Groovie

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about web programmers and the web frameworks they choose, or don’t choose, and why. I’m mainly going to talk about Python Web Frameworks as the majority of them have small communites, and possible reasons this could be.

I only started using Python for web development about a year ago, and it took me about a month to settle down on a web framework. In that time, I looked over at least a dozen different frameworks. There’s so many python web frameworks, quite a few people have actually setup entire pages and sections of their site just to covering them all.

I think part of the reason for the proliferation of frameworks is because of the nature of many Python programmers, as I briefly mentioned in a prior post on Making Decisions for Others.

The recent appearence of Django on the Python web framework scene I’m sure has quite a few other Python web framework developers wondering, “Why isn’t the web framework I made getting this much attention and use?”

A Common Base

Many of these same people would like to blame it on hype and good marketing. While that will certaainly boost initial usage, I don’t believe it will create a lasting user base. I think a huge driving factor behind Rails and Django, besides for the hype and marketing, is the fact that both of them make a lot of decisions for you. These decisions start the users all off at a common base of understanding.

The linear progression from:

1. Never used the framework
2. Wrote the tutorial app
3. Wrote their own basic webapp
4. Wrote an advanced web application

Makes it easy for people a step or two up, to help other new users join them. Because the steps they all take are the same steps to achieve greater understanding of the web framework, they can easily help new users get to where they are. Most, if not all the other Python web frameworks I’ve seen are so flexible its hard to have a common base of understanding amongst new users. The process looks more like this:

1. Never used the framework
2. Researched the frameworks options and choices to find a possible starting point
3. Wrote a basic web application using method X
4. Wrote an advanced web app using method X

The flexibility of the web framework becomes an obstacle to a strong user-base in this case, as it fragments the users by the methodology they’re using to build their webapp. It also reduces the common re-usable components available, since different users will utilize different options of the framework and have possibly very different starting points.

Have a Tutorial Application

Also lacking from many Python web frameworks is a clear and obvious Tutorial application. Ideally the front page of a Python web framework should be an obvious path to become an experienced user of said framework. Such as:

1. Install the framework
2. Write a basic tutorial application
3. Look here/there for instruction as need to write your own more complex application

A good tutorial should leave a user feeling confident that they know how to install and start with a common base for writing their own web applications. It’s also amazing how many problems people can have just getting a framework installed and running in a minimal configuration. Having a tutorial that leaves them with a functioning web application gives them a big leap forward.

Since many users will do the first tutorial web application, other new users can give help to even newer users that run into a problem. This is where the common base effect really provides some power.

Methods of Fragmentation

The Python frameworks I’ve tried and used have fragmented their starting points and users in various ways. All of them as a result of their “flexibility and power”. Here are a few common trends of fragmentation I’ve seen:

• Let the user choose various template language schemes (Use ZPT, or Cheetah, or…)
• Let the user choose from web paradigm (MVC, page-driven, pipelined…)
• No base or example configuration for a fully working webapp (So everyone sets up their first application slightly differently)

The last one I listed, is probably the easiest to solve, especially with useful web framework template creators like Python Paste. Obviously, removing the first two will be seen by many Python web framework developers as undesirable. I think it’d really help the users though, as it gives them more in common with each other. If they all use the same paradigm, and the same template language with your framework, their ability to help each other increases and they feel confident they made the “right” choice as well.

Assumptions

I’ve assumed for the purpose of this post, that Python web framework makers are interested in having a large user-base. This isn’t always the case, I’m sure some just want a small, very experienced user-base that isn’t going to be asking basic questions like, “I can’t connect to my database like you show in the tutorial”.

I can understand that, but for the other Python web framework makers out there, try and consider some of the things I mentioned. There are a lot of Python coders out there, and a lot of them can live without having 4 template language choices and 2 different design paradigms. So when adding that feature that’d let people get so much “power and flexibility”, will it fragment your user-base?

Designing web pages is a pretty annoying task for most web programmers I’ve met, including myself. I’ll be first to admit it, I’m not too hot when it comes to web design. I haven’t even bothered changing the default theme for the blog engine I’m using.

What would be really slick is a sort of Web Design for Programmers book, ala Joel’s User Interface Design for Programmers writings and book. I’ve read quite a few books on web design that try to go over basics, but in the end for some reason it always feels like as a programmer, I’m missing those creative juices that result in an unique and interesting website.

There’s a fairly nice series with this exact title over at PeachPit.com that goes over some of the fundamentals. What I think would be ideal, is a website entirely devoted to this topic, with examples and layouts that are good starting points for your own web projects.

I searched around on Google quite a bit, and only came up with the PeachPit articles I cited above. A List Apart is a rather nice site to learn specific web design techniques, but doesn’t really focus on application of the techniques as related to the website on the whole. This part is left up to the designer, which doesn’t help a programmer much.

Having a beautiful website, or even just an aesthetically pleasing one can make a big difference even to other programmers, whether they want to acknowledge it or not. One of the clearest examples of this I’ve seen is with web frameworks and toolkits. A great looking website can get people into a toolkit/framework that might’ve otherwise moved onto a site that looked more “interesting”.

I’ve read quite a bit of Paul Graham’s articles regarding Lisp, how awesome Lisp is, how much of a dufus one might be for using a language programmed for dufuses.

Now, before I start, I should mention that these posts are quite old, and I don’t really want to start a flame fest over this again. However, I couldn’t help but notice today with a problem I had in my code, how easy Python made the solution (Zach points out the Lisp solution is quite succinct as well).

