About Me

PBX I'm Paul Bissex, and e-scribe.com is my consulting business. I build web applications using open source software, especially Django. In the '90s I did graphic design for newspapers and magazines. Then I wrote technology commentary and reviews for Wired, Salon.com, Chicago Tribune, and lots of little places you've never heard of. Feel free to email me.

Book

I'm co-author of "Python Web Development with Django", an excellent guide to my favorite web framework. Published by Addison-Wesley, it is available from Amazon and your favorite technical bookstore as well.

Colophon

Built using Django, served by Apache and mod_wsgi. The database is SQLite. The operating system is FreeBSD, on a VPS hosted at Johncompanies.com. Comment-spam protection by Akismet. Vintage topo imagery from the Maptech archive. The markup engine is Markdown.

Pile o'Tags

Stuff I Use

Akismet, del.icio.us, Django, dpaste.com, Emacs, FreeBSD, Freenode, jQuery, LaunchBar, MacPorts, Markdown, Mercurial, OS X, Postfix, Python, SQLite, Subversion, TextMate, Trac, Ubuntu Linux, wmii

Spam Report

At least 71104 pieces of comment spam killed since January 2008, mostly via Akismet.

Turbogears and Subway to merge?

Looking at this ticket, endorsed by Subway creator Peter Hunt and this post by Turbogears creator Kevin Dangoor, there's clearly a non-zero chance that these two frameworks -- which are, as I noted in my initial post on Turbogears, very similar architecturally -- will join forces.

I agree with Kevin that "saving Python from Ruby" or whatever is not a goal worth focusing on. But focusing developer momentum behind a demonstrably popular web framework model is.

Saturday, December 31st, 2005
python + web frameworks
2 comments

• Comment from Mark Ramm , 2 days later

I agree, and I hope that developer momentum can be focused on making TurboGears the best possible framework in January-February so version 1.0 can be released. The Subway merge can bring in a lot of smart guys and good technology, and we can use the smart guys now. But actual technology may should come into the trunk as soon as 1.0 is out the door.

Then there will be lots of time for new features, evaluating existing components, and generally making TurboGears amazingly great for version 2.0.

All of the above is just my opinion, but I know people want a framework that they can use in real projects today, and that should be the first goal of the combined TurboGears/subway team. If we maintain focus, we can have 1.0 out the door in the next several weeks, and open things up for lots of interesting ideas in the 2.0 release.

"A time for everything, and everything in its time."

• Comment from Paul , 2 days later

Thanks for the note, Mark. Good luck with the book!