People always seem to be discussing which language/framework is best, why one is better than the other. I generally don’t like to join in on such discussions as I believe you can achieve what you want using any language. However, recently I’ve found that I’ve sort of fallen victim to such discussions.

When I was looking at the different web techs I would like to look into, I had no idea where to start. After a little while, I decided on looking at a small selection of the popular frameworks. Well, which one do I start with? I did a little reading on everyone on my list and came across a lot of comments about Ruby on Rails along the lines of “It scales terribly, they all fall apart when it gets big “. Yikes, scaling issues when the application gets a lot of users? I definitely don’t want to look at Rails first, I’d have to address all of the problems. This is why I chose Django as the first web development framework to look at.

Well, taking a step back, it seems a little silly of me to have jumped to conclusions like that. Researching a little into this matter, it seems that people who made the comment of Rails not scaling etc, probably had no idea what actual issue was with these big sites. A good example of this is the commonly quoted Twitter issue. Alex Payne clarified what the problem was in his post back in May. Even with his post, people like us who are not actually doing any web development at Twitter have no idea what the precise problem is.

So, if you’re comparing new technologies, it is probably a good idea to fully look into them before deciding if an issue really is an issue with the technology.

To embark on my little journey, I needed to find an environment that could accommodate all of my needs. Given the variety of languages/framework/web servers I plan to look into, I couldn’t settle less than having complete control over my server. Enter Slicehost, a company that offers VPS for prices that are quite affordable. I went with a basic 256mb slice for $20/month. They offer some pretty good features and are quite developer friendly. What really got me was the great set of articles they provide in their help section, definitely check them out.

Whoohoo! My own little server. Time to start moving foward…first on my list…Django…

Here is a list of frameworks/technologies I want to examine. (in no particular order or relationship) I will categorize them later.

• Python + frameworks (Django, TurboGears etc…)
• Ruby + frameworks (Rails, Merb etc…)
• Java/Wicket
• SQLite and its capabilities
• Different “web” servers (nginx, lighttpd, mongrel etc…)
• Google App Engine
• GWT

This is mostly a list of things I want to look at first and should keep me busy for a while. I would be examining these on the basis of the learning curve, documentation, ease of setup/use, scalability, capability etc.

Once every so often I find the need to step back and evaluate the work I’m doing. I feel that it helps me understand myself a little better and from that I can figure out what it is I really want to do. I find it to be immensely rewarding and makes me a lot happier. For instance, the last time I went through this process, I switched from writing software for a cell phones to web development. It helped me escape the madness that is the cell phone industry and I am currently living a sane life, giving me an opportunity to learn everything that I want to.

For a while now I’ve been hearing a lot of buzz about new web development frameworks and technologies. I’ve been looking for a chance to learn about them and see how they compare with my current work. I also want to see how adopting these new technologies can improve businesses. With the emerging of some side projects, I decided it was time to explore the vast plain of web development in the direction of frameworks and technologies and hence the name of this blog.