[plug] Web / Database advice sought

[Brad Campbell]

> I've opted for a pairing of Django and pyjamas. I'm embarrassed to say
> it took me nearly 7 hours to get a basic hello world (using JSONRPC and
> an already established postgres database) working. On the other hand,
> now I have the tin tacks hammered in it appears to be very easy to build
> on the basic framework leveraging the limited Python experience I have.
>

Because I know there were a couple of people following along at home, 
I'll just post a quick update after a few more days with this combination.

If you are a web bunny, Pyjamas makes it very easy to put some of the 
automation into AJAX style web pages without having to learn the ins and 
outs of Java or Javascript. It also abstracts away a number of the 
common browser incompatibilities such that it mostly "just works".

The django back end took a little getting used to, and to be honest I'm 
not entirely sure just how much extra value it is on top of the standard 
database bindings for my type of application, but it certainly makes 
abstracting the database back end pretty easy.

On the whole, once you've got your head around both bits (and 
particularly debugging Pyjamas - which is easy once you know how but 
nigh on impossible until you figure it out) it makes for a very easy 
client/server application development environment.

I've also had to brush up on my (admittedly *very* rusty) Python.

I've not explored the UI design possibilities in Pyjamas beyond the 
basic horizontal and vertical panel concept (as after using Xmonad, 
auto-placement is just logical to me). I'm not sure how you'd go if you 
wanted a bit more of a free-form interface. Django has got some spiffy 
templating features that might be handy there.

As a post script, Xmonad is awesome if you have more than 2 heads, and 
your heads are different sizes!

Brad