22 Dec 2005 titus   » (Journeyer)

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and an Enthusiastic Kwanzaa!

I probably won't write much over the weekend, so... have a good time over the holidays, folks.

WSGI, Paste, marketing.

I was going to write a long entry on "what is WSGI", partly in response to Ian's post, but I'd rather code than opine. At least for today ;).

Still, here's my personal take on the situation. In general, I'm conservative: I didn't like list comprehension, iterators, and metaclasses when they were first implemented. (I still hate the decorator syntax.) I didn't think WSGI was worth much at first. And I still have a hard time comprehending the structure of Python Paste, if not the intent.

I've changed my mind about list comprehension, iterators, metaclasses, and WSGI. I suspect I will eventually end up changing my mind about Paste; I'm already contemplating implementing stuff with Paste hooks.

My hunch, based on my experience with new Python features and WSGI, is that Ian (like GvR and PJE) is busy solving problems that I will not encounter for quite some time. It may take me a while to figure that out, and I may even end up not liking Ian's choices. But I strongly believe that WSGI and Paste are better long-term bets than Yet Another Python Web Framework -- it's like betting on a decoupled, decentralized content delivery system rather than relying on a few large content providers to make the right technical choices.

If there's one problem I'd like to solve, it's the marketing problem we seem to have with WSGI and Paste. It's time to change the effin' names. More on that next time I'm feeling creative.

Paranthetically, I've also been thinking on and off about making a proposal to unify Web handling in the Python 3000 std lib with a 'web' module; 'web.interface' for WSGI, 'web.url' for URL handling, 'web.browser' for a mechanize-style browsing interface, 'web.cgi'... etc. Anyone interested?

--titus

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