WSGI - Why It's Cool

I had an urge to revisit django this morning after introducing a co-worker to it sometime back and watching him get excited about python and web development. This particular coworker has become a bit smitten with web2y lately himself, after starting down the django track. But what do these two frameworks have in common? While besides being python based - they are both WSGI compliant.

Originally when I first dove into django to do some mickey mouse web development, I sheepishly followed the tutorials and used apache2+mod_python - which is what django suggests by default and used originally before complying with WSGI (if I have my history correct). That may be the more scalable choice, but I can't say for certain since I haven't dug into the details regarding what API to use between framework and web server.

But I think using WSGI is cool - and here's why. First of all, it's becoming (or is already) an established standard. PEP 333 is the official documentation and community proposal for WSGI if more info is needed, though I found this short paper to be quite a decent and quick overview. Nearly all python web frameworks are adhering to it, including the aforementioned web2py and django. So basically what this means is that regardless of what web server I'm forced to use, we should always have our choice of web frameworks to use with that web server. Conversely, if I've written (or need to support) a python web application written using a particular framework that supports WSGI, I'll be able to deploy my web application in any web server that supports WSGI. WSGI has allowed, potentially, the same application I've written targetted to an apache environment to be used over on GAE (although obviously I'd need to adapt or rewrite the data access layer to take advantage of BigTable).

So with that said, I welcome WSGI and now think it is a *good* thing.

Lugradio Announces Its Retirement

It is a sad day in the podcasting world. The first podcast that I started listening to roughly 2 years ago, and the only podcast that I would call myself a regular listener of, is Lugradio. I am in general fan of both open source software, Linux, and British humor thus making this the quintessential tech podcast for me. Turns out that Jono and co. want to end the show before it jumps the shark, which I can't fault them for. Plus I can only imagine the amount of work and toil that goes into making a podcast and these guys are doing it all pro bono - an effort that can not be sustainable over long periods of time.

So to Jono, Aq, Chris, Adam, Matthew, Ade and a host of other presenters I say thanks for the hard work, insights, and hilarity that resulted in this fine podcast and I wish you all luck in your future endeavors.