TurboGears Development Blog

I've dabbled in TG now and then for a few years now, but still haven't produced any project using it. I feel -- that's an impression, not an analysis -- that it's a bit of a moving target. Each time I come back with the thought "ok, this looks like something I could do with TG" it turns out something has changed, and I should re-learn a component to get going. I think it could use a "freeze" -- perhaps for a few years it would have a chance of not exactly being a "best of the breed" project, but on the other hand, you would have a set of features identifying the framework and letting people get familiar with them easier. Right now I feel like it's a great environemnt for those developers who already know all the components being swapped in and out, but not very friendly to outsiders. Unlike, say, Django, which is much more finite and clearly defined: you learn this, and you know Django. In TG I see it more like: you learn this, and you're good for a year or two. Then we change the foundations from CherryPy to Pylons, the default template language from Genshi to Mako (or the other way around), add new authentication layer, change the default widget library and if you learn these, you'll be good for another year or two. This might not be the best venue to vent the frustration and perhaps I'm not being completely fair, but then you're probably much closer to the community than I am. I'll certainly subscribe your blog, if only to keep an eye on the flux of TG components.

hi Grzegorz, your comments are true and valuable. turbogears had an entry barrier, had some lacking documentation. however almost all false behaviour of the project is in the past right now. this is why i have started the turbogears development blog. it is for both web programming newbies and python newbies or anyone who wish to learn turbogears. michael pedersen and alessandro molina are being great project leaders and moving turbogears forward. from my point of view, what was lacking in turbogears was the community's activity. django is spread by the community. there can be issues with the core and the changes, etc. but i believe we can sort all of those issues easily.

Hi Grzegorz, I can see the point of your comment. As a TurboGears user I have been dissatisfied with the continuous changes of framework core technologies many times in the past. It made really hard to build and maintain a real world web app. This is the reason why the TurboGears team learned the lesson quite well and invested a lot during the 2.1 release to create an abstraction layer to hide many of the technologies behind TG. We are now heavily committed on backward compatibility for every TG application, most of the features available in TG are now available inside the tg namespace itself and directly accessing the underlying libraries is now discouraged and not supported. Even when switching a technology that is directly used by the developer, like the ToscaWidgets1 to ToscaWidgets2 switch that is going to happen in 2.2, the team did everything possible to make sure that applications that use TW1 will continue to work without issues. We have all been TG users and we faced the fear of having to trash away all our work to start again, so we will do our best to avoid that pain to new TurboGears users.

Thanks for the responses, guys. I must say you're giving me hope where I as good as forfeited it already. It's a good thing, too, because TG does deserve more exposition (and things that come with it, like more hosting offers). I just happen to have another project in the queue that could be done with TG ;) I think I'll give it a try.

Thanks for the responses, guys. You're giving me hope again where I already as good as forfeited it ;) TG does deserve more exposition (and things that come with it, like more hosting offers), and the focus on downward compatibility (and providing a consistent and constant interface for the programmer) will make it certainly easier to propagate. I just happen to have a project in the queue that could be done with TG... I think I'll give it a try.

well, Grzegorz, we are happy to have you back with TG. :) you know TG has a mailing list and an IRC channel on irc.freenode.net called #turbogers. you can get help via those two any time you need.