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PBX My name is Paul Bissex, and e-scribe.com is my consulting business. I build web applications using as much open source software as possible. From September to June I teach web design and other important non-photographic professional skills to photographers. In the '90s I wrote technology commentary and reviews for magazines, newspapers, and web publications, including Wired, Salon.com, FamilyPC, the late lamented Web Review, and the Chicago Tribune. Feel free to email me.

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YAPWF: Aaron Swartz's web.py released

Released today: web.py. (Source, documentation, backstory.)

Even though everybody (including Aaron) refers to this as a framework, it's a lot more library-like than most of the frameworks it's ostensibly competing with -- by design, it seems. It's very compact -- only about 1000 lines of fairly dense Python. (About 275 of those are a template for pretty error pages adapted from Django though.)

Personally, I find the compact, all-in-one style very appealing. Less for a newbie to absorb and less for an experienced user to keep track of. Yes, it does require a template engine and a database wrapper to be useful, but the core is still extremely lean.

I'm very curious to see how web.py grows. Will users demand built-in ORM and support for other databases? Templating alternatives? Form validation? Admin tools and auto-generated CRUD? And as those things get added, will web.py asymptotically approach Turbogears, or Django, or ... ?

It's conventional to sigh and groan when a new Python web app framework is released. I don't know that I'll use web.py for anything beyond the obligatory test run, but I know that Aaron motivated some good little changes in Django while he was wrestling with it and birthing web.py.

In the end I think that whatever small amount of energy dissipation web.py causes will be more than offset by the ideas that it (by which I mean Aaron, really) injects into the discussion of what a web framework should be and do.

Tuesday, January 3rd, 2006
+ +
4 comments

Some related posts: A little something I've been working on • Turbogears and Subway to merge? • Django Docs in Plucker format • A minimal wiki in Django • TurboGears progress, or, bring on the CRUD • Controller freaks • YAPWF: TurboGears • Django progress • Django, Rails, and PHP • Python web framework mania
• Comment from Adam Hayward, later that day

Sorry for the off topic post, but I really dislike the way you use strikethoughs to denote visited links.

Thanks for the news about web.py!

• Comment from Paul, later that day

I really dislike the way you use strikethoughs to denote visited links

Noted -- I may go back to color change instead.

And you're welcome!

• Comment from Anonymous, later that day

yeah, nice post ... but damn I hate those strikethrougths too

• Comment from Raymond Lutz, 1 day later

Just to point to this YAPWF: spiffy from Wilfredo Sanchez, http://www.wsanchez.net/blog/archives/000091.html

' haven't check it...

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