Web.py VS Rails

This weekend I have been having fun coding on my laptop a report tool in web.py and basic Web (database) application in Rails.

Current versions of web.py didn’t have sqlite, but I hacked in support quickly. This is so opposite to my fumbling experiences with Rails…

I have the PDF of Agile Webdev and reading the PDF (in that monster acroread) sucks. The API is good, but you have to be online, as I can’t find it on my (often offline) Debian system. So I prefer Aaron’s simple python style web.py docs. Online I love that Poignant guide to Ruby, though I still find python docs just easier.

One thing I quickly noticed is putting Rails vendor/ stuff in source control was a bad idea. I sorted things out eventually, though I am struggling to merge some conflicts in svk. Argh, pain.

The generators in Rails are great, but installing them is a bitch as I discovered on my system. I eventually installed login_generator and got something working pretty quickly. Then when I upped it back to dreamhost, it seem that DreamHost doesn’t have login generator installed either. Omg, how do I install it? So deploying and managing code in web.py is 100 times better. Even though it isn’t a Debian package. ;)

Debugging in web.py is easy. I still not sure about printing and showing up stuff the way I’d like too in Rails. That makes me really blind.

I find Rails scaffold generator, form helpers and the model construct to save a bunch of time. So with database applications with luser input, I think I will still employ Rails. For smaller (more cutting edge) projects I will definitely use web.py.

Rails is definitely a phenomenon. Their mailing list is incredibly busy.