Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[aaronwmail-usenet]

Damjan wrote:>
> Starting a new Apache process with python included (trough mod_python) is
> even worse than CGI.

Yes, but I think only for the first interaction
after being dormant for a period. In fact I've
noticed that hitting http://www.xfeedme.com
the first time is usually slow.  But once the
apache is up it seems to stay up until it has
been inactive for a good while, and it's fast.
I'm inferring all this from what I see using
"ps" and other indirect tools.

  -- Aaron Watters

===
as the poet said:
 "Everybody have fun tonight
  Everybody Wang Chung tonight"

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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Damjan]

>> Yes, but your mod_python programs still run with the privileges of the
>> Apache process, as are all the other mod_python programs. This means that
>> my mod_python program can (at least) read files belonging to you -
>> including your config file holding your database password
> 
> I think a standard solution to this is to
> associate each virtual host server to a
> different port and have the main apache
> redirect to the port.  Inetd makes sure
> that the vserver apache instance only
> stays alive while it's needed.  It might be
> complicated to set up, but it works.
> Again, something like this is probably
> advisable anyway to limit the ways one
> vserver can damage another generally
> speaking.

Starting a new Apache process with python included (trough mod_python) is
even worse than CGI.

But it seems AppArmor supports secureing mod_python (and mod_php and
mod_perl) with a special Apache module (and the AppArmor support in the
Linux kernel - yes this is Linux only).

http://developer.novell.com/wiki/index.php/Apparmor_FAQ#How_do_AppArmor_and_SELinux_compare_with_regard_to_webserver_protection.3F

Now that it's GPL AppArmor seems to get a lot of supporters.

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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[aaronwmail-usenet]

Damjan wrote:
> Yes, but your mod_python programs still run with the privileges of the
> Apache process, as are all the other mod_python programs. This means that
> my mod_python program can (at least) read files belonging to you -
> including your config file holding your database password

I think a standard solution to this is to
associate each virtual host server to a
different port and have the main apache
redirect to the port.  Inetd makes sure
that the vserver apache instance only
stays alive while it's needed.  It might be
complicated to set up, but it works.
Again, something like this is probably
advisable anyway to limit the ways one
vserver can damage another generally
speaking.
  -- Aaron Watters

===
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   -- Indiana Jones

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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Damjan]

>> I didn't realize you could do shared hosting with mod_python, because
>> of the lack of security barriers between Python objects (i.e. someone
>> else's application could reach into yours).  You really need a
>> separate interpreter per user.
> 
> mod_python uses sub-interpreters - can be per virtual server, per
> directory etc, cf
> http://www.modpython.org/live/current/doc-html/dir-other-ipd.html
> http://www.modpython.org/live/current/doc-html/dir-other-ipdv.html
 
Yes, but your mod_python programs still run with the privileges of the
Apache process, as are all the other mod_python programs. This means that
my mod_python program can (at least) read files belonging to you -
including your config file holding your database password.

PHP solves this problem by using it's safe mode and basedir restrictions.
Mod_python nor Python itself don't have this feature.

There are sollutions for Apache that run each virtual host under a different
uid but they have quirks:

 Metux MPM - http://www.metux.de/mpm/en/
 mod_suid  - for apache 1.3.x
http://www.palsenberg.com/index.php/plain/projects/apache_1_xx_mod_suid
 mod_suid2 - for apache 2.0.x
http://bluecoara.net/item24/cat5.html
 mod_ruid  - seems to be an improvement of mod_suid2
http://websupport.sk/~stanojr/projects/mod_ruid/

But I see mod_python more as a way to extend Apache itself, than for running
Python applications. A lot of the Apache mod_auth_* modules could be
replaced with mod_python scripts.

OTOH SCGI or FastCGI seem better sutied for python web (WSGI) applications.

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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Bruno Desthuilliers]

Paul Rubin wrote:
> "Ben Sizer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>> Another perfectly good reason is that PHP pages are much simpler to
>> deploy than any given Python application server. Just add the code into
>> your HTML pages as required and you're done. Python could come close to
>> this if something like the Python Server Pages implementation in
>> mod_python was to become widely available and well known, but that
>> still requires overcoming the first problem.
> 
> I didn't realize you could do shared hosting with mod_python, because
> of the lack of security barriers between Python objects (i.e. someone
> else's application could reach into yours).  You really need a
> separate interpreter per user.

mod_python uses sub-interpreters - can be per virtual server, per
directory etc, cf
http://www.modpython.org/live/current/doc-html/dir-other-ipd.html
http://www.modpython.org/live/current/doc-html/dir-other-ipdv.html


-- 
bruno desthuilliers
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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[aaronwmail-usenet]

Ben Sizer wrote:
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> > Paul Rubin wrote:
> > > A typical shared hosting place might
> > > support 1000's of users with ONE apache/php instance (running in a
> > > whole bunch of threads or processes, to be sure).
> >
> > You just need to run multiple apache
> > instances, which is advisable anyway.
> > The hosting service formerly known as
> > python-hosting has been doing this
> > for years.
>
> Would you need one instance per user? Is it practical to run 1000s of
> Apache instances on one server?
>

I'm almost certain Apache spawns instances as needed.
If they are all active at the same time you will need at least
that many threads anyway and I don't think processes
are really much more expensive than threads usually.
But I'm not an expert on virtual hosting or apache or
even thread/process internals.

However when I do a "ps -aef" on my shared server
(http://www.xfeedme.com) I only see the apache
instances that are active, and not the 50 dormant
ones, if I recall.

   -- Aaron Watters

===
She was flirty, dirty, musta been about thirty
   -- 70's stones lyrics
She was nifty, shifty musta been about fifty
   -- 90's stones lyrics

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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Ben Sizer]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Paul Rubin wrote:
> > A typical shared hosting place might
> > support 1000's of users with ONE apache/php instance (running in a
> > whole bunch of threads or processes, to be sure).
>
> You just need to run multiple apache
> instances, which is advisable anyway.
> The hosting service formerly known as
> python-hosting has been doing this
> for years.

Would you need one instance per user? Is it practical to run 1000s of
Apache instances on one server?

-- 
Ben Sizer

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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[aaronwmail-usenet]

Paul Rubin wrote:
> I didn't realize you could do shared hosting with mod_python, because
> of the lack of security barriers between Python objects (i.e. someone
> else's application could reach into yours).  You really need a
> separate interpreter per user.  A typical shared hosting place might
> support 1000's of users with ONE apache/php instance (running in a
> whole bunch of threads or processes, to be sure).

You just need to run multiple apache
instances, which is advisable anyway.
The hosting service formerly known as
python-hosting has been doing this
for years.  For example my http://www.xfeedme.com
site uses it (which seems to be down at the moment!
oh no! :( ).
   -- Aaron Watters

ps: little known fact: mod_python descends
from an NSAPI plugin implementation
I wrote as an example of embedding python in
the defunct "Internet Programming
with Python" book.  Books die, but software lives on.

===
if you are happy and you know it stick with your dosage.
   -- seen in the New Yorker

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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Alex Martelli]

Ray <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Damjan wrote:
> > BTW I'd choose TurboGears for it's flexibility, but I guess Django could be
> > nice when more rapid results are needed (and the problem doesn't fall too
> > far from the Django sweet spot).
> 
> Well actually I was thinking of exaclty the same thing, because our
> apps are mostly CRUD apps anyway. However I just learned of one very
> big killer--lack of support for Oracle and MS SQL Server. That pretty
> much shoots Django down from the list, and with it Python.

According to
, with
Rails...:

"""
When connecting rails to Oracle the performance dropped to the extent it
made any production use of the product useless.
   ...
Oracle. I would bet performance degrades dramatically when Rails
connects to Oracle as Rails does not use Bind Variables or cache
prepared statements. Not using bind variables in Oracle is the single
most common mistake. When running the load test connected to Oracle,
does Oracle consume a lot of the CPU?
Its unfortunate, as until Rails handles Oracle correctly, its not really
fit to be used on it, and I was really hoping to use it there!
"""

IOW, if these comments are correct, Rails is also _practically_ unusable
with Oracle.  Meanwhile, Django has experimental Oracle support with a
patch (, latest checkin is
from Jul 31, but it has been around for over a year in some form or
other).  As to what will mature first, Rails/Oracle performance or the
Django/Oracle patch, who knows.  I suspect it won't matter much, because
"buzz" trumps substance (in the short run, at least), and Ruby on Rails
has buzz (according to Tim O'Reilly's reports at OSCON last week, sales
of Ruby books have overtaken sales of Perl books recently -- Python
books, while gaining relative to Perl, are still below).

The one big issue that may preserve Perl, Python and PHP against Ruby's
onslaught is -- acronyms.  Any of the "P" languages can acronymically be
part of a "LAMP" setup, one of the coolest acronyms in years; indeed,
BSD, PostgreSQL and lighttpd may already have been handicapped by the
un-coolness of acronyms such as BLPP.  But Ruby suffers even worse here,
since somebody using Ruby instead of a P-language would be a... LAMR!!!

If I were on the board of the Ruby equivalent of the PSF, I'd be
lobbying hard for the language's name to be changed to PRuby -- with the
P being mute, as in Wodehouse's character Psmith.  _That_ would remove
the acronymical barrier and ensure PRuby's triumph.


Alex
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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Alex Martelli]

Bruno Desthuilliers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
   ...
> >>And of course import hooks.
> > 
> > Python?? Where?
> 
> RTFM:
> http://www.python.org/doc/2.3.5/lib/built-in-funcs.html

Perhaps a better reference is 
.

Alex
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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Ben Sizer]

Paul Rubin wrote:
> "Ben Sizer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> > Another perfectly good reason is that PHP pages are much simpler to
> > deploy than any given Python application server. Just add the code into
> > your HTML pages as required and you're done. Python could come close to
> > this if something like the Python Server Pages implementation in
> > mod_python was to become widely available and well known, but that
> > still requires overcoming the first problem.
>
> I didn't realize you could do shared hosting with mod_python, because
> of the lack of security barriers between Python objects (i.e. someone
> else's application could reach into yours).  You really need a
> separate interpreter per user.  A typical shared hosting place might
> support 1000's of users with ONE apache/php instance (running in a
> whole bunch of threads or processes, to be sure).

Ah yes, I hadn't considered that. Is this a Python limitation?
Py_Initialize() seems to initialise a global Python object which
obviously makes it awkward to share. Other languages allow you to
create multiple instances (eg. Lua has lua_newstate() which returns a
new Lua state) which would facilitate running multiple interpreters
without the new process overhead. A brief search implies that mod_perl
doesn't have the same problem as mod_python (but has other problems).
It would be a shame if Python is almost alone in having this issue.

-- 
Ben Sizer

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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Paul Rubin]

"Ben Sizer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Another perfectly good reason is that PHP pages are much simpler to
> deploy than any given Python application server. Just add the code into
> your HTML pages as required and you're done. Python could come close to
> this if something like the Python Server Pages implementation in
> mod_python was to become widely available and well known, but that
> still requires overcoming the first problem.

I didn't realize you could do shared hosting with mod_python, because
of the lack of security barriers between Python objects (i.e. someone
else's application could reach into yours).  You really need a
separate interpreter per user.  A typical shared hosting place might
support 1000's of users with ONE apache/php instance (running in a
whole bunch of threads or processes, to be sure).  
-- 
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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Ben Sizer]

Vincent Delporte wrote:
> On 31 Jul 2006 07:05:27 -0700, "Ben Sizer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >Typically you run PHP as a module in your webserver, so there should be
> >no process startup overhead. mod_python provides the same sort of
> >functionality for Python, but is not as popular or widely installed as
> >the PHP Apache module.
>
> So, if mod_python provides the same functionality, it's not the main
> reason why Python developers use application servers while PHP users
> still program with page codes in /htdocs.
>
> Why do PHP users stick to that old way of things? Because they mostly
> use shared hosts, with no way to install their application server?

