It seems like only yesterday I attended the PyCon 2005 conference, which took place right around the same time that Ruby on Rails was really beginning to gather steam. Of all the talks I attended, one in particular stands out as attracting perhaps the largest crowd of the entire show. It was titled “PyWebOff: Mapping the python web application frameworks”, which was a rather ironic name (likely purposely so) in light of the complete lack of compelling Python-based framework solutions.

This was a fairly informal talk which generated a fair amount of discussion towards its conclusion regarding what could be done in order to satisfy the growing clamor. While it’s unclear whether any specific actions were undertaken as a direct result of that talk, what is clear is that soon thereafter several impressive projects were underway, most notably Django and Turbogears. Today I came across Pylons, which based on what I’ve read on the website, looks extremely promising.

To say the least, this is a pretty amazing turnaround, and indicative of how open source communities can quickly spring to action in order to adjust to market demands.