Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Django VS Tomcat; A productivity perspective

Attention: This post is not accurate. I was just a Tomcat noob on those days...

These days I'm fully obsessed with developing Apache Tomcat and Django at the same for two separate projects.
It's provided me a comprehensive view over development life-cycle for both of these technologies. I'll explain pros and cons of them soon, but there are some prominent points which are undeniable. For an experienced programmer, the rate of productivity in Django is about 5-10 times more than Tomcat (If, for example, we consider the development time as a base ranking). Although Tomcat is not a complete web framework like Djnago and doesn't provide such functionalities (It's a so called Web Container), but the differences still matter, I guess.
Now, I think I do know why Paul Graham told great hackers prefer to choose Python over Java, and why most recent startups choose python/ java/ Scala/ Erlang, etc. for their development. It is the first time that I have such a great practical experience and I highly recommend to try to develop two different technologies by comparing them from productivity perspective. It will be a mind blowing experience.
I'll go into technical details soon ....

UPDATE:   Now, after a while, I can say that they are not comparable by any means. Comparing Django VS. Tomcat , from Productivity perspective, is like comparing F-22 VS. C-46 aircrafts !!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

competing python/Django with Tomcat is like comparing the combination of Windows/MSOffice with just MacOS.

Tomcat is just a container, it can run apps emitted from many different frameworks. Try things like Spring, Struts or Groovy. Sure python give you more productivity gains, but so do Groovy (grails), Scala (lift), Sring(roo) and Ruby (rails)

Vahid said...

Thanks for you suggestion..
Yes, you are right.
Tomcat is a web container, and is definitely weaker than a full framework like Django, ROR, or Spring MVC.
I want to compare them, because I'm supposed to develop two "real-world" applications with both of these technologies. So, If my job was to work with Spring or Struts, I would compare them with Django instead(which is more fair comparison) ...

dnr said...

"Although Tomcat is not a complete web framework" -> Tomcat is *not* a web framework at all. Your comparison makes no sense, same as if you were comparing Apache httpd and PHP (duh!)

Vahid said...

You are right ... My post was not accurate. I was was a Tomcat noob on those days ..