Yes, one reason is because they can't install anything other than web
pages. Not only can they not install a Python application server, they
can't install mod_python either, and few places will have it
pre-installed. Shared hosting accounts for a massive number of sites so
this is a significant issue.

Another perfectly good reason is that PHP pages are much simpler to
deploy than any given Python application server. Just add the code into
your HTML pages as required and you're done. Python could come close to
this if something like the Python Server Pages implementation in
mod_python was to become widely available and well known, but that
still requires overcoming the first problem.

-- 
Ben Sizer

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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Gerhard Fiedler]

On 2006-07-31 14:37:26, Bruno Desthuilliers wrote:

>> So, if mod_python provides the same functionality, it's not the main
>> reason why Python developers use application servers while PHP users
>> still program with page codes in /htdocs.
>> 
>> Why do PHP users stick to that old way of things? Because they mostly
>> use shared hosts, with no way to install their application server?

I'm not sure about PHP users in general, but I think that there are many
sites hosted on shared hosts. Many of those sites need a solution for
dynamic pages. That's quite a market.

> mod_python is at once lower-level and a bit more powerful than PHP. It
> really exposes most of Apache's API to Python - which BTW doesn't make
> it that well-suited for shared hosting... (most of the time, updating a
> mod_python based app requires restarting the server). 

Why is that (restarting required)? And is there a way to "lock down" a
mod_python installation WRT Apache, in a way similar to a typical PHP
installation? AFAIK there are a number of shared hosts that support Python.
I'm not sure whether that's mod_python, though...

Thanks,
Gerhard

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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Bruno Desthuilliers]

Vincent Delporte wrote:
> On 31 Jul 2006 07:05:27 -0700, "Ben Sizer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> Typically you run PHP as a module in your webserver, so there should be
>> no process startup overhead. mod_python provides the same sort of
>> functionality for Python, but is not as popular or widely installed as
>> the PHP Apache module.
> 
> So, if mod_python provides the same functionality, it's not the main
> reason why Python developers use application servers while PHP users
> still program with page codes in /htdocs.
> 
> Why do PHP users stick to that old way of things? Because they mostly
> use shared hosts, with no way to install their application server?

PHP has never been designed to allow writing such a thing as a web
server (some may say that PHP has never been designed at all, but this
is another troll^Mquestion). IIRC, it was initially meant to run as cgi,
then rewrote as an apache module.

And the fact is that while there's no startup overhead in PHP (at least
when deployed as a module), you still have to rebuild the whole world
(includes, app-specific conf etc) for each request. This is what
long-running application servers try to solve.

mod_python is at once lower-level and a bit more powerful than PHP. It
really exposes most of Apache's API to Python - which BTW doesn't make
it that well-suited for shared hosting... (most of the time, updating a
mod_python based app requires restarting the server).


-- 
bruno desthuilliers
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p in '[EMAIL PROTECTED]'.split('@')])"
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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Terry Reedy]

"Ben Sizer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message 
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>As for PyGame, it's
> good that development there has picked up again but I'd love to see it
> broaden its horizons beyond SDL. Maybe that is impractical, however.

By wrapping SDL and interfacing to Numeric, Pete Shinners picked a chunk 
that he could chew and maintain.  The Pygame site has recently added a 
PyGame Cookbook or the equivalent so people can more easily share small 
chunks built on pygame and comment thereupon.

tjr



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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Vincent Delporte]

On 31 Jul 2006 07:05:27 -0700, "Ben Sizer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Typically you run PHP as a module in your webserver, so there should be
>no process startup overhead. mod_python provides the same sort of
>functionality for Python, but is not as popular or widely installed as
>the PHP Apache module.

So, if mod_python provides the same functionality, it's not the main
reason why Python developers use application servers while PHP users
still program with page codes in /htdocs.

Why do PHP users stick to that old way of things? Because they mostly
use shared hosts, with no way to install their application server?
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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Ben Sizer]

Gerhard Fiedler wrote:
> On 2006-07-29 01:07:12, Tim Roberts wrote:
>
> > Vincent Delporte <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >>
> >>BTW, what is the advantage of running a CherryPy/Django server instead
> >>of the regular way of code in pages? Improved performance because the
> >>Python interpreter is already up and running?
> >
> > Exactly.  The Python interpreter can take a significant fraction of a
> > second to start.  For the typical short web request, the overhead can add
> > up.
>
> Is this start-up overhead the same thing for PHP? Or is this handled
> differently there?

Typically you run PHP as a module in your webserver, so there should be
no process startup overhead. mod_python provides the same sort of
functionality for Python, but is not as popular or widely installed as
the PHP Apache module.

-- 
Ben Sizer

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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Gerhard Fiedler]

On 2006-07-29 01:07:12, Tim Roberts wrote:

> Vincent Delporte <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>
>>BTW, what is the advantage of running a CherryPy/Django server instead
>>of the regular way of code in pages? Improved performance because the
>>Python interpreter is already up and running?
> 
> Exactly.  The Python interpreter can take a significant fraction of a
> second to start.  For the typical short web request, the overhead can add
> up.

Is this start-up overhead the same thing for PHP? Or is this handled
differently there?

Gerhard

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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Ben Sizer]

Terry Reedy wrote:
> "Ben Sizer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > PyGame was barely maintained for a year, and is based on SDL which was
> > also barely maintained for a year, and which hasn't kept up with
> > hardware advances at all.
>
> I believe there is a recent release of SDL, but which what advances I do
> not know.  Pygame is being actively worked on by more than one person.

The recent release of SDL was another minimal one, though there is an
intention to make the important changes 'soon'. As for PyGame, it's
good that development there has picked up again but I'd love to see it
broaden its horizons beyond SDL. Maybe that is impractical, however.

-- 
Ben Sizer

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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Ben Sizer]

Sybren Stuvel wrote:
> Ben Sizer enlightened us with:
> > PyGame was barely maintained for a year, and is based on SDL which
> > was also barely maintained for a year, and which hasn't kept up with
> > hardware advances at all.
>
> Still, ID Software and Epic both use SDL + OpenGL for their games. Why
> is it good for them but insufficient for you?

Because id and Epic have many millions of dollars and better developers
to throw at the problem than I do. :)  To put it another way, they have
lots of in-house middleware that is built on top of those technologies
to make them more effective. SDL and OpenGL is the bottom of the stack
for them. We mere mortals often prefer to start with something a little
higher level. :)

-- 
Ben Sizer

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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Ben Sizer]

Paul Boddie wrote:
> Ben Sizer wrote:
> >
> > Even C++ comes with OpenGL in the standard library.
>
> Which standard library?

Sorry, it was a long day, and I used entirely the wrong term here. By
that, I meant "typically shipped with each compiler". I've never had to
even install a development library to use OpenGL, whether under Win32
or Linux. It's just a typical part of the distribution.

> [Web-SIG standardisation]
> > And I always thought that WSGI was solving the wrong problem. It
> > certainly didn't go very far towards meeting the expressed goals of the
> > Web-SIG. Oh well.
> > 
>
> There are some remarks just after that message about the SIG charter
> needing to change or having become irrelevant, but in fact the need for
> standard functionality is as relevant today as ever. At a slightly
> higher level, everyone would now prefer that you buy into their total
> "full stack" solution, perhaps with the exception of the Paste
> developers whose selection of packages either suggest a problem of
> internal framework proliferation or one of a lack of coherency in
> presenting a suitable solution to the casual inquirer.

Yeah. On the server side I think there's been a sad lack of attention
to the large middle ground that lies between simple CGI scripting and
full stack solutions. In fact, I'd guess that the majority of web sites
fall into that middle ground, just perhaps not the most interesting or
financially lucrative ones. Examples might be things like the various
PHP forums, or web-based non-real-time games. These applications are
complex enough to deserve a decent implementation language such as
Python, yet simple and small enough that most users won't want to set
up dedicated hardware for the purpose. I think there's definitely scope
in the standard library to go well beyond the current cgi module and
the piecemeal offerings in other modules, without needing to provide
another integrated web stack.

-- 
Ben Sizer

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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Vincent Delporte]

On Sat, 29 Jul 2006 04:07:12 GMT, Tim Roberts <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Exactly.  The Python interpreter can take a significant fraction of a
>second to start.  For the typical short web request, the overhead can add
>up.
>
>On the other hand, unless you're handling dozens of requests per minute,
>users are unlikely to notice.
>
>You can also keep session state in memory instead of spilling to disk, and
>you can keep database sessions open.

Thanks for the explanations.
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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Tim Roberts]

Vincent Delporte <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>BTW, what is the advantage of running a CherryPy/Django server instead
>of the regular way of code in pages? Improved performance because the
>Python interpreter is already up and running?

Exactly.  The Python interpreter can take a significant fraction of a
second to start.  For the typical short web request, the overhead can add
up.

On the other hand, unless you're handling dozens of requests per minute,
users are unlikely to notice.

You can also keep session state in memory instead of spilling to disk, and
you can keep database sessions open.
-- 
- Tim Roberts, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.
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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Paul Boddie]

Ben Sizer wrote:
>
> Even C++ comes with OpenGL in the standard library.

Which standard library?

[...]

> Does PyQT play well with PyGame? And isn't it more of a windowing
> environment?

I'll have to let that question go, but I imagine the PyQt mailing list
would be able to provide some kind of answer:

http://mats.imk.fraunhofer.de/pipermail/pykde/

As for the nature of PyQt, it is a framework for developing
applications of various kinds, with the graphical user interface part
being the most interesting for most Python developers, I imagine. I
have read that the drawing and rendering support is rather powerful in
PyQt4, and I believe that various Qt-based visualisation solutions
exist.

[Web-SIG standardisation]

> This is something I wasn't incredibly happy about, as I felt it meant
> that personal egos were being saved at the expense of improving Python.

And some of the old frameworks whose APIs were so sacred have since
been replaced by a selection of new frameworks, each with their own
variation on what could easily be a common API. The original exercise
which led to the making WebStack was to investigate and document just
how each of the main frameworks differed; what I learned was that the
sacred "convenient" APIs of numerous frameworks were frequently
underdefined wrappers around parts of the cgi module that, despite
protests to the contrary, were more or less providing the same
functionality with varying amounts of subjective convenience.

(To an extent, WebStack doesn't expose certain functionality of the old
cgi module API completely, either, but with a dose of additional
motivation, I'd probably update the API to do certain things in a more
satisfactory way whilst preserving the improved semantics.)

> And I always thought that WSGI was solving the wrong problem. It
> certainly didn't go very far towards meeting the expressed goals of the
> Web-SIG. Oh well.
> 

There are some remarks just after that message about the SIG charter
needing to change or having become irrelevant, but in fact the need for
standard functionality is as relevant today as ever. At a slightly
higher level, everyone would now prefer that you buy into their total
"full stack" solution, perhaps with the exception of the Paste
developers whose selection of packages either suggest a problem of
internal framework proliferation or one of a lack of coherency in
presenting a suitable solution to the casual inquirer.

Given the amount of traffic the Web-SIG mailing list has been getting,
it's safe to say that while many would consider the job done, the
project has mostly failed in meeting its objectives.

Paul

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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Vincent Delporte]

On Fri, 28 Jul 2006 17:58:24 +0200, Bruno Desthuilliers
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Ben Sizer wrote:
>(snip)
>> Pretty much every Python web offering revolves around you having your
>> own server with the luxury of running your own long-running processes
>> on it. 

