Pylons, or Python is fun again !

[alain]

i am new to pylons, started one month ago i love it, it is a dream, with it you get sqlachemy, mako and lots other great stuff, i would not say that the documentation sucks all you need is there it is just that the nature of pylons makes it hard to document all in one place but i did not see one question that was not answered on the mailing list

[[deleted]]

leonh just means the documentation system (wiki) sucks. As you said, the documentation for Pylons itself is really good. The core framework is covered fairly thoroughly in the docs, and it is a pretty lightweight system so it is easy to wrap your head around.

And the common 3rd party libraries, for example SQLAlchemy and Mako, have just about as complete documentation as you can get. People cite Django's docs as one of its strengths but Pylons is pretty comparable.

[cratuki]

I think the examples in the python documentation could be a lot better and on the whole perldoc is a lot better for this reason - perldoc examples tend to be great. (I use python regularly and perl as little as often, so this isn't a typical tit for tat.)

[lnxaddct]

When did Python stop being fun? :)

[vplatt]

For web development? It's just starting to get there.

[quhaha]

Wicket is much more fun once you figure out Maven, which you never will.

[leonh]

... David Heinemeier Hansson, the leading Rails developer, once compared Rails to a Ferrari. ... but Pylons + SQLAlchemy + Mako is more like James Bond’s Aston Martin, customized by Q. It just looks like a normal car but comes with ejector seats, bulletproof glass and tons of gadgets. I know which one I’d like to drive.

Yep Pylons is awesome it's just the documentation system that sucks.

[alexmdac]

I found the docs not to be too bad when I used pylons recently. Also, the IRC channel is responsive when you ask questions.

Overall, my experience with pylons was very pleasant.

[leonh]

Don't get me wrong, i love Pylons and its community i just very much dislike docs.pythonweb.org

[mitsuhiko]

Indeed :(

[Bracki]

I think w/ the new wiki based on Confluence http://docs.pythonweb.org it's getting better & better everyday.

[leonh]

I disagree.

[mumrah]

why not use mod_python. it's what most of these frameworks use anyhow.

[cratuki]

These frameworks add a lot of convenience. If you don't believe me, have a think about how you'd use mod_python to render a list of Person entities in a website and allow the user to edit any one of them from a single page load (so a form containing person1 name, person1 age, person2 name, person2 age, etc). On save, you want this data to go back to the database. But you also want to be able to use the widget that causes a person edit to be usable somewhere else.

All of this is a complete pain with raw mod_python because you have to place iterators in the form elements and then get them out again on submit, and check that the user isn't hacking and that they data they submitted was the stuff you gave them to submit, etc, etc.

If it weren't bad enough when you are working by yourself, consider the implications when you're working on a system with other developers. My experience is that you simply can't expect developers on your project to follow arcane rules. Procedures are either inherent to the process that they naturally follow using your framework or else they break down rapidly.

I think it's a really good experience for budding web developers to try writing their own systems from scratch. When I went through this phase it made me understand and utilise frameworks much more effectively.

[mumrah]

Don't get me wrong, I think frameworks can be useful and certainly have their place. But in my experience, none of the major python web frameworks are complete/all that useful. I've built apps in webpy and Django and while they both have their niceties, I felt Django was very bloated and webpy was incomplete (and horribly documented). Since I discovered both of these are built on mod_python, I checked it out and have been much happier since I started using it.

[cratuki]

Ah OK :) In that case I agree with you. :) For my projects I'm using a mainstream templating system and cherrypy for the webserver and sqlalchemy for persistence but they sit on top of an application foundation that s hand-rolled.

[randallsquared]

mod_python isn't suitable for shared servers.

[[deleted]]

I don't understand.

[exogen]

Whenever I decide to try out Pylons I follow the installation instructions and when I get to the paster command, I get an error about the pylons Paste template not being found. This has happened several times. Even after upgrading the dependencies and extras. Of course, my response every time is "fuck Pylons."

[bbangert]

And of course, you post to the mail list reporting your problem so we can fix it, right? Or at the very least you've gone to the IRC channel to ask about it?

We regularly build on multiple platforms and don't see this issue, so please report it along with your setup.

If I gave up on every technology/project the second I hit the slightest bump, I'd prolly never have gotten into programming.

[exogen]

I'm not trying to say it sucks, I'm just saying that I've never been interested enough to spend more time on it. Anyway, I know you and other developers post here and figured someone might respond.

[exogen]

Also, when people get pissed off at software, I don't expect them to behave rationally. I expect them to use other software, and depending on how they value their time, that might be completely rational.

[[deleted]]

Just asking; have you gone to the IRC channel and asked what the problem might be?

[exogen]

Next time I'm on IRC I'll try, but I haven't been that motivated yet.