Django: The Python Web Framework?

I’ve been reading some posts about Guido’s pronouncement that Django is the Python Web Framework to use at SciPy ‘06. I’m not sure that’s really good for the community, and I’m not sure it’s a good thing to endorse it that way. Christopher Lenz actually sums up the issues quite well in his posting: The Python Web. I think Chris raises a number of valid issues. It’s definitely not easy to separate the database models from the templating system–things are fairly tightly coupled. I also loved the fact that he brought up SQLAlchemy. I haven’t looked at SQLAlchemy in a long time, but it’s an impressive piece of work. Why anyone would spend time re-inventing the Python ORM wheel by doing anything else, is beyond me. Don’t get me wrong, I like Django. I even use Django. I just don’t think we’re at the point where we can call it the python web framework.

Update: I’ve played with SQLAlchemy recently for another project, and did some performance measurements. SQLAlchemy was very slow for lots of small objects as an ORM. It was actually very disappointing, so I can see why Django would have chosen to go another route..