BTW, what is the advantage of running a CherryPy/Django server instead
of the regular way of code in pages? Improved performance because the
Python interpreter is already up and running?
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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Terry Reedy]

"Ben Sizer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message 
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> PyGame was barely maintained for a year, and is based on SDL which was
> also barely maintained for a year, and which hasn't kept up with
> hardware advances at all.

I believe there is a recent release of SDL, but which what advances I do 
not know.  Pygame is being actively worked on by more than one person.
tjr 



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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Ben Sizer]

Paul Boddie wrote:
> I can only profess familiarity with Pygame which still seems to do more
> or less what it always did, although I haven't kept up with the
> community, but I have recently released a simple game which seems to
> work quite well. By "simple", I mean two-dimensional playing areas,
> pre-recorded soundtracks, retro-style gameplay.

PyGame is great at what it does, which as you say, is usually
retro-style 2D games. It also provides a reasonable way of setting up a
window for input, sound mixing, etc. But its 2D technology is primitive
(eg. DirectDraw 6 on Windows if I remember correctly) and much of the
rest is not very advanced, such as limited support for controllers,
extra mouse buttons, 3D sound, etc. This is more a limitation of SDL
which got neglected in recent years.

Even C++ comes with OpenGL in the standard library. I am disappointed
that this hasn't become the case with Python. I don't even know if
PyOpenGL is compatible with the latest incarnation of NumPy or whether
you have to rebuild it all yourself. It's a bit of a mess really.

> If I were to get into OpenGL, I'd look at stuff like PyQt alongside
> other traditional bindings, mostly because such frameworks - certainly
> Qt, as far as I've seen from various reports - usually incorporate a
> lot of effort resulting from a serious amount of developer attention to
> integrating such technologies and making them work reliably in a number
> of environments.

Does PyQT play well with PyGame? And isn't it more of a windowing
environment?

> > Pretty much every Python web offering revolves around you having your
> > own server with the luxury of running your own long-running processes
> > on it. Great for business apps, not much use for the hobbyist or
> > independent site.
>
> Once upon a time I used to advocate my WebStack framework as a solution
> to this problem situation: WebStack applications run on BaseHTTPServer
> or other monolithic servers (Webware, Twisted, Zope 2, Java Servlet),
> but can also be deployed as CGI or in mod_python environments. The
> apparent response to this advocacy (which was backed up by an actual
> implementation) was that no-one needed such flexibility: an opinion
> somewhat at odds with actual practice if you consider widely-deployed
> applications such as ViewCVS/ViewVC, Trac, MoinMoin, and so on, where
> all of these have provided their own server abstractions at least until
> very recently.

Of course, if you're a developer producing your own framework - as
pretty much everybody on the Web-SIG was - then you're presumably
already aiming at the dedicated hosting space, so it's not surprising
that such flexibility is not held in high regard by those.

> I've said this a few times now, but it's worth repeating: when WSGI was
> proposed as the next great thing in Python Web standardisation (a topic
> in which no-one had any substantial interest until PHP/Ruby were
> considered ahead of Python in certain much-discussed decisions), it was
> formulated in such a way as to stay off the turf already occupied by
> the significant Python frameworks of the time.

This is something I wasn't incredibly happy about, as I felt it meant
that personal egos were being saved at the expense of improving Python.
And I always thought that WSGI was solving the wrong problem. It
certainly didn't go very far towards meeting the expressed goals of the
Web-SIG. Oh well.


-- 
Ben Sizer

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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Bruno Desthuilliers]

Ben Sizer wrote:
(snip)
> Pretty much every Python web offering revolves around you having your
> own server with the luxury of running your own long-running processes
> on it. 

This is becoming less and less of a "luxury" - the cost of dedicated web
servers is really dropping at eyesight.

-- 
bruno desthuilliers
python -c "print '@'.join(['.'.join([w[::-1] for w in p.split('.')]) for
p in '[EMAIL PROTECTED]'.split('@')])"
-- 
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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Paul Boddie]

Ben Sizer wrote:
> Paul Boddie wrote:
> > Ben Sizer wrote:
> > >
> > > In my case, multimedia and game support is patchy,
> >
> > There are lots of multimedia and game frameworks for Python. Which ones
> > have you tried and why are they insufficient?
>
> PyGame was barely maintained for a year, and is based on SDL which was
> also barely maintained for a year, and which hasn't kept up with
> hardware advances at all. On the graphical side you can opt for OpenGL,
> the Python library for which is also barely maintained (though I hear
> work is underway behind the scenes) and doesn't provide much more than
> a minimal layer over the C interface anyway. DirectX support only
> appeared this year unless you used IronPython, and it doesn't seem very
> popular.

I can only profess familiarity with Pygame which still seems to do more
or less what it always did, although I haven't kept up with the
community, but I have recently released a simple game which seems to
work quite well. By "simple", I mean two-dimensional playing areas,
pre-recorded soundtracks, retro-style gameplay.

If I were to get into OpenGL, I'd look at stuff like PyQt alongside
other traditional bindings, mostly because such frameworks - certainly
Qt, as far as I've seen from various reports - usually incorporate a
lot of effort resulting from a serious amount of developer attention to
integrating such technologies and making them work reliably in a number
of environments.

> Which other frameworks are you thinking of? I know of a variety of
> wrappers around individual libraries, and of wrappers around 3D engines
> such as Irrlicht and Ogre, but not much else.

If I were to consider other three-dimensional rendering technologies,
I'd probably look at things like Soya 3D, Panda3D and whatever other
people have dug up:

http://www.vrplumber.com/py3d.py

You also mentioned multimedia frameworks, and this is probably another
area where there are so many projects that it's hard to pick the good
ones.

> > Certainly, some Web frameworks have some element of Java flavouring,
> > but there's also considerable diversity at least at certain levels.
>
> Pretty much every Python web offering revolves around you having your
> own server with the luxury of running your own long-running processes
> on it. Great for business apps, not much use for the hobbyist or
> independent site.

Once upon a time I used to advocate my WebStack framework as a solution
to this problem situation: WebStack applications run on BaseHTTPServer
or other monolithic servers (Webware, Twisted, Zope 2, Java Servlet),
but can also be deployed as CGI or in mod_python environments. The
apparent response to this advocacy (which was backed up by an actual
implementation) was that no-one needed such flexibility: an opinion
somewhat at odds with actual practice if you consider widely-deployed
applications such as ViewCVS/ViewVC, Trac, MoinMoin, and so on, where
all of these have provided their own server abstractions at least until
very recently.

Since that time, WSGI has emerged as an interoperability technology,
but the fundamental platform fragmentation issues remain, as everyone
attempts to show how easy it is to write "WSGI middleware". Moreover,
the server abstractions required by widely-deployed applications are
still necessary, and it is in precisely this area that framework
proliferation has occurred.

> There are probably some hosts that will provide
> shared hosting for your Django or Turbogears app, but they are not
> exactly numerous. The barrier to entry here is much higher than with
> PHP or ASP, for example.

I think the attitude has been that if you're not willing to lay out the
bucks (albeit not quite as much as it used to be now that virtual
private servers are becoming commonplace), the big players in the
frameworks scene aren't willing to pay you much attention. But as
applications like ViewCVS show, many people appreciate Web application
deployment on low-end hosting, and that not all Web applications are
part of some big Web 2.0 rollout.

> And even with the full framework approach, the
> field has been so fragmented until recently that in terms of community
> support, you'd be better off opting for another language. I appreciate
> there's a diversity vs. standardisation argument there which may never
> be settled, so I accept this is just a personal opinion, but I do think
> a critical mass of users is important with any technology.

I've said this a few times now, but it's worth repeating: when WSGI was
proposed as the next great thing in Python Web standardisation (a topic
in which no-one had any substantial interest until PHP/Ruby were
considered ahead of Python in certain much-discussed decisions), it was
formulated in such a way as to stay off the turf already occupied by
the significant Python frameworks of the time. The consequence of that
decision has been a slight, one centimetre upward movement of the
Python Web scene's "healthy competition" in the entire "

Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Ray]

Ben Sizer wrote:
> a minimal layer over the C interface anyway. DirectX support only
> appeared this year unless you used IronPython, and it doesn't seem very
> popular.

IronPython is not released yet, I do hope it will become popular
though. It's in RC1 now and should be released soon. I'm really looking
forward to it!

> > Certainly, some Web frameworks have some element of Java flavouring,
> > but there's also considerable diversity at least at certain levels.
>
> Pretty much every Python web offering revolves around you having your
> own server with the luxury of running your own long-running processes
> on it. Great for business apps, not much use for the hobbyist or
> independent site. There are probably some hosts that will provide
> shared hosting for your Django or Turbogears app, but they are not
> exactly numerous. The barrier to entry here is much higher than with
> PHP or ASP, for example. And even with the full framework approach, the
> field has been so fragmented until recently that in terms of community
> support, you'd be better off opting for another language. I appreciate
> there's a diversity vs. standardisation argument there which may never
> be settled, so I accept this is just a personal opinion, but I do think
> a critical mass of users is important with any technology.

Diversity can be a pain in the ass sometimes. Instead of ending up with
something really good you end up with a lot of mediocre stuff (Note:
I'm not saying anything about Django or Turbogears here, mind!).
Reminds me of the time when I was installing Linux for the first time
and finding out that there were tons of text editor included in the
distro. I only need vi so that wasn't a problem, but I could imagine
someone from a strictly Windows world would wish that there was only
one text editor :)

> I'm in a similar situation to the original poster; I'd like to use
> Turbogears for an app I want to write, but will probably end up doing
> it in PHP instead, because I can't get dedicated hardware or a local
> host for Turbogears. (Never mind the lack of documentation.)

Yep. And my case now is pretty much shot with no Oracle/SQL Server
support.

> > Otherwise, no amount of complaining will put the
> > two technologies together.
>
> It's a fair point, but on the other hand, saying "if you want it doing,
> do it yourself" doesn't objectively improve the status quo. If
> something doesn't exist, it doesn't exist, and it's valid to comment
> upon that fact.

Couldn't agree more. A lot of would-be users, upon being told that,
would simply turn to another framework/language/platform/whatever that
does provide the feature in question. This is especially true for
companies with fast moving projects like the one I'm working for at the
moment.

Of course, then we can always say, "sur, go ahead, your loss blah
blah blah" Well maybe. But how does it help ourselves really?

> 
> -- 
> Ben Sizer

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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Ray]

Ben Sizer wrote:
> Roman Susi wrote:
> > Ben Sizer wrote:
> > > The problem is that Python is the 2nd best language for everything. ;)
> >
> > Is it a bad thing?
>
> I don't know. I suppose that depends on how you define 'bad'! For me,
> it is often inconvenient, because I'd prefer to use Python but
> generally find that I have to choose something else if I want to do the
> best possible for any particular project.

Exactly. It's bad because Python is the language you'd love to use at
work but can't :) Don't tell me to look for a job in a Python shop,
there's none. OTOH, there IS at least one RoR shop that I know of and
they're doing pretty well!

> In my case, multimedia and game support is patchy, and web development
> support is still oriented towards the Java/enterprise user - if CGI
> doesn't suffice, that is. In the original poster's case, it's seemingly
> because specific database support seems to be lacking. Improving the
> libraries in these areas would hopefully increase the diversity of
> Python's potential applications rather than diminish it.

Yep, (support in Django, specifically, not Python).

> 
> -- 
> Ben Sizer

-- 
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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Ben Sizer]

Paul Boddie wrote:
> Ben Sizer wrote:
> >
> > In my case, multimedia and game support is patchy,
>
> There are lots of multimedia and game frameworks for Python. Which ones
> have you tried and why are they insufficient?

