February, 16 2004

The other day I wrote that I planned to use Twisted to build my own blogging software.

This means using Python. There were a few different reasons for choosing Python:

1. Python has all the necessary Internet connectivity and plenty of interesting packages available.
2. Python applications tend to be a lot less memory intensive than Java, which means they can be hosted comparatively cheaply. It’s possible to get a full-featured Python app in 8Mb. I’m not sure that Java Hello World runs in 8 Mb these days.
3. Most importantly, since I’m doing this as a hobby, I plan to enjoy it, and Python is my current pet language.

Having decided on Python, Ian Bicking’s Web Framework Shootout was my next stop. Because I’d like to use Python commercially, I was looking for a framework that a) is already in wide use, b) is well documented, c) can be used to build functionality stunningly quickly (at least, compared to J2EE) and d) would be acceptable to the clients and other developers of the company I work for.

The two frameworks that stand out for me were Twisted and Webware. I suspect that I will find these two frameworks to be approximately equivalent in terms of utility, with Webware more palatable to our developers due to their Servlet/JSP/EJB background. However, I didn’t want to pass up Twisted without having tried it at least once, so Twisted got the guernsey for my first big project, and I’ll use Webware for the next one.