On my trial to find the best python web framework(all around), I’ve just finished learning Pylons and experiencing everything it has to offer. Genshi is amazing and kills any text template engine(Django, Mako). SQLAlchemy is much different than Django’s ORM and has its advantages and disadvantages. Django’s ORM feels more natural and is much easier to learn at first. I believe that SQLAlchemy is much more powerful but the learning curve is much bigger.
Django is a great web framework and I think it is perfect for people that want to build news/content sites. Everything in Django works very well together which makes it a one-stop shop.
Pylons is awesome too but compared to Django is lacking in a lot of documentation. You need to look in a lot of different places to learn all the aspects that Pylons has to offer. I will say that Genshi + SQLAlchemy + Pylons + Routes is very very powerful.
I’m going to be moving on to TurboGears now to see what is has different. I’ve read that the documentation is more complete but for the most part the components in each framework are pretty much the same(or can be).
Here it goes.
TurboGears 1.1 will use Genshi by default, and 2.0 will provide clean set of defaults and a well integrated set of development conventions/rules on top of Pylons. So , for example you’ll be able to drop down to Routes when you need them, but will have TG style object dispatch for when you don’t want to have to deal with the power/complexity of routes.
So ultimately TG and Pylons will be very very close together. Ben Bangert and I are continually working on ways to better work together, so it will be interesting to see what happens over then next couple of months.
–Mark
I think that the ability to plug and play all the different components is a huge selling point for developers. Obviously not all components are right for all projects, but by integrating a single framework with all these different packages…now that’s power. I look forward to see what you and Ben do. In fact, I might be interested in getting involved with Pylons/TG development. I’d love to return something to the community that has given me so much.
Chris