PyGame was barely maintained for a year, and is based on SDL which was
also barely maintained for a year, and which hasn't kept up with
hardware advances at all. On the graphical side you can opt for OpenGL,
the Python library for which is also barely maintained (though I hear
work is underway behind the scenes) and doesn't provide much more than
a minimal layer over the C interface anyway. DirectX support only
appeared this year unless you used IronPython, and it doesn't seem very
popular.

Which other frameworks are you thinking of? I know of a variety of
wrappers around individual libraries, and of wrappers around 3D engines
such as Irrlicht and Ogre, but not much else.

> Certainly, some Web frameworks have some element of Java flavouring,
> but there's also considerable diversity at least at certain levels.

Pretty much every Python web offering revolves around you having your
own server with the luxury of running your own long-running processes
on it. Great for business apps, not much use for the hobbyist or
independent site. There are probably some hosts that will provide
shared hosting for your Django or Turbogears app, but they are not
exactly numerous. The barrier to entry here is much higher than with
PHP or ASP, for example. And even with the full framework approach, the
field has been so fragmented until recently that in terms of community
support, you'd be better off opting for another language. I appreciate
there's a diversity vs. standardisation argument there which may never
be settled, so I accept this is just a personal opinion, but I do think
a critical mass of users is important with any technology.

I'm in a similar situation to the original poster; I'd like to use
Turbogears for an app I want to write, but will probably end up doing
it in PHP instead, because I can't get dedicated hardware or a local
host for Turbogears. (Never mind the lack of documentation.)

> Otherwise, no amount of complaining will put the
> two technologies together.

It's a fair point, but on the other hand, saying "if you want it doing,
do it yourself" doesn't objectively improve the status quo. If
something doesn't exist, it doesn't exist, and it's valid to comment
upon that fact.

-- 
Ben Sizer

-- 
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Paul Boddie]

Ben Sizer wrote:
>
> In my case, multimedia and game support is patchy,

There are lots of multimedia and game frameworks for Python. Which ones
have you tried and why are they insufficient?

> and web development support is still oriented towards the Java/enterprise 
> user - if CGI
> doesn't suffice, that is.

Certainly, some Web frameworks have some element of Java flavouring,
but there's also considerable diversity at least at certain levels.

> In the original poster's case, it's seemingly because specific database 
> support seems to
> be lacking. Improving the libraries in these areas would hopefully increase 
> the diversity
> of Python's potential applications rather than diminish it.

Last time I checked, which was admittedly a long time after I actually
needed the modules concerned, support for Oracle with Python was
actually pretty good. I suppose it's a case of the Django people
getting round to gluing the Oracle modules to their object-relational
mapper and making sure that it all still works, and perhaps some
motivated member of the Django community can step forward and do the
work to get it going. Otherwise, no amount of complaining will put the
two technologies together.

Paul

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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Ben Sizer]

Roman Susi wrote:
> Ben Sizer wrote:
> > The problem is that Python is the 2nd best language for everything. ;)
>
> Is it a bad thing?

I don't know. I suppose that depends on how you define 'bad'! For me,
it is often inconvenient, because I'd prefer to use Python but
generally find that I have to choose something else if I want to do the
best possible for any particular project.

In my case, multimedia and game support is patchy, and web development
support is still oriented towards the Java/enterprise user - if CGI
doesn't suffice, that is. In the original poster's case, it's seemingly
because specific database support seems to be lacking. Improving the
libraries in these areas would hopefully increase the diversity of
Python's potential applications rather than diminish it.

-- 
Ben Sizer

-- 
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Roman Susi]

Ben Sizer wrote:
> Ray wrote:
> 
>>Just that it's a big, huge, humongous pity to see Python keeps missing
>>the big thing over and over again. Last time when biotechnology was
>>hot, which language became The Language? Perl. Now simple web app is
>>hot? It's Ruby.
> 
> 
> The problem is that Python is the 2nd best language for everything. ;)
> As a general purpose language I don't think it can be beaten, but for
> almost any given project of non-trivial size, there seems to always be
> one language that has better support for the subject. I frequently find
> myself wanting to use Python but being unable to, often due to some
> library being unavailable, as in your case.
> 

Is it a bad thing? In my opinion it is better to be 2nd place for a long
time than get to the top and fall short after that. Because then Python
will be associated with certain thing (like Ruby with Rails, Java with
Beans, C with two pluses, Fortran with 77 ;-)

Its healthy for a Pythons to live in many different ecosystems.

Regards,
Roman
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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[gregarican]

Bruno Desthuilliers wrote:
> Please define "security". I fail to see how language-inforced access
> restriction (and mandatory declarative static typing etc) relates to
> 'security'. As far as I'm concerned, security is about protecting a
> system from piracy, not about inflicting useless pain to programmers.

I must agree here. When I am coding I appreciate ease of referencing
things above and beyond a language tying my hands behind my back
supposedly in the name of security. If I am savvy enough and know what
I am doing I can create classes, methods, etc. that implement an
effective security model in terms of encapsulation and hiding. But
there are times that I am creating something that I don't want boxed in
by the language enforcing all of this for me. It's like when people
dismiss PHP as a supposedly insecure language. It's more a problem of
too many newly initiated PHP developers not using techniques they
should be to create secure applications.

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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Bruno Desthuilliers]

Kay Schluehr wrote:
> Bruno Desthuilliers wrote:
> 
> 
Care to write an external DSL in Ruby ?
>>
>>I mean : write a parser and interpreter for a DSL. In Ruby.
> 
> 
> It is this kind of stuff Rubys talk about when they mention "DSLs in
> Ruby":
> 
> http://www.artima.com/rubycs/articles/ruby_as_dsl.html
> 
yes, I know - embedded DSLs.

FWIW, after a *quick* glance at this article, I haven't seen anything
that seemed undoable nor even difficult to do in Python - it all boils
down to reading an ini-like file and creating a stub source-tree from it.

-- 
bruno desthuilliers
python -c "print '@'.join(['.'.join([w[::-1] for w in p.split('.')]) for
p in '[EMAIL PROTECTED]'.split('@')])"
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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Kay Schluehr]

Bruno Desthuilliers wrote:

> >>Care to write an external DSL in Ruby ?
>
> I mean : write a parser and interpreter for a DSL. In Ruby.

It is this kind of stuff Rubys talk about when they mention "DSLs in
Ruby":

http://www.artima.com/rubycs/articles/ruby_as_dsl.html

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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Kay Schluehr]

Jaroslaw Zabiello wrote:

> Of course, I you like, you can freeze every object you want and nobody can
> be able to open and change it. You can also trace all activity for changing
> something to objects because Ruby has nice system hooks implemented. Ruby
> has nice security system (private, protected, public scopes for methods and
> attributes, objects freezing, system hooks).

Sounds good. I guess unlike Java you can't inspect and modify all those
data using reflection in Ruby?

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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Bruno Desthuilliers]

Jaroslaw Zabiello wrote:
> On Wed, 26 Jul 2006 18:23:22 +0200, Bruno Desthuilliers wrote:
> 
> 
Care to write an external DSL in Ruby ?
>>>
>>>?
>>
>>I mean : write a parser and interpreter for a DSL. In Ruby.
> 
> 
> I see. Nope. I do not like code generators. 

I'm not talking about "code generators", I'm talking about implementing
a language with another language.

> In this sense every template
> system is DSL.

Indeed.

> E.g. Smarty Templates for PHP. You can create "external DSL"
> even in C or assembler.

Indeed.

> This is not the point. The point is Ruby is much
> better suited to create internal DSL than Python

Care to back your claim ? Or are you just parroting what you read from
some clueless guy more concerned with hype and buzz than with reality ?

> or PHP.

Please compare what is comparable.

-- 
bruno desthuilliers
python -c "print '@'.join(['.'.join([w[::-1] for w in p.split('.')]) for
p in '[EMAIL PROTECTED]'.split('@')])"
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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Bruno Desthuilliers]

Jaroslaw Zabiello wrote:
> On Wed, 26 Jul 2006 18:20:44 +0200, Bruno Desthuilliers wrote:
> 
> 
>>May I suggest that you learn some Lisp dialect ?
> 
> 
> Nope. I hate Lisp syntax. 

This should not prevent you from learning it - at least, you'd then
avoid making dumb statements...

> 
>>>Of course, I you like, you can freeze every object you want and nobody can
>>>be able to open and change it. You can also trace all activity for changing
>>>something to objects because Ruby has nice system hooks implemented.
>>
>>__getattribute__ / __setattr__ / __delattr__
> 
> 
> This is not the same. Ruby can also lock access to attributes.

Please re-read the doc for these methods.

> Freezing is
> different. It can freeze any object so you will not be able to add or
> delete any method. Once freezed object cannot be unfrozen. So you can be
> sure that nobody will change you classes if you do not like.
>  
> 
>>And of course import hooks.
> 
> 
> Python?? Where?

RTFM:
http://www.python.org/doc/2.3.5/lib/built-in-funcs.html

What about learning Python instead of repeating arguments from clueless
people ?

> 
>>>Ruby
>>>has nice security system (private, protected, public scopes for methods and
>>>attributes,
>>
>>This is not "security", this is data-hiding. 
> 
> 
> No. Data hiding are in Python.

Oh, yes ? Where, exactly ?

> Ruby uses security similiar to Java. If the
> class has method marked as private it cannot be used in children classes. 

Python methods are attributes, so from a Python POV, this is still
data-hiding. But granted, I should have used "language-inforced access
restriction" instead. So let me rephrase:

This is not "security", this is language-inforced access restriction.

>>And IIRC, Ruby's attributes are always private
> 
> 
> Yes and no. Yes, because you cannot read them directly without accessors.
> And no, because you can read them if you set proper accessor.

Adding accessors doesn't make the attributes public.

> 
>>>In past Python had Bastion module 
>>>(http://www.python.org/doc/lib/module-Bastion.html) 
>>>but it was rejected and now Python has nothing.
>>
>>Seems like Zope is not doing so bad...
>  
> Zope is only a great application. 

Zope is a framework and an application server.

> Invision Power Board or ezPublish are
> also great application, but it does not mean that PHP is great language. :)

You can't say that Python is dumb when it comes to security and reject
an example of a Python framework that address the problem.

> Python has no security at all. I has only convention and mangling.

Please define "security". I fail to see how language-inforced access
restriction (and mandatory declarative static typing etc) relates to
'security'. As far as I'm concerned, security is about protecting a
system from piracy, not about inflicting useless pain to programmers.

> Of
> course somebode can say, it is enough, and maybe it is. But I think, that
> this might be another reason why Java guys prefer Ruby to Python.

Agreed - but this all boil down to Ruby having a more canonical object
model than Python.

-- 
bruno desthuilliers
python -c "print '@'.join(['.'.join([w[::-1] for w in p.split('.')]) for
p in '[EMAIL PROTECTED]'.split('@')])"
-- 
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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Ray]

Jaroslaw Zabiello wrote:
> >> Ruby
> >> has nice security system (private, protected, public scopes for methods and
> >> attributes,
> >
> > This is not "security", this is data-hiding.
>
> No. Data hiding are in Python. Ruby uses security similiar to Java. If the
> class has method marked as private it cannot be used in children classes.

Why are you calling this "security"? The enforcement of "private" is
not "security" in Java by a long shot. Trust me I know, been doing Java
since near its inception. By your definition of "security" C++ has
"security" too. But no, Java (real) security is very different from C++
and Ruby enforcement of private. It's a much bigger subject in its own
right.

