I’ve been an IBM fan for quite some time, but even more now that I cover them on occasion on different topics. Their people are smart and enjoyable to chat with on topics like search, and they do very well when it comes to finding third party folks to discuss topics as they do on their developerWorks tutorial series.

The two-part discussion presented by Ian Maurer, Senior Consultant, Brulant, Inc, covers Python in a couple of contexts. First, developers working with the Python-powered Django framework to build web applications can build it in Linux and get to work right away.

Maurer goes through the process of the install in his tutorial, and configuring the admin tool for Django. Then the developer can create a model (Django follows the Model-View-Controller architecture) for the project. From Maurer:

Maurer’s Django example proceeds through the development of a job search application. He makes an important observation about templates in Django: “The Django template language has been designed with limited functional capabilities. This limitation keeps templates simple for non-programmers and keeps programmers from putting business logic where it doesn’t belong, the presentation layer.”

Maurer followed up the Django walkthrough with a tutorial on TurboGears, a Python-built mega-framework. This project focused on building a shopping application.

He called TurboGears a mega-framework because of the components TurboGears brings together:

MochiKit: JavaScript library
Kid: Templating language
CherryPy: Base Web framework
SQLObject: Object-relational mapper (ORM)

After installation, Maurer shows how to get started with a model package called tgcommerce. With this, the developer has a simple shopping cart for the application.

Once the model has been created, developers can use CatWalk from the TurboGears toolbox to quickly create, update, and delete data for their model through a GUI.

Maurer found that the error handling in the controller methods could be better. Refactoring in the controller class can catch a SQLObjectNotFound error and make it a NotFound exception. Instead of the 404 error, that could be written to redirect instead.

He also included an Ajax example that adds an item to the cart; “To make this shopping cart example buzzword compliant,” he wrote.

After going through the tutorial, he compared the Django and TurboGears frameworks. Maurer said both were extracted from existing applications and released as open source. Then he summarized the differences:

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

I figure that Ruby would be easy to learn because of its similarity to Perl (I’m told). But I also figure that Python would be easy to learn because of its simplicity. And when it comes to webby stuff, I can use Rails with Ruby and Django with Python.

I’m currently leaning toward Python and began doing so last week. I started with Mark Pilgrim’s excellent Dive Into Python and made it thru the first 3 chapters pretty quickly. So far it feels pretty good.

Before I really dive in, though, I’m curious to hear what others think about the choice between these two languages.

(On a related note, you might also read Tim Bray’s On Ruby post, since he just started learning Ruby.)

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Jeremy Zawodny is the author of the popular Jeremy Zawodny’s blog. Jeremy is part of the Yahoo search team and frequently posts in the Yahoo! Search blog as well.

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“Microsoft may or may not be “dead” and what remains of the Longhorn feature set may or may not “suck,” but one way or another, Microsoft needs to figure out how to move faster. That’s the beginning and end of the story.”

Link: Microsoft and VCs

Speaking of stuff that Microsoft needs to respond quicker to. First there was Ruby on Rails. Now there’s Django, a high-level Python Web framework that’s getting talked up on the blogs. Simon Willison has more on that.

Why am I talking this stuff up? Because Microsoft’s customers are best served when I show them everything that’s available in the marketplace. Like they couldn’t figure it out anyway (it’s one of the top searches today on Technorati).

But, even better, it lets us have a conversation about this stuff so we can all learn about its plusses and minuses.

Technorati searches for Ruby on Rails (592 posts) and Django Project (14 posts).

Yes, we need to move faster. Even Steve Ballmer acknowledged that in our interview together. The cautionary tale for Microsoft is if we don’t, there are other speedboats waiting to serve developers.

But, back to Ruby on Rails and Django: what do you think? Have you compared them to ASP.NET yet? Have you started developing with either?

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Robert Scoble is the founder of the Scobleizer blog. He works as PodTech.net’s Vice President of Media Development.

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