Day: January 17, 2008

For a web application that I am developing as part of a research project I have decided on using [Python](http://python.org/) for the business logic. The reasons being that the application will use fixed-point binary arithmetic, units, and data output as line-graphs. Python seems to have the libraries that I’ll need for this and is better suited for rapid development than Java.

Part of the requirements that I have been researching this last week have been concerned with the identification of a suitable web application framework for Python. I started out this week assuming that this would be [Django](http://www.djangoproject.com/) and even bought the [book](http://www.djangobook.com/)! However, because this is research, I have the luxury of time so I’ve done some additional research and decided that the alternative frameworks [TurboGears](http://turbogears.org/) and [Pylons](http://pylonshq.com/) were also worth a look. Searching Google for getting started screencasts and videos I discovered a [wonderful video](http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=6297126166376226181&q=turbogears&total=20&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0) of a web application framework comparison presentation by Sean Kelly. In this presentation, Sean uses J2EE (Servlets and JSPs), Rails, DJango, TurboGears, Zope/Plone and even Enterprise Java Beans (JBoss) to develop a simple time-tracker application and reports his experiences. Rails, Django and TurboGears come out (roughly in that order), but the big surprise is that [Zope](http://www.zope.org/)/[Plone](http://plone.org/) comes out top! So, maybe I need to rethink!

I’ve embedded the video here as it’s not only a useful and timely comparison of web application frameworks, it’s also an example of just how useful and inspirational a simple presentation can be!

http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=6297126166376226181&hl=en-GB

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