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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[John J. Lee]

Jaroslaw Zabiello <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> On Mon, 24 Jul 2006 14:23:21 +0200, Sybren Stuvel wrote:
> 
> > Another reason for me not to use Ruby, is that there is no distinction
> > between those two lines of code:
> > 
> > x = somefunc
> > x = somefunc()
> 
> It has no meaning. Just use always () if you like. But sometimes it is
[...]

Well... has no meaning *in Ruby*, yes.  You're begging the question!

(The implied question being "*Should* it have meaning?")

There is a reasonable argument for assigning different meanings to foo
and foo(), as I'm sure you know: regardless of syntax, there is a
distinction to be made between calling a function and referring to it
(e.g. to keep a reference to the function for later use as a
callback).  I guess Ruby uses code blocks for that purpose?  Seems
there are swings and roundabouts.

http://blog.ianbicking.org/ruby-python-power.html#ruby-blocks


John
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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Paul Boddie]

Jaroslaw Zabiello wrote:
> On Wed, 26 Jul 2006 18:20:44 +0200, Bruno Desthuilliers wrote:

[Quoting JZ...]

> >> Ruby
> >> has nice security system (private, protected, public scopes for methods and
> >> attributes,
> >
> > This is not "security", this is data-hiding.
>
> No. Data hiding are in Python. Ruby uses security similiar to Java. If the
> class has method marked as private it cannot be used in children classes.

Can you please stop using the term security in a vague way whilst
pointing the finger at Java? Sure, Python doesn't really have the
"security" you refer to, apart from elementary protection using
name-mangling (which is mostly good enough) for double-underscore
attributes, but mentioning "Java" and "security" in the same sentence
whilst only really referring to private/protected/public/final is
misleading: Java has an entire spectrum of security features that are
found neither in Python nor Ruby.

[...]

> Python has no security at all. I has only convention and mangling. Of
> course somebode can say, it is enough, and maybe it is. But I think, that
> this might be another reason why Java guys prefer Ruby to Python.

Whatever "no security" means, and I ask you to choose your terminology
more carefully, both Ruby and Python have some way to go before
supporting most of Java's more useful security features. Certainly, the
Java guys can't be flocking to Ruby specifically because it lacks
bytecode verification and a fairly mature sandboxing mechanism.

Paul

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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[John J. Lee]

Joe Knapka <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> John J. Lee wrote:
> 
> > The fact that "open classes" are apparently thought to be a good thing
> > in Ruby puzzles (and worries) me.
> 
> This objection strikes me as having the same
> nature as, "Python's lack of strong protection for
> class members puzzles (and worries) me".

No, it doesn't.

I didn't express myself clearly enough.


> The Pythonic
> answer to that objection is usually that this is a
> feature: it lets people who know what they're doing
> solve problems more easily than if they had to work
> around a bunch of "helpful" protection.

Yes.  Simplifying a bit: It is not considered a good thing to take
advantage of that.  Rather, it is considered a good thing *to be able*
to take advantage of it.

In stark contrast, I'm told that some Ruby users claim that open
classes are a good thing for everyday cases, rather than as a last
resort with serious costs.  Even for builtin types!!  I don't know if
that's true, it's just what I've heard.  Hmm, googled a bit and found
this:

http://www.artima.com/forums/flat.jsp?forum=123&thread=120400


That single datapoint seems to support what I've heard!


> Classes are effectively open in Python, too, at least
[...]

Quite.


John
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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Jaroslaw Zabiello]

On Wed, 26 Jul 2006 18:23:22 +0200, Bruno Desthuilliers wrote:

>>>Care to write an external DSL in Ruby ?
>> ?
> 
> I mean : write a parser and interpreter for a DSL. In Ruby.

I see. Nope. I do not like code generators. In this sense every template
system is DSL. E.g. Smarty Templates for PHP. You can create "external DSL"
even in C or assembler. This is not the point. The point is Ruby is much
better suited to create internal DSL than Python or PHP.

-- 
Jarosław Zabiełło
http://blog.zabiello.com
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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Jaroslaw Zabiello]

On Wed, 26 Jul 2006 18:20:44 +0200, Bruno Desthuilliers wrote:

> May I suggest that you learn some Lisp dialect ?

Nope. I hate Lisp syntax. 

>> Of course, I you like, you can freeze every object you want and nobody can
>> be able to open and change it. You can also trace all activity for changing
>> something to objects because Ruby has nice system hooks implemented.
> 
> __getattribute__ / __setattr__ / __delattr__

This is not the same. Ruby can also lock access to attributes. Freezing is
different. It can freeze any object so you will not be able to add or
delete any method. Once freezed object cannot be unfrozen. So you can be
sure that nobody will change you classes if you do not like.
 
> And of course import hooks.

Python?? Where?

>> Ruby
>> has nice security system (private, protected, public scopes for methods and
>> attributes,
> 
> This is not "security", this is data-hiding. 

No. Data hiding are in Python. Ruby uses security similiar to Java. If the
class has method marked as private it cannot be used in children classes. 

> And IIRC, Ruby's attributes are always private

Yes and no. Yes, because you cannot read them directly without accessors.
And no, because you can read them if you set proper accessor.

>> In past Python had Bastion module 
>> (http://www.python.org/doc/lib/module-Bastion.html) 
>> but it was rejected and now Python has nothing.
> 
> Seems like Zope is not doing so bad...

Zope is only a great application. Invision Power Board or ezPublish are
also great application, but it does not mean that PHP is great language. :)

Python has no security at all. I has only convention and mangling. Of
course somebode can say, it is enough, and maybe it is. But I think, that
this might be another reason why Java guys prefer Ruby to Python.

-- 
Jaroslaw Zabiello
http://blog.zabiello.com
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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Kay Schluehr]

Ray wrote:

> > But you can't compile a Python module into a dotNet library that is
> > used from C# which is the very essence of the CLR. IronPython is not
> > more usefull than PythonNet.
>
> At least for my case I will use IronPython for higher level task, and
> perhaps calls libraries written in C# instead of the other way around,
> plus you can leave your module as scripts anyway. If what you want from
> C# is accessing Python's power then you can always host the IronPython
> engine can't you?

Yes, it is a two-way scripting. But then you can also access the
CPython interpreter as a dll. Another promising approach is that of a
CLR backend for PyPy but it compiles only RPython directly and one
needs a separate interpreter for anything more advanced in Python.

O.K. Let me do a constructive suggestion here. In order to demonstrate
the usefullness of the Python + .NET bridge why not writing a nice
little application? I've once written a Python console using
CPython+Scintilla+PythonNet. It is still buggy but feature complete (
at least I implemented all requirements I had to make ). One can
replace PythonNet using IronPython and embedd the console in a little
IronPython application.

If you are interested in this stuff I would start reanimating my code.
You can mail me at [EMAIL PROTECTED]

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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Paul Rubin]

Bruno Desthuilliers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Hopefully it's more secure than Java wrt/ attributes/methods access
> restriction. IIRC, accessing a 'private' attribute thru reflection is
> quite possible in Java.

That's controlled by some flag you can set.  Browser applet sandboxes
depend on the security and set the flag.
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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Bruno Desthuilliers]

Paul Rubin wrote:
> Bruno Desthuilliers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> 
>>>Ruby has nice security system (private, protected, public scopes
>>>for methods and attributes,
>>
>>This is not "security", this is data-hiding. And IIRC, Ruby's attributes
>>are always private - just like in Smalltalk FWIW.
> 
> 
> I don't know anything about Ruby, but if it's supposed to be like
> Java, then it's real security. 

Hopefully it's more secure than Java wrt/ attributes/methods access
restriction. IIRC, accessing a 'private' attribute thru reflection is
quite possible in Java.

> I'm not sure why a typical server side
> app would care, though.

Noticed this too ?-)

-- 
bruno desthuilliers
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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Paul Rubin]

Bruno Desthuilliers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> > Ruby has nice security system (private, protected, public scopes
> > for methods and attributes,
> 
> This is not "security", this is data-hiding. And IIRC, Ruby's attributes
> are always private - just like in Smalltalk FWIW.

I don't know anything about Ruby, but if it's supposed to be like
Java, then it's real security.  I'm not sure why a typical server side
app would care, though.
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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Bruno Desthuilliers]

Jaroslaw Zabiello wrote:
> On Wed, 26 Jul 2006 18:01:50 +0200, Bruno Desthuilliers wrote:
> 
> 
I have difficulty imagining how a language could be more dynamic than
Python...
>>>
>>>E.g. try to extends or redefine builtin Python classes on fly.
>>
>>Ok, this is one of the few restrictions - builtin types. Yeah. Have
>>something more convincing ?
> 
> 
> Nope. Python has similiar dynamic. Or.. maybe real closures.
>
> 
>>Care to write an external DSL in Ruby ?
> 
> 
> ?

I mean : write a parser and interpreter for a DSL. In Ruby.

-- 
bruno desthuilliers
python -c "print '@'.join(['.'.join([w[::-1] for w in p.split('.')]) for
p in '[EMAIL PROTECTED]'.split('@')])"
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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Bruno Desthuilliers]

Jaroslaw Zabiello wrote:
> On 26 Jul 2006 08:16:21 -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> 
> 
>>>E.g. try to extends or redefine builtin Python classes on fly. Ruby is so
>>>flexible that it can be used to create Domain-specific Programming
>>>Languages.
>>
>>This, of course, is really cool if you are working
>>all by yourself on a dissertation or something,
>>but can be completely disasterous if you are
>>actually working with other people who need to
>>know what the expressions of the programming
>>language mean and do. 
> 
> 
> This should not be problem in real life. Look at Ruby on Rails. This is
> excellent example of DSL in action.

As Ben Bangert notices, if Rail's a DSL, then so are a lot of Python
frameworks and librairies:
http://www.groovie.org/articles/2005/12/08/is-rails-a-dsl-what-is-a-dsl-and-is-it-possible-in-python


> Rails uses customized Ruby to create
> very friendly web framework. So there is no possible to create such simple
> and friendly framework in other language than Ruby (and Smalltalk which has
> the same feature)

May I suggest that you learn some Lisp dialect ?

> Of course, I you like, you can freeze every object you want and nobody can
> be able to open and change it. You can also trace all activity for changing
> something to objects because Ruby has nice system hooks implemented.

__getattribute__ / __setattr__ / __delattr__

And of course import hooks.

> Ruby
> has nice security system (private, protected, public scopes for methods and
> attributes,

This is not "security", this is data-hiding. And IIRC, Ruby's attributes
are always private - just like in Smalltalk FWIW.

> objects freezing, system hooks). In past Python had Bastion
> module (http://www.python.org/doc/lib/module-Bastion.html) but it was
> rejected and now Python has nothing.

Seems like Zope is not doing so bad...

> Java guys can favor Ruby also because
> of its security.

s/security/orthodox object model/ IMHO.

Jaroslaw, don't take me wrong, I really think that Ruby is a really nice
language (while not as mature as Python when it comes to implementation
and libraries). But I'm afraid that all your arguments here are nothing
more than the usual Ruby/Rails hype.

-- 
bruno desthuilliers
python -c "print '@'.join(['.'.join([w[::-1] for w in p.split('.')]) for
p in '[EMAIL PROTECTED]'.split('@')])"
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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Jaroslaw Zabiello]

On Wed, 26 Jul 2006 18:01:50 +0200, Bruno Desthuilliers wrote:

>>>I have difficulty imagining how a language could be more dynamic than
>>>Python...
>> 
>> E.g. try to extends or redefine builtin Python classes on fly.
> 
> Ok, this is one of the few restrictions - builtin types. Yeah. Have
> something more convincing ?

Nope. Python has similiar dynamic. Or.. maybe real closures.

> Care to write an external DSL in Ruby ?

