Comments on: 500 Programming Languages: Python

By: Probably Programming » Blog Archive » A brainfuck synthesizer

Probably Programming » Blog Archive » A brainfuck synthesizer — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 16:10:33 +0000

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By: pib

pib — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 19:22:59 +0000

I think the approach I like best for Erlang web development (for dynamic apps) is to have most of the front-end code actually run in the user’s browser via JavaScript, and basically just make API calls to the Erlang backend. That way you don’t need two server-side languages.

I really like the idea of CouchApps that Chris Anderson has been working on, but I think I prefer a little wrapper around the nasty long URLs that CouchDB ends up having, and some sort of good authentication layer, as well.

I also would love to get a chance to give Nitrogen (http://nitrogenproject.com/) a try for some dynamic applications. At that point you’re basically writing your apps in a mix of Erlang, HTML templates, and a DSL for defining how to react to various events. I like the idea of writing all the code in one place that it has.

By: terry chay

terry chay — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 18:55:40 +0000

Yeah Django is a framework, it should be compared to ZF and Ruby on Rails. I’d say that of the three, I’d like Django the most, but that isn’t saying much. Frameworks make design decisions for you and they tend to get in the way unless you wrote it yourself.

It’s really hard to compete with mod_php, it’s everywhere with most every extension you need preinstalled, and has a whole host of great open source programs and tools premade and trivial to install (mediawiki, wordpress, etc.). I like to say, “When you are developing for the web, web frameworks fall somewhere between downloading Wordpress and building it yourself. That’s a pretty narrow straight to navigate.”

I’m not a fan of Erlang for web development. The main reason for this is simply that I think the “web as glue” model is good design and I want my glue to be straightforward. There is no doubt that it does some important (today) things that PHP just can’t do (or rather… SHOULDN'T do), I just feel that it should be a service (maybe in erlang like CouchDB or ejabberd) and then you bind to it. But I can think of some web problems that disprove that, just as I can think of web problems where Django would be better than DIY PHP code.

By: pib

pib — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 17:34:13 +0000

Yes, I wrote a post about Django a while back, even. Django is exactly what I mean by "the right way". Sure, the development is fast, and you don't even have to set up an actual web server, but when it comes time to put your Django app up on a production server, it's more work. Most hosts already have PHP up and running, and lots of them won't support Python at all. So you have to find a host that supports it, then you've got to set up your app to work with whatever type of Python setup their server has.

With PHP, it's pretty much the same setup for development and deployment.

Now, this is all coming from a guy who likes Erlang for web development, so the extra little bit is negligible for me, but not for your typical, starting-out web developer.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 17:18:21 +0000

@pib,

Have you seen Django? It's hard to think the difference in time would be more than a negligible amount.

By: pib

pib — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 17:49:10 +0000

It’s just too bad it’s not quite as quick to throw together a Python web application as it is to throw together a PHP one. It probably has something to do with Pythonists insisting on doing things “the right way.” It results in better overall code, but a longer lead-in time, I think.

By: terry chay

terry chay — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 17:23:58 +0000

I also recommend it as a general purpose scripting language, especially for large teams. Perl is more utilitarian, but it gets hard for even the writer to read over time. Python pretty much looks the same no matter who codes it.