Dev-Picayune

Brandon and I were exchanging emails the other day about the state of Python IDE’s and specifically about IDE support for GUI’s. My thought was that while nearly every distribution of Python has Tkinter with it, it’s just so impotent that despite being included it’s not really the standard GUI library for Python. Whether it’s wxPython, or PyGTK or something else, there’s plenty of debate on GUI frameworks and Python. That has certainly hurt the Python community a little if what you’re looking for a great editor IDE combined with a great GUI layout tool.

So what does this have to do with web frameworks? I’d say that unlike the GUI thing, we’re probably better off in a sense because Python retains it’s own identity. Unlike Ruby, where one can barely think or mention the name Ruby without also saying “Rails”. It’s like saying Marco without saying Polo. Ruby has (in my opinion) lost a fair amount of identity because of Rails. Certainly, there are plenty of projects in the Ruby community that by their nature will start to reverse that (one that immediately comes to mind is IronRuby). But just imagine for a moment if Python was just known for one web framework only. What if it was “Python turning TurboGears” or “Python on Pylons” or “Twisted Python (aka Python in a Knot)” or even “Python was his Django”. Python would lose some of its identity. So, for those who like to revel in the diversity of web solutions for Python, enjoy! And for those who wish the community would just pick one framework, they can just go to Zope.