?

-- 
Jarosław Zabiełło
http://blog.zabiello.com
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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Bruno Desthuilliers]

Jaroslaw Zabiello wrote:
> On Wed, 26 Jul 2006 16:25:48 +0200, Bruno Desthuilliers wrote:
> 
> 
>>I have difficulty imagining how a language could be more dynamic than
>>Python...
> 
> 
> E.g. try to extends or redefine builtin Python classes on fly.

Ok, this is one of the few restrictions - builtin types. Yeah. Have
something more convincing ?

> Ruby is so
> flexible that it can be used to create Domain-specific Programming
> Languages.

Yes, Ruby is not bad at *embedded* DSLs. Nor are Lisp and Python and
Smalltalk and a few others too. Now embedded DSLs all have the same
limitation: they are just a specialisation of an existing
general-purpose language - so you have to deal with the host language's
syntax. Care to write an external DSL in Ruby ?


-- 
bruno desthuilliers
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p in '[EMAIL PROTECTED]'.split('@')])"
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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Ben Sizer]

Ray wrote:
> Just that it's a big, huge, humongous pity to see Python keeps missing
> the big thing over and over again. Last time when biotechnology was
> hot, which language became The Language? Perl. Now simple web app is
> hot? It's Ruby.

The problem is that Python is the 2nd best language for everything. ;)
As a general purpose language I don't think it can be beaten, but for
almost any given project of non-trivial size, there seems to always be
one language that has better support for the subject. I frequently find
myself wanting to use Python but being unable to, often due to some
library being unavailable, as in your case.

-- 
Ben Sizer

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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Jaroslaw Zabiello]

On 26 Jul 2006 08:16:21 -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

>> E.g. try to extends or redefine builtin Python classes on fly. Ruby is so
>> flexible that it can be used to create Domain-specific Programming
>> Languages.
> 
> This, of course, is really cool if you are working
> all by yourself on a dissertation or something,
> but can be completely disasterous if you are
> actually working with other people who need to
> know what the expressions of the programming
> language mean and do. 

This should not be problem in real life. Look at Ruby on Rails. This is
excellent example of DSL in action. Rails uses customized Ruby to create
very friendly web framework. So there is no possible to create such simple
and friendly framework in other language than Ruby (and Smalltalk which has
the same feature)

Of course, I you like, you can freeze every object you want and nobody can
be able to open and change it. You can also trace all activity for changing
something to objects because Ruby has nice system hooks implemented. Ruby
has nice security system (private, protected, public scopes for methods and
attributes, objects freezing, system hooks). In past Python had Bastion
module (http://www.python.org/doc/lib/module-Bastion.html) but it was
rejected and now Python has nothing. Java guys can favor Ruby also because
of its security.

-- 
Jarosław Zabiełło
http://blog.zabiello.com
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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Jean-Paul Calderone]

On 26 Jul 2006 08:16:21 -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
>Jaroslaw Zabiello wrote:
>> On Wed, 26 Jul 2006 16:25:48 +0200, Bruno Desthuilliers wrote:
>>
>> > I have difficulty imagining how a language could be more dynamic than
>> > Python...
>>
>> E.g. try to extends or redefine builtin Python classes on fly. Ruby is so
>> flexible that it can be used to create Domain-specific Programming
>> Languages.
>
>This, of course, is really cool if you are working
>all by yourself on a dissertation or something,
>but can be completely disasterous if you are
>actually working with other people who need to
>know what the expressions of the programming
>language mean and do.  Back in the day every
>good Common Lisp programmer wrote in a
>dialect completely incomprehensible to any other
>Common Lisp programmer.  Kinda fun, but not
>"best practice."
>   -- Aaron Watters
>

I think this is exactly correct.  However, note that Python does not
necessarily really have this limitation.  _CPython_ may prevent you
from changing the behavior of builtins, but that doesn't mean all
Python implementations do (in fact, even CPython used to let you add,
remove, or change the implementation of methods on builtin types).

For example:

[EMAIL PROTECTED]:~/Projects/pypy/trunk$ pypy/bin/py.py 
PyPy 0.9.0 in StdObjSpace on top of Python 2.4.3 (startuptime: 1.83 secs)
 list.append = lambda self, value: 'hello, world'
 x = []
 x.append(10)
'hello, world'
 x
[]
 

As alternate implementations become more widely used, it will be important
to nail down exactly which behaviors are implementation details and which
are language features.  Right now the line is pretty fuzzy in many cases.

Jean-Paul
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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[aaronwmail-usenet]

Jaroslaw Zabiello wrote:
> On Wed, 26 Jul 2006 16:25:48 +0200, Bruno Desthuilliers wrote:
>
> > I have difficulty imagining how a language could be more dynamic than
> > Python...
>
> E.g. try to extends or redefine builtin Python classes on fly. Ruby is so
> flexible that it can be used to create Domain-specific Programming
> Languages.

This, of course, is really cool if you are working
all by yourself on a dissertation or something,
but can be completely disasterous if you are
actually working with other people who need to
know what the expressions of the programming
language mean and do.  Back in the day every
good Common Lisp programmer wrote in a
dialect completely incomprehensible to any other
Common Lisp programmer.  Kinda fun, but not
"best practice."
   -- Aaron Watters

===

Writing about music is like
dancing about architecture.
   -- Elvis Costello

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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Jaroslaw Zabiello]

On Wed, 26 Jul 2006 16:25:48 +0200, Bruno Desthuilliers wrote:

> I have difficulty imagining how a language could be more dynamic than
> Python...

E.g. try to extends or redefine builtin Python classes on fly. Ruby is so
flexible that it can be used to create Domain-specific Programming
Languages.

-- 
Jarosław Zabiełło
http://blog.zabiello.com
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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[gregarican]

Ray wrote:
>
> The lack of support for Oracle and SQL Server by Django is also a
> killer that'll prevent Django from being picked up by a LOT of
> companies (sadly, including mine :( ).
>

Uh, yeah. I was aware of Django but haven't had the time to delve into
it. If it doesn't support these larger scale database server types that
would indeed throw a red flag up in certain environments. What all
types doesn't it support? MySQL, PgSQL, SQL Lite, Pervasive SQL? I
know. I haven't made Google my friend and haven't STFW :-/

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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Bruno Desthuilliers]

Jaroslaw Zabiello wrote:
(snip)

> Ruby is more dynamic than Python

Care to elaborate ? I played a bit with Ruby and failed to come to the
same conclusion... (the two main differences I noticed are 1/ Ruby is
expression-based and 2/ it has a more canonical object model - IOW, it
mostly cloned Smalltalk's one)

FWIW, Lisp-like macro-system apart, I have difficulty imagining how a
language could be more dynamic than Python...


-- 
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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Jonathan Ellis]

Jaroslaw Zabiello wrote:
> On Mon, 24 Jul 2006 12:23:12 +0100, Steve Holden wrote:
>
>
> > The impression I get is that Rails is relatively inflexible
> > on database schemas,
>
> Django has the same problem. E.g. both Django ORM and ActiveRecord cannot
> work with complex primary keys. But for Rails there is a solution for even
> very strange created databases: rBatis
> (http://jutopia.tirsen.com/articles/tag/rbatis) it is Ruby port of java
> Ibatis (http://ibatis.apache.org/)

The only commits to the rBatis svn repository happened on May 20.
Looks like it's going nowhere fast to me.

-Jonathan

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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Jaroslaw Zabiello]

On Mon, 24 Jul 2006 14:23:21 +0200, Sybren Stuvel wrote:

> Another reason for me not to use Ruby, is that there is no distinction
> between those two lines of code:
> 
> x = somefunc
> x = somefunc()

It has no meaning. Just use always () if you like. But sometimes it is
better to avoid them to have more beautifull code. E.g.

class Article < Activerecord::Base
  belongs_to: author
  has_many: comments
end

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http://blog.zabiello.com
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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Jaroslaw Zabiello]

On Mon, 24 Jul 2006 13:22:33 +0200, Sybren Stuvel wrote:

>> "Nah, we're not interested in Python."
> 
> Ask them why.

I know why. In general Java guys can recognize Ruby as more friendly
language than Python, more secured (there is almost no security in Python).
There is also much more hype about Ruby on java blogs. 

> The behaviour of Ruby hasn't even properly been defined.

No. Ruby uses different paradigm. The language can be extended with its
open classes. There is many similarity between Ruby and Smalltak. No Perl
or Java, but Smalltalk. Philosophy and object model is very similiar. Ruby
is more dynamic than Python exactly like Smalltak is.

The main reason for using Rails is: Rails is complete framework, much
easier to learn and use than Django.

The main reason for using Python: Python is more productive. It is easier
to learn Python than Ruby. Python uses minimalistic approach. It contains
less methods, structures than Ruby. It is easier to memorize. Ruby has
messed namespace with many aliases to methods. And it has much more methods
to every object. It is difficult to remember them. There is no Ruby
docstrings as well. You have to read manual, book much more than in Python.

Also modules are easier to use in Python. When I am doing import blah i
know what was downloaded and I can see it by simply typing dir(blah). 
But when you do "require blah" in Ruby you know *nothing*. You have to
look inside blah.rb file to see what was happened. "require" command can
execute code, add many namespaces etc. etc.


-- 
Jarosław Zabiełło
http://blog.zabiello.com
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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Jaroslaw Zabiello]

On Mon, 24 Jul 2006 12:23:12 +0100, Steve Holden wrote:


> The impression I get is that Rails is relatively inflexible 
> on database schemas,

Django has the same problem. E.g. both Django ORM and ActiveRecord cannot
work with complex primary keys. But for Rails there is a solution for even
very strange created databases: rBatis
(http://jutopia.tirsen.com/articles/tag/rbatis) it is Ruby port of java
Ibatis (http://ibatis.apache.org/)

-- 
Jarosław Zabiełło
http://blog.zabiello.com
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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[gregarican]

I would suggest trying to pick up Ruby. Knowing both Python and Ruby
has helped me in that I can choose whichever tool is the best fit.
There are certain cases where I have to abandon Ruby for a certain
project because the library isn't mature enough or cross platform
enough for my requirements. So coding in Python is my option. Then
again there are other things where I am able to choose Ruby as the best
fit because of other concerns. The languages are different, but not
_that_ different. If you can get past the initial Perlishness (is that
a word?) of Ruby you will find that going from one language to the
other isn't that huge of a jump.

Damjan wrote:
> >> "Nah, we're not interested in Python."
>
> This is a hard attitude, but I have the same feeling about Ruby, I like
> Python and just don't see a reason to invest any time in Ruby (Rails or
> not).. and from that little I've seen from it.. I didn't like it.
> OTOH Ruby surelly is not that bad either.
> 
> -- 
> damjan

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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Ray]

John J. Lee wrote:
> I get that overall impression of Django too (as being more tightly
> coupled to itself, hence less flexible, when compared with TurboGears
> in particular).  I haven't done much with it yet, though (and
> presumably the 'magic-removal' branch landing did some good).
>
> What do you make of the rest of Django (aside from the DB stuff)?
>
> It's a shame TurboGears doesn't yet have a solid "out of the box" CRUD
> admin interface as Django.

And it's a shame that: Python doesn't have The Anointed Web Framework.
Things may have been different if there can be only one, who knows.

The lack of support for Oracle and SQL Server by Django is also a
killer that'll prevent Django from being picked up by a LOT of
companies (sadly, including mine :( ).

> 
> 
> John

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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Ray]

Damjan wrote:
> BTW I'd choose TurboGears for it's flexibility, but I guess Django could be
> nice when more rapid results are needed (and the problem doesn't fall too
> far from the Django sweet spot).

