Recently, it seems like everyone's been focused upon creating The One Framework -- the Ruby on Rails of Python. In fact, I'm almost as guilty as everyone else. We have failed in this regard, and we will continue to fail. We've been struggling to find the best practices and combination of tools to create Joe User's average database-backed dynamic web site and application, and not only can't we agree on how to do it, no actual end-users care when polished solutions like Rails and ASP.NET are in town. Not only that, by many accounts Ruby seems to be overtaking Python in its rate of growth. Personally, I'd rather write Python.

But oh, how quick are we to forget Python's smashing successes in the Web world. We've got Plone, probably the most popular and comprehensive CMS out there. We've got the platform its built on, Zope, which is (from what I hear) fairly popular, too. We've had PyBloxsom, which until WordPress came along was a very widespread blogging system. Let's also not forget MoinMoin and Mailman, some of the most widespread Wiki and mailing list applications on the Web today. And hell, we've got Python's "killer" web app, Trac, which just about everyone is using these days. And oh, BitTorrent. I know it's not a Web application in the traditional server-side sense, but it just shows how capable Python truly is.

What do all of these applications have in common? They certainly don't share a web framework; most of them are developed specific to that application and tailored to various deployment platforms (CGI, FastCGI, custom server, mod_python). Python appears to be falling behind in the world of custom-made Web applications, but in the world of generic, reusable Web applications, Python is doing great.

And let's not forget about the great achievement of Web-SIG: WSGI. Now, we have a system that lets us write an application once and deploy it upon any WSGI-compliant server or gateway (to name a few, ISAPI, mod_python, CGI, FastCGI, SCGI, custom HTTP server).

Here's what I propose: screw Web frameworks for now. We won't win in the Rails generation. Perhaps when some ingenious Python programming comes up with that next-generation Web framework (Seaside + ZODB + LINQ + ASP.NET + PyMeld + LivePage + CrackAJAX, anyone?), we can give the Web framework wars another shot.

For today, let's work on making generic Python products. Let's make a kick-ass community forums system, an incredible blogging system, a news script, a CPanel/Webmin clone that people will use because of their features, not their programming language. Commentary is a great example of what I'm talking about. Let's not forget to make sure Trac, Plone, and all of our applications run seamlessly on WSGI, and let's make our WSGI gateways ironclad and diverse.

And, most importantly, let's all get behind what I believe is the most pressing and important concept in the Python web development world today: Paste Deploy. What Python needs more than anything is a brainless, quick-and-easy way of connecting applications to gateways. I want to drop a CGI file on to a Web server, point its config file to (the fictional) pyBB-1.0.0.egg, chmod it, and have it Just Work. I want to do the same thing for FastCGI. In fact, what I would love more than anything would be a portable mod_wsgi across Apache, LightTPD, and IIS: a module that would let me drop a .egg file into a directory and have it automatically pick up and install the WSGI application from the archive. Once we've got this, a standard, portable way of easily installing ANY Python web app, we'll be getting somewhere.

Happy hacking.