
At last, i think Django will be a really good challenger. The code is light, understandable. There are few well-known names in the dev team. The framework has already been used for a bunch of high traffic websites... I'll probably drop some more notes about Django later about other tasks like templating, admin, and so on.
#. renaldo on Wed Mar 15 14:04:53 2006
I think that adding typechecking is nice but doesn't it make the current class implementation look even more useless for the novice? I mean I think its confusing and thats my problem with it. Decorators? OK I can't use them and it makes me mad.
Reliability can come from permanent types and no conversion or predictable conversion. Fortran is less confusing type wise, and its fast and reliable (I think). Reliable is when something breaks in the code and it still runs fine. sometimes python magically does this.
Also speed is what I'm after and automatic guis and easy programming that stays fun. Typing sounds like a fun hack and another notch on the proverbial totem pole.
But I shouldn't complain python is still great and if history repeats typing will be easy to use (unlike decorators, what the heck a sub interpreter/clickable assembler would be more fun).
Python rulez!
#. Jkx on Wed Jul 20 19:28:58 2005
http://www.pythonpaste.org rules !