Well actually I was thinking of exaclty the same thing, because our
apps are mostly CRUD apps anyway. However I just learned of one very
big killer--lack of support for Oracle and MS SQL Server. That pretty
much shoots Django down from the list, and with it Python.

> >> "Nah, we're not interested in Python."
>
> This is a hard attitude, but I have the same feeling about Ruby, I like
> Python and just don't see a reason to invest any time in Ruby (Rails or
> not).. and from that little I've seen from it.. I didn't like it.
> OTOH Ruby surelly is not that bad either.

Yeah, I know... in fact I have the same attitude towards Ruby too.
People have been telling me it's cool left and right and I go to see
some Ruby code, I go "UGH!", and refuse to continue. Maybe because Perl
is #1 on my Most Hated Language list. *shrugs*

Just that it's a big, huge, humongous pity to see Python keeps missing
the big thing over and over again. Last time when biotechnology was
hot, which language became The Language? Perl. Now simple web app is
hot? It's Ruby. Of course Python is used by Google and it's something,
but I guess a lot of people do not know that, even those making a
living in the IT industry. OTOH everybody knows about Rails and and
everybody raves about it, even those who haven't touched it!

> -- 
> damjan

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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Ray]

Kay Schluehr wrote:
> Aren't they "rushing" for years? The last update of the Jython news
> page is from march 2005. This is not very encouraging even if there is
> a secret life of Jython.

Yeah I know... but I've been subscribing to jython-dev for quite
sometime, and the activity there is surely picking up compared to, say,
early 2006. Jython has new committers on board as well so that's
encouraging.

> But maybe we shouldn't worry because we can
> still read:
>
> "Jython, lest you do not know of it, is the most compelling weapon the
> Java platform has for its survival into the 21st century:-)"

:(

> > But yeah, compared to IronPython
> > (2.4 compliant, halfway to 2.5 even), it's pretty behind. But things
> > are changing the development seems to be picking up speed again!
>
> But you can't compile a Python module into a dotNet library that is
> used from C# which is the very essence of the CLR. IronPython is not
> more usefull than PythonNet.

At least for my case I will use IronPython for higher level task, and
perhaps calls libraries written in C# instead of the other way around,
plus you can leave your module as scripts anyway. If what you want from
C# is accessing Python's power then you can always host the IronPython
engine can't you?

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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Paul Boddie]

Joe Knapka wrote:
>
> Steve Yegge's "Opinionated Elf" is an example of a problem
> that is very easy and elegant to solve with open classes,
> and painful to solve when classes are closed:
> http://www.cabochon.com/~stevey/blog-rants/polymorphism-fails.html

For some value of "elegant", I suppose:

"But the real problem, the one that really gets me, is that your code
is going in and distributing itself across all the classes in the
system. It feels like a violation of encapsulation."

Paul

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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Bruno Desthuilliers]

Joe Knapka wrote:
(snip)
> Classes are effectively open in Python, too, at least
> where methods are concerned, since one can do
> klass.__dict__["myMethod"]=myMethod.

actually, klass.myMethod = myMethod is enough...


-- 
bruno desthuilliers
python -c "print '@'.join(['.'.join([w[::-1] for w in p.split('.')]) for
p in '[EMAIL PROTECTED]'.split('@')])"
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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Kay Schluehr]

Ray wrote:
> David Cook wrote:
> > On 2006-07-24, Sybren Stuvel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >
> > > Jython isn't up to par with current Python versions either.
> >
> > But the last release is up to the level of C-Python 2.2 or so.  I don't
> > really feel like I'm missing that much with it.
>
> You mean the alpha? They're rushing for a beta now that'll bring Jython
> to 2.2, I hope it'll come out soon.

Aren't they "rushing" for years? The last update of the Jython news
page is from march 2005. This is not very encouraging even if there is
a secret life of Jython. But maybe we shouldn't worry because we can
still read:

"Jython, lest you do not know of it, is the most compelling weapon the
Java platform has for its survival into the 21st century:-)"

I would eventually forget Jython completely and select a bridge like
JPype and ask for use cases and expected interaction between both
languages.

> But yeah, compared to IronPython
> (2.4 compliant, halfway to 2.5 even), it's pretty behind. But things
> are changing the development seems to be picking up speed again!

But you can't compile a Python module into a dotNet library that is
used from C# which is the very essence of the CLR. IronPython is not
more usefull than PythonNet.

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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Michele Simionato]

Joe Knapka ha scritto:
> Classes are effectively open in Python, too, at least
> where methods are concerned, since one can do
> klass.__dict__["myMethod"]=myMethod.

Yes, but builtin classes in Python are closed and this is the relevant
point.


  Michele Simionato

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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Damjan]

> A few months ago I had to choose between RoR and a Python framework
> (TurboGears in that case). I picked TurboGears because of the language
> maturity and all the third party libs. i.e. I can do PDF reporting with
> reportLab, control OpenOffice with Python..

This is a good argument, you should make a list of all the greatest python
libraries that you could use for your projects, for ex. reportlab, PIL,
doctools, elementtree, sqlalchemy etc etc and try to "sell" that.

BTW I'd choose TurboGears for it's flexibility, but I guess Django could be
nice when more rapid results are needed (and the problem doesn't fall too
far from the Django sweet spot).

>> "Nah, we're not interested in Python."

This is a hard attitude, but I have the same feeling about Ruby, I like
Python and just don't see a reason to invest any time in Ruby (Rails or
not).. and from that little I've seen from it.. I didn't like it. 
OTOH Ruby surelly is not that bad either.

-- 
damjan
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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Joe Knapka]

John J. Lee wrote:

> The fact that "open classes" are apparently thought to be a good thing
> in Ruby puzzles (and worries) me.

This objection strikes me as having the same
nature as, "Python's lack of strong protection for
class members puzzles (and worries) me".  The Pythonic
answer to that objection is usually that this is a
feature: it lets people who know what they're doing
solve problems more easily than if they had to work
around a bunch of "helpful" protection.

Classes are effectively open in Python, too, at least
where methods are concerned, since one can do
klass.__dict__["myMethod"]=myMethod.
Though admittedly, it isn't widely advertised as a
feature of Python.

It makes sense to me to think of open classes as being
open for extension, not modification. After all, methods
added by clients are unlikely to depend on
implementation details (though I suppose they could, to
which I would say, "Don't do that").

Steve Yegge's "Opinionated Elf" is an example of a problem
that is very easy and elegant to solve with open classes,
and painful to solve when classes are closed:
http://www.cabochon.com/~stevey/blog-rants/polymorphism-fails.html

Cheers,

-- JK
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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Yannick]

Hi,

A few months ago I had to choose between RoR and a Python framework
(TurboGears in that case). I picked TurboGears because of the language
maturity and all the third party libs. i.e. I can do PDF reporting with
reportLab, control OpenOffice with Python..
Ruby has still a "cool factor" going with it, but give it 2-3 years to
become mainstream and another language will be the new cool thing to
program with..


Ray wrote:
> I just moved to another company that's mainly a Java/.NET shop. I was
> happy to find out that there's a movement from the grassroot to try to
> convince the boss to use a dynamic language for our development!
>
> Two of the senior developers, however, are already rooting for Ruby on
> Rails--although they haven't tried RoR themselves. When I suggested
> Django, they went like, "what's that?".
>
> I said, "It's like the Python counterpart of RoR".
>
> "Nah, we're not interested in Python."
>
> I think they are already predisposed to RoR simply because of RoR's
> visibility (i.e.: at my workplace everybody knows RoR but nobody knows
> about Django unless they've used Python as well). So far the arguments
> I can think of:
>
> 1. The investment of learning Python will be a good investment because
> it transfer to platforms that we've already supported, i.e.: JVM and
> .NET CLR (using Jython and IronPython). Ruby's availability on this
> platform is not as mature--JRuby is still at 0.9 and I don't think
> IronRuby is coming out anytime soon :)
>
> 2. Python is a much more mature language than Ruby--it's been around
> since ages ago and as such has a lot more tools, articles, and other
> resources than Ruby. It is also the language being used by
> high-visibility company like Google, with the creator of the language
> himself working there.
>
> 3. Python emphasizes readability instead of cleverness/conciseness.
>
> 4. What else? I haven't tried RoR so I can't argue meaningfully on
> whether using Django will put us at an advantage.
>
> Can you help me with my argument? Meanwhile I think I'll give RoR a try
> as well.
> 
> Thank you,
> Ray

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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[John J. Lee]

"Ray" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> I just moved to another company that's mainly a Java/.NET shop. I was
> happy to find out that there's a movement from the grassroot to try to
> convince the boss to use a dynamic language for our development!
> 
> Two of the senior developers, however, are already rooting for Ruby on
> Rails--although they haven't tried RoR themselves. When I suggested
> Django, they went like, "what's that?".
> 
> I said, "It's like the Python counterpart of RoR".
> 
> "Nah, we're not interested in Python."
[...]

It's the herding instinct.  Hard to argue with that mindset.


John

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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[John J. Lee]

Steve Holden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
[...]
> Well, my view is that both are frameworks, and so you will inevitably 
> "run out of steam" at some point if your implementation plans become too 
> ambitious. The impression I get is that Rails is relatively inflexible 
> on database schemas, and once you get "off the beaten track" it gets 
> difficult to cope with complex existing databases.

I get that overall impression of Django too (as being more tightly
coupled to itself, hence less flexible, when compared with TurboGears
in particular).  I haven't done much with it yet, though (and
presumably the 'magic-removal' branch landing did some good).

What do you make of the rest of Django (aside from the DB stuff)?

It's a shame TurboGears doesn't yet have a solid "out of the box" CRUD
admin interface as Django.


John

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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[John J. Lee]

Sybren Stuvel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
[...]
> - What I was told from a professor in formal languages, which is
>   that there is no formal definition of the Ruby language. That's
>   enough for me to not use it.
[...]

So you're not using Python either?

Probably I don't understand what you're getting at, but the Python
language reference had big gaps in it last time I looked (though
Fredrik Lundh has been working on updated documentation -- I'm sure
he'll do a great job).  Lots of features were just not in there.
Certainly lots of details e.g. regarding the various special method
protocols (especially when it comes to builtin types) are not
documented.  ISTR the core maintainers of CPython aren't even that
worried about the grammar productions listed in the reference manual
being 100% accurate.  CPython and Jython (ignoring the fact that
Jython's still on 2.1) have some fairly significant differences in
various details of the language.  No doubt IronPython will too.  Of
course, this is not something unique to Python, and I guess Python
does very well in comparison, when it comes to actual practice.


The fact that "open classes" are apparently thought to be a good thing
in Ruby puzzles (and worries) me.


John

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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[aaronwmail-usenet]

Steve Holden wrote:
...
> I wouldn't waste your time. "A man convinced against his will is of the
> same opinion still", and they already know they aren't interested in
> Python. There are probably many other matters about which they are
> uninformed and equally determined

This is too true.  Fortunately progress proceeds
slowly nonetheless.  For example C++ is much
less used these days where it is totally and
catastrophically inappropriate than in years past
-- maybe because the true C++ boneheads have
been promoted or are retiring...  Nevertheless I was
recently told by a new grad that I should translate
one of my (working, no problems) python apps to
C++ because C++ is "a higher level language."
But I'm sure he'll fall in line with the next stream
of lemmings rather than sink into the tarpit with the
dinosaurs.

   -- Aaron Watters

===
Paradigms shift when the old guys retire.  -- Kuhn (?)

