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 70645 pieces of comment spam killed since January 2008, mostly via Akismet.

Django, Rails, and PHP

Sam Newman has posted a useful high-level comparison of Django and Rails on his site. In it, I think he hits on one little-discussed reason why these two projects are grabbing so much mindshare right now:

[Rails and Django] ... historically would have ended up being written in Perl or PHP - but ended up being written in Ruby and Python respectively.

When I heard DHH speak at OSCON, he mentioned switching to Ruby after giving up on trying to make PHP do the kind of stuff he wanted to do. Back in July I asked Simon Willison (of the Django team) about PHP; he said that both he and Adrian Holovaty had worked in PHP for years, but it was Python that "gave us the flexibility we needed to pull everything off."

In other words, Rails and Django are web frameworks for people who are sick of PHP. That's a big market.

Friday, August 19th, 2005
django + php + programming + rails + web frameworks
3 comments

Some related posts: Making your way from PHP to Python and Django • Rails security hole hullabaloo • The Zend Framework • Controller freaks • YAPWF: TurboGears • Django progress • Railing • Everything on Rails • Cake • Python web framework mania

• Comment from sam newman , 1 day later

Interestingly a large amount of people 'switching' to ruby and python because of rails and django are stillusing the new languages like hacky PHP apps. Movement to a new language/famework doesn't neccessarily result in an improvement in software quality - in fact the reverse can often be the case!

• Comment from Paul , 1 week later

On the other hand, it's likely that if those people stick around, the Python and/or Ruby communities and the emphasis they put on craft will have a positive influence on the newcomers. Worked for me. Python was the first language I got serious with after several years of PHP work, and the influence of the community was at least as significant for me as my prior experience in C, Pascal, Prolog, Forth, and whatnot.

• Comment from miguev , 7 months later

Haha, very big market. I'm looking for stop using PHP after several years of playing and developing with it.

I love Python, but Dreamhost is putting me on trubble with Django... so I am considering Rails (again). Maybe someday I'll have the time to switch my PyQT apps to Rails.