Debating web development toolsets

[Myles Braithwaite]

>> I believed in the marketing hype and it made me stupid. When ever I
>> had to leave the
>> RoR environment it took a day to get back up to speed.
>
> Is that good stupid or bad stupid?  Seriously, I've hit the same  
> thing going
> from microcontroller code to C++ or Java a few times and back, and the
> difference in mindset felt like shifting half a dozen gears.  If it  
> simply
> makes life easier, then I'm all for it.

Bad stupid. If you want to learn about web development stay far away  
from RoR.

>> ASP.NET isn't really a language but a glorified template language you
>> will have
>> to use C#, J#, C++, IronPython, and VisualBasic. I gave a  
>> presentation
>> on IronPython
>> and ASP.NET at PyGTA a while ago:
>> http://wiki.mylesbraithwaite.com/Presentations/2007/PyGTA-IronPython
>
> That's pretty cool, I didn't know you could use Python in ASP.  Not  
> quite a
> reason to jump onto ASP, but neat nevertheless.



>>> Python: Don't know much about python beyond Mailman.  Looks like a
>>> decent
>>> scripting language, can it do reports and interface mySQL well?
>>
>> Python is my favorite language of all time. I find it best for web
>> development because
>> of it's status. It can handle the enterprise-level apps and small
>> websites.
>
> That's pretty much what I'm looking for: something that can start  
> small and
> grow big, with solid support.  How well does it interface databases?

Python has great support for databases.

>> If you interested I would suggest taking a look at some web  
>> frameworks
>> like Django,
>> web.py, and TurboGears.
>
> TurboGears looks like it could be pretty good.  How does it compare  
> to RoR?

I wouldn't compare TurboGears to RoR, Django is more like RoR.  
TurboGears is a
package of some python software.

>> It really matters what exactly you are developing. If you are
>> developing a simple website
>> i.e. a blog and some flatpages, I would suggest PHP or Perl. If you
>> want a step high than that
>> I would suggest RoR. If you are doing something a little more
>> complicated I would suggest
>> Python. If you have some money behind you Java and ASP.NET are the  
>> way
>> to go.
>
> This suggests to me that I should look at RoR or Python.  I suppose  
> the
> question becomes: which one does the better job of making database- 
> driven
> sites and reporting easiest, since that will be the bulk of the  
> sites I work
> with.

Python is more mature language so it might have more support for  
databases.

For a database-driven site I would suggest steering away from RoR and  
move
towards Python. How skilled are you in SQL? If you have been doing it  
for years
then you might want to move fully away from RoR. If you don't know  
allot of SQL
and it is your biggest handicap (like me) I would suggest a Web  
Framework
like RoR, Django, TurboGears, etc.

>> Hope any of that helped, if your coming to TLUG tomorrow we could
>> discus further over beer.
>
> Definitely!  Thanks for the ideas.  I may or may not be able to make  
> it out
> tomorrow, it depends entirely on how long things run in the
> afternoon/evening.
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists