The days of web development where a project like a blog or a wiki would takes months to build are gone. Welcome to the rapid web development era.
Are you still in the slow lane when it comes to web development? (Image by Luc B)
This is the new reality. With the advent of web frameworks like Ruby on Rails, Django, Pylons, CakePHP, TurboGears, Tapestry and the likes, the world of web development is changing quite a lot. Development is getting more agile too. It seems to me like yesterday was the time of dynamic website with classic ASP.
What does it all mean? Like many new methods that brings renewed productivity, you have to adapt or die. There is no other option. What are you going to tell your client when he comes to ask you how long and how expensive it is going to be to build his next web application when you know that this same client is going to go and see your competitor that is using a rapid web development framework with the same question? For that sole reason, you should start today and learn one of these frameworks.
That is what I did a few weeks ago. I started learning Pylons. Since it gives a lot a flexibility to the developer and uses python, I decided to go for that one. That framework is not what I would call a popular framework. It is still considered beta, but so far I like it.
After toying with it for a few hours, I choose to go for one of the first few tutorial they propose which is called the QuickWiki. The goal is to build a fully fonctional wiki in 20 minutes. Impressive, is not it? Well, I did it, but not in 20 minutes. I guess it would take that much time for someone who knew the ins and outs of Pylons, but I was still new to it. It took me about 3 hours to complete it. Nonetheless, I was in awe when I finished that tutorial.
Where does all this gained speed come from? Most of these frameworks use an object-relational-mapper (ORM), some kind of model-view-controller approach, an elegant template system and many day-to-day tools that simplify the work of the web developer. Most of these tools were already present in the development world, but these frameworks brings them together in a brillant way.
Get yourself ready and hop in that new high-speed car for your web development.
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