Web Application Frameworks: C++ vs Python

Question

I am familiar with both Python and C++ as a programmer. I was thinking of writing my own simple web application and I wanted to know which language would be more appropriate for server-side web development.

Some things I'm looking for:

• It has to be intuitive. I recognize that Wt exists and it follows the model of Qt. The one thing I hate about Qt is that they encourage strange syntax through obfuscated means (e.g. the "public slots:" idiom). If I'm going to write C++, I need it to be standard, recognizable, clean code. No fancy shmancy silliness that Qt provides.
• The less non-C++ or Python code I have to write, the better. The thing about Django (Python web framework) is that it requires you pretty much write the HTML by hand. I think it would be great if HTML forms took more of a wxWidgets approach. Wt is close to this but follows the Qt model instead of wxWidgets.

I'm typically writing video games with C++ and I have no experience in web development. I want to write a nice web site for many reasons. I want it to be a learning experience, I want it to be fun, and I want to easily be able to concentrate on "fun stuff" (e.g. less boilerplate, more meat of the app).

Any tips for a newbie web developer? I'm guessing web app frameworks are the way to go, but it's just a matter of picking one.

Answer 1

I would go with Wt because:

• You already know C++
• It has a nice layout system, so you don't need to know lots of HTML
• It is very well written and a pleasure to code in
• Your deployed apps will handle 50 times the load of the python app on less hardware (from experience with pylons apps, 10,000 times the load of a plone app :P)
• It has all the libraries that the guy in the first question says it doesn't and more
  • In built development webserver
  • Templating language
  • ORM
  • unit testing help
  • open-id and user+password authentication
  • A brilliant widget library
• Web 2.0 isn't an after thought; it wasn't designed on a Request+Response model like all the python frameworks (as far as I know), but on an event driven interactive model.
  • It uses WebSockets if available
  • Falls back to normal ajax gracefully if not
  • Falls back to http for browsers like linx
• It is more like coding a gui app than a web app, which is probably what you're used to
• It is statically typed and therefore less error prone. Does def delete(id): take an int or a string ?
• The unit tests (on my apps at least) take 10-100 times less time than my python app unit tests to run (including the compile time)
• It has a strong and friendly community. All my email list posts are answered in 0-3 days.

Answer 2

If you'd like to avoid writing HTML, you could try GWT. However, in my experience, using an intermediate framework to generate HTML and ECMAScript never works anywhere near as well as hand-writing the pages.

[edit] nikow mentions in the comments that Pyjamas is a port of GWT to Python.

Regarding the language, if given the choice between C++ and Python I would pick Python 100% of the time. Even ignoring the obvious difference in abstraction between those languages, Python simply has more useful libraries than C++. You don't have to write your own development-oriented web server -- Django comes with one. You don't need to write a custom template library -- Python has Genshi. Django comes with a capable ORM layer, or for even more control you can use SQLAlchemy. It's barely a contest.

Answer 3

• Django is good point to start web development it is great framework
• If you look for C++ take a look on CppCMS, it is much more close to Django, it is not like Wt that mimics Qt.

In any case, it is really depends on your needs. C++ can be used for embedded or high performance web applications, but for medium range web sites Django would be better. (and I'm developer of CppCMS)

Answer 4

I think you better go firt python in your case, meanwhile you can extend cppCMS functionalities and write your own framework arround it.

wt was a good idea design, but somehow not that suitable.