Without a doubt, Lisp excels at recursion, function/code generation, and closures. This frequently leaves Lisp looking like a god when you see how many lines of code other languages take to replicate the examples Paul chooses to compare (which always revolve around the things Lisp excels at as Paul Prescod points out)

Today, I came across a fairly common case, where I had a function taking keyword arguments and collecting them all. That would look like this in Python:

def somefunc(**kargs):

Now, if I want to take two of those keyword being passed in, and set some defaults so they’re not required but will always have something set in the function body, its rather easy:

def somefunc(keyone='default', keytwo='anotherdefault', **kargs):

So in one line, I have now added two defaults that will be available in my function body for use. How succinct is this in Lisp? What about in Ruby?

I cite two languages that came off very well in the Accumulator Generator shoot-off. They Ruby doesn’t do quite as well in this case, which I’ve actually encountered far more than the code generation cases Graham is apt to cite. (I actually like Ruby and am now using it quite a bit, I’ll be quite happy when it has keyword args)

What’s even worse is where in this thread that I referenced above, Graham at the end says he has no clue how one would create a basic class to handle accumulation in Lisp. I find that rather disturbing that something so easy in Python has Graham saying, “God only knows.” how to do it in Common Lisp Richard points out below that this is because PaulG is rather keen on macros, and not so big on OO. That makes complete sense to me as Lisp did not start out with OO features, those were added later when it was all the rage. When working in an elegant functional language like Lisp I can see why one would never have to consider OO.

That alone should indicate that many technical comparisons between languages can be easily skewed towards a language by using examples that heavily favor built-in abilities of the language one chooses to boast about.

In the end, I’m left with the belief that different languages have different applications. Claiming one language is the be-all, and is always better for any task is about as false as claiming that a language has no problems or issues.

Within certain realms it does make sense to compare languages, scripting vs scripting, functional vs functional, etc. But leaping to a comparison of functional/dynamic-typed vs non-functional/static-typed is typically going to result in some strange claims.

Anyways, if you feel like commenting, try and come up with an example of where Language X (that you use) has a very succinct solution compared to Language Z (all the others). It’d be great to compare some examples and see areas in which different languages fall flat on their face when it comes to succinctness. (Ie, in most dynamic languages, you’d have to add several lines of code to ensure variables are the type you want. A feature/annoyance of static-typed languages)

Update: An anonymous user kindly informs me that there’s no foundation for my claim that some languages are better in certain realms than others, unfortunately the anonymous user fails to say why.

Ruby has no keyword arguments currently (Ruby 2 will have them and keyword collectors ** as Python does). To even approximate my Python example in Ruby, you’d first need to declare the argument as optional which has the side effect of packaging it into an Array. Wheras in Python **kargs packages up the rest of the key/vals under a dictionary. If someone would like to write out the full translation in Ruby, I’d be happy to put it up here, but I doubt its going to be pretty (until Ruby 2).

Zach was helpful and provided an example showing that the specific task I cited is fairly short in Lisp as well, looking like this:

(defun somefunc (&rest kwargs
                 &key (keyone "default") (keytwo "anotherdefault")
                 &allow-other-keys)
                 ; ...
                 )

I would like to make it very clear that my point is not that Python is better, but that technical comparisons can be warped to favor certain languages. This is the same point Paul Prescod makes, and what I’d actually like to see is more technical comparisons that make this point obvious.

Really. I mean it. Where’s Single Sign-On?

Liberty Allienace was started 4 years ago to provide a competing alternative to Microsoft’s Passport. It’s taken Liberty Alliance years to get to any sort of usable starting point, while Microsoft has actually had developer code out there and usable since 2001. I’ve even toyed with some Passport login code in Perl 4 years ago.

Since that time, Passport is used rarely if ever on the web, and the Liberty Alliance has tons of docs to show, implementation specs, and even a Java toolkit for Liberty Alliance. Yet I don’t see many (or any?) websites using the federated login of Liberty Alliance. Where’s my single sign-on??

In the time of Web 2.0 a toolkit for the major scripting languages should exist. Why isn’t there one for PHP? Perl? Python? Rails? Has anyone done any calculations in how “good” a website or web service has to be before a user is ready to take the plunge to setup yet another username/password? This is an obstacle that gets in the way of a website having more members, and anyone in the business of getting members should want as few obstacles as possible.

I know I’m not even signing up or using some services purely because I can’t deal with yet another username/password to remember. I can’t even remember the ones I’m currently signed up for, so I have to use software that does password/site remembering for me, in my case Password Wallet.

So what are the supposed strenghts of web services/applications?

1. You don’t need to install any software
2. You don’t need to worry about upgrades
3. You can use it anywhere

Out of these, #3 is the one that has been lost nowadays thanks to a password/username program. I can’t get to any website I’ve registered on without my personal computer, because I can’t remember that many usernames and passwords. Some will say, “just use the same user/password everywhere”, and many people do. Even this doesn’t always work though, if someone else signed up using that username first.

It’s been FOUR YEARS since the big hub-bub over Microsoft Password and Liberty Alliance, and we still don’t have handy little toolkits in the most commonly used scripting languages to interact with them. I don’t know about you, but I find this pretty sad.

So tonight I took the plunge, and converted the blog to Typo. It’s totally slick, and I’m digging it. Plus when I want to tweak stuff, I don’t have to mess around with Perl.

It’s currently lacking a feature I had grown accustomed to, Technorati auto-pinging. I’m thinking this would be a good thing to contribute, so I’ll start digging into the code and see what needs to be updated.

Migration was also a bit of a hassle, as it appears the MovableType 3 migration script only is happy if you use MySQL for your old and new blog. Getting it migrated to Typo required dumping the MovableType database using pg_dump, and loading it into the Typo database. Then the mt3.rb script needed to be edited to remove all the table prefixes. After this, the script happily imported all my prior posts, comments, and trackbacks.