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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Paddy]

Ray wrote:
> I just moved to another company that's mainly a Java/.NET shop. I was
> happy to find out that there's a movement from the grassroot to try to
> convince the boss to use a dynamic language for our development!
>
> Two of the senior developers, however, are already rooting for Ruby on
> Rails--although they haven't tried RoR themselves. When I suggested
> Django, they went like, "what's that?".
>
> I said, "It's like the Python counterpart of RoR".
>
> "Nah, we're not interested in Python."
>
> I think they are already predisposed to RoR simply because of RoR's
> visibility (i.e.: at my workplace everybody knows RoR but nobody knows
> about Django unless they've used Python as well). So far the arguments
> I can think of:
>
> 1. The investment of learning Python will be a good investment because
> it transfer to platforms that we've already supported, i.e.: JVM and
> .NET CLR (using Jython and IronPython). Ruby's availability on this
> platform is not as mature--JRuby is still at 0.9 and I don't think
> IronRuby is coming out anytime soon :)
>
> 2. Python is a much more mature language than Ruby--it's been around
> since ages ago and as such has a lot more tools, articles, and other
> resources than Ruby. It is also the language being used by
> high-visibility company like Google, with the creator of the language
> himself working there.
>
> 3. Python emphasizes readability instead of cleverness/conciseness.
>
> 4. What else? I haven't tried RoR so I can't argue meaningfully on
> whether using Django will put us at an advantage.
>
> Can you help me with my argument? Meanwhile I think I'll give RoR a try
> as well.
> 
> Thank you,
> Ray

Ruby does not have doctest :-)

- Paddy.

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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Ray]

David Cook wrote:
> On 2006-07-24, Sybren Stuvel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > Jython isn't up to par with current Python versions either.
>
> But the last release is up to the level of C-Python 2.2 or so.  I don't
> really feel like I'm missing that much with it.

You mean the alpha? They're rushing for a beta now that'll bring Jython
to 2.2, I hope it'll come out soon. But yeah, compared to IronPython
(2.4 compliant, halfway to 2.5 even), it's pretty behind. But things
are changing the development seems to be picking up speed again!

Cheers
Ray

> 
> Dave Cook

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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[David Cook]

On 2006-07-24, Sybren Stuvel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Jython isn't up to par with current Python versions either.

But the last release is up to the level of C-Python 2.2 or so.  I don't
really feel like I'm missing that much with it.

Dave Cook
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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Ray]

Steve Holden wrote:
> Well, my view is that both are frameworks, and so you will inevitably
> "run out of steam" at some point if your implementation plans become too
> ambitious. The impression I get is that Rails is relatively inflexible
> on database schemas, and once you get "off the beaten track" it gets
> difficult to cope with complex existing databases.

Hi Steve,

Thanks for the reply! Regarding "running out of steam", well... we've
been using Struts + Spring + Hibernate on the Java side, so yeah, we're
quite used to molding our code to fit frameworks :)

Cheers
Ray

>
> regards
>   Steve
> --
> Steve Holden   +44 150 684 7255  +1 800 494 3119
> Holden Web LLC/Ltd  http://www.holdenweb.com
> Skype: holdenweb   http://holdenweb.blogspot.com
> Recent Ramblings http://del.icio.us/steve.holden

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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Ray]

Thanks Sybren for the reply! Regarding this point:

> The form handling is also excellent.

Is it excellent in a way that's "better" than RoR in certain ways?

Regards,
Ray

Sybren Stuvel wrote:
> Ray enlightened us with:
> > Two of the senior developers, however, are already rooting for Ruby on
> > Rails--although they haven't tried RoR themselves. When I suggested
> > Django, they went like, "what's that?".
> >
> > I said, "It's like the Python counterpart of RoR".
>
> Bad answer. Now they think they'll get the same thing they already
> have with RoR, but that they'll have to put more effort into it.
>
> > "Nah, we're not interested in Python."
>
> Ask them why.
>
> > I think they are already predisposed to RoR simply because of RoR's
> > visibility (i.e.: at my workplace everybody knows RoR but nobody
> > knows about Django unless they've used Python as well).
>
> Which means most of the people saying "we're not interested in Python"
> do so without proper reason, since they don't know the language.
>
> > 1. The investment of learning Python will be a good investment
> > because it transfer to platforms that we've already supported, i.e.:
> > JVM and .NET CLR (using Jython and IronPython). Ruby's availability
> > on this platform is not as mature--JRuby is still at 0.9 and I don't
> > think IronRuby is coming out anytime soon :)
>
> Jython isn't up to par with current Python versions either.
>
> > 2. Python is a much more mature language than Ruby--it's been around
> > since ages ago and as such has a lot more tools, articles, and other
> > resources than Ruby. It is also the language being used by
> > high-visibility company like Google, with the creator of the
> > language himself working there.
>
> That is _definitely_ true. The behaviour of Ruby hasn't even properly
> been defined.
>
> > 4. What else? I haven't tried RoR so I can't argue meaningfully on
> > whether using Django will put us at an advantage.
>
> Check out the admin you get for free with Django. Add/edit/delete
> controls are easily done with RoR, but Django comes with a mature,
> easy to use, on-the-fly generated, customizable admin. The form
> handling is also excellent.
>
> Sybren
> --
> The problem with the world is stupidity. Not saying there should be a
> capital punishment for stupidity, but why don't we just take the
> safety labels off of everything and let the problem solve itself?
>  Frank Zappa

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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Steve Holden]

Ray wrote:
> Steve Holden wrote:
> 
>>I wouldn't waste your time. "A man convinced against his will is of the
>>same opinion still", and they already know they aren't interested in
>>Python. There are probably many other matters about which they are
>>uninformed and equally determined.
> 
> 
> Well the thing is that I have to admit I have some stake in this. If
> we're using Rails then everybody's starting from 0. Whereas if we're
> using Python I already know it so I'll have an easier time :)
> 
> Also, those are just two developers. Convincing the big guy, the
> decision maker, is a separate matter isn't it?
> 
> Do you know of any other arguments, or you do think that for somebody
> who really, really doesn't care about which language, either RoR/Ruby
> or Django/Python will do just fine?
> 
Well, my view is that both are frameworks, and so you will inevitably 
"run out of steam" at some point if your implementation plans become too 
ambitious. The impression I get is that Rails is relatively inflexible 
on database schemas, and once you get "off the beaten track" it gets 
difficult to cope with complex existing databases.

regards
  Steve
-- 
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Holden Web LLC/Ltd  http://www.holdenweb.com
Skype: holdenweb   http://holdenweb.blogspot.com
Recent Ramblings http://del.icio.us/steve.holden

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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Ray]

Tim Heaney wrote:
> "Ray" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> >
> > Can you help me with my argument?
>
> Well, there is this study suggesting Django outperforms Ruby on Rails
>
>   http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/pages/Framework+Performance
>
> > Meanwhile I think I'll give RoR a try as well.
>
> Good idea. I think Ruby on Rails is terrific. Perhaps you'll think so
> too. If not, at least you'll have a better idea of why you don't.

Thanks Tim!! 

Cheers
Ray

> 
> Tim

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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Tim Heaney]

"Ray" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
> Can you help me with my argument? 

Well, there is this study suggesting Django outperforms Ruby on Rails

  http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/pages/Framework+Performance

> Meanwhile I think I'll give RoR a try as well.

Good idea. I think Ruby on Rails is terrific. Perhaps you'll think so
too. If not, at least you'll have a better idea of why you don't.

Tim
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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Ray]

BTW the link below is good reading! Thanks Steve!

Steve Holden wrote:
>http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2005/08/i_changed_my_mi.html

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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Ray]

Steve Holden wrote:
> I wouldn't waste your time. "A man convinced against his will is of the
> same opinion still", and they already know they aren't interested in
> Python. There are probably many other matters about which they are
> uninformed and equally determined.

Well the thing is that I have to admit I have some stake in this. If
we're using Rails then everybody's starting from 0. Whereas if we're
using Python I already know it so I'll have an easier time :)

Also, those are just two developers. Convincing the big guy, the
decision maker, is a separate matter isn't it?

Do you know of any other arguments, or you do think that for somebody
who really, really doesn't care about which language, either RoR/Ruby
or Django/Python will do just fine?

Cheers
Ray

>
>http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2005/08/i_changed_my_mi.html
>
> regards
>   Steve
> --
> Steve Holden   +44 150 684 7255  +1 800 494 3119
> Holden Web LLC/Ltd  http://www.holdenweb.com
> Skype: holdenweb   http://holdenweb.blogspot.com
> Recent Ramblings http://del.icio.us/steve.holden

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Re: Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Steve Holden]

Ray wrote:
> I just moved to another company that's mainly a Java/.NET shop. I was
> happy to find out that there's a movement from the grassroot to try to
> convince the boss to use a dynamic language for our development!
> 
> Two of the senior developers, however, are already rooting for Ruby on
> Rails--although they haven't tried RoR themselves. When I suggested
> Django, they went like, "what's that?".
> 
> I said, "It's like the Python counterpart of RoR".
> 
> "Nah, we're not interested in Python."
> 
> I think they are already predisposed to RoR simply because of RoR's
> visibility (i.e.: at my workplace everybody knows RoR but nobody knows
> about Django unless they've used Python as well). So far the arguments
> I can think of:
> 
> 1. The investment of learning Python will be a good investment because
> it transfer to platforms that we've already supported, i.e.: JVM and
> ..NET CLR (using Jython and IronPython). Ruby's availability on this
> platform is not as mature--JRuby is still at 0.9 and I don't think
> IronRuby is coming out anytime soon :)
> 
> 2. Python is a much more mature language than Ruby--it's been around
> since ages ago and as such has a lot more tools, articles, and other
> resources than Ruby. It is also the language being used by
> high-visibility company like Google, with the creator of the language
> himself working there.
> 
> 3. Python emphasizes readability instead of cleverness/conciseness.
> 
> 4. What else? I haven't tried RoR so I can't argue meaningfully on
> whether using Django will put us at an advantage.
> 
> Can you help me with my argument? Meanwhile I think I'll give RoR a try
> as well.
> 
I wouldn't waste your time. "A man convinced against his will is of the 
same opinion still", and they already know they aren't interested in 
Python. There are probably many other matters about which they are 
uninformed and equally determined.

   http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2005/08/i_changed_my_mi.html

regards
  Steve
-- 
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Recent Ramblings http://del.icio.us/steve.holden

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Need a compelling argument to use Django instead of Rails

[Ray]

I just moved to another company that's mainly a Java/.NET shop. I was
happy to find out that there's a movement from the grassroot to try to
convince the boss to use a dynamic language for our development!

Two of the senior developers, however, are already rooting for Ruby on
Rails--although they haven't tried RoR themselves. When I suggested
Django, they went like, "what's that?".

I said, "It's like the Python counterpart of RoR".

"Nah, we're not interested in Python."

I think they are already predisposed to RoR simply because of RoR's
visibility (i.e.: at my workplace everybody knows RoR but nobody knows
about Django unless they've used Python as well). So far the arguments
I can think of:

1. The investment of learning Python will be a good investment because
it transfer to platforms that we've already supported, i.e.: JVM and
.NET CLR (using Jython and IronPython). Ruby's availability on this
platform is not as mature--JRuby is still at 0.9 and I don't think
IronRuby is coming out anytime soon :)

2. Python is a much more mature language than Ruby--it's been around
since ages ago and as such has a lot more tools, articles, and other
resources than Ruby. It is also the language being used by
high-visibility company like Google, with the creator of the language
himself working there.

3. Python emphasizes readability instead of cleverness/conciseness.

4. What else? I haven't tried RoR so I can't argue meaningfully on
whether using Django will put us at an advantage.

Can you help me with my argument? Meanwhile I think I'll give RoR a try
as well.

Thank you,
Ray

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