These guys kill me, but this episode in particular is truly a riot:

Watch the video

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.

The Django Web framework has created quite a stir in recent months, and for good reason; it’s a pretty brilliant piece of work. Used to power popular website showcases such as Chicagocrime.org, and downloaded by thousands of users from around the globe, Django seems to be living up to its assertion of being the framework for “perfectionists with deadlines”.

I’ve had the distinct pleasure of working with Django creator Adrian Holovaty and lead developer Jacob Kaplan-Moss on their forthcoming Apress book introducing the framework, titled “Pro Django: Web Development Done Right”. You can preorder it now on Amazon.com.

The book will be published under the GFDL and will eventually be made available for free download on the Django website. However, in the meantime we’re encouraging others to post feedback about each chapter on the super-sweet commenting system Adrian and Jacob have recently setup. Currently two chapters are available (1 and 2), and you can read them and post comments at http://www.djangobook.com/.