> These guys seem to have no clue about the increasingly > pervasive nature of computing in society today. There are many very > smart and intelligent "beginners" who know little about web frameworks > or even Python. They simply look for tools to develop their ideas. > In fact, you see many scientists and researchers who write programs > and develop webapps (in particular). My thinking is in the short > future many more (smart) people who will be writing programs, > naturally. They will look for tools that in the easiest manner > facilitate the creation of what they want to do.
I just want to second this point. I fit this description. I'm a business guy, and no part of my job description would mention setting up databases or writing software, but often software is a way to increase efficiency dramatically, even if it's just a VB script in Excel to automate some repetitive or complex task. I recognized that my team would benefit a lot if we had a gold copy of certain data in a database accessible to everyone (with normal CRUD features and some canned ways of presenting it). In the past, I would have thrown together a MS Access DB, but I realized that a web-based app would be far better, and that the web frameworks out there would make that equally as easy to put together. I took some CS classes in college (15 years ago) and wrote a decent amount of code back then (Fortran, Lisp, C) but had never used Python nor had I ever done any web-related development (heck, I even had to brush up on HTML!) before deciding to set this up. After looking around at frameworks (with the most time spent on Django including some initial app prototyping), I chose web2py. It was a no- brainer, because it was very easy to get started with, and yet as far as I can tell, there is nothing that I cannot do in web2py that I could do, or could do easier, in any other framework. I taught myself Python to use web2py, and I put together an app that we now use in production in our firm. It was a nights and weekends project, and it took longer than it should have because of my inexperience, but in the grand scheme of things it took very little effort relative to the value it created. Web2py is to me the next generation of MS Access, and I mean that as a compliment. MS Access first opened up the world of database-driven applications to business people. With Access they could throw together a simple application to manage a database (CRUD and reports) without having to hire a developer or wait on their IT staff to write one. Web2py does the same thing. It is easy enough for a business user to throw something together very quickly and be up and running immediately. The amount of development expertise required is trivial. For a basic app, if you read the web2py book, you don't even have to understand more than the very basics of python. For really, big complex apps, there may be some reason that Django is preferable - I'll leave that to the professional web developers to figure out the tools they need - but I can't say enough about how great my experience has been with web2py, as a non-developer looking for the "tools that in the easiest manner facilitate the creation of what I want to do" (to use your words). I just needed to get stuff done, and web2py worked.
