I am brand new to web application development, and I'm looking for a good web framework to learn in order to build a new web application (sort of a personal task/project management system). I want it to look (and act) like a serious, polished, state-of-the-art Web 2.0 site/app (i.e., not amateurish or out-dated). I've got some experience with website building, HTML, CSS, and a little javascript. I don't have any experience with server-side coding, but I do have general programming experience (i.e., not web/internet related) as well as some experience with relational databases and SQL.
I'm looking for a framework that will be relatively easy to learn, though I'm just as concerned with how easy it is to go through the learning process (i.e., find well-organized documentation, tutorials, examples, community support, etc.) as with the conceptual simplicity/ easiness of the framework itself (i.e., I don't mind learning something hard if I've got good learning resources). Also, rather than creating everything from scratch, I'm hoping to rely as much as possible on existing libraries, plug-ins, applications, examples, etc. So, a framework that's compatible with as large a universe as possible of existing solutions would be ideal. I'm also planning to link to various web service API's (e.g., Google Calendar). >From what I've read, web2py sounds like a great framework -- comprehensive, well-integrated, easy to set up, learn, and deploy, etc. However, although it sounds good on paper, I haven't yet found a single site built with web2py that looks all that impressive (at least superficially). It's easy to find quite a number of sophisticated and impressive looking sites/apps built with Ruby on Rails and Django, but I haven't seen anything remotely comparable based on web2py. I'm wondering why the disparity. Is it simply that web2py is a relative newcomer and has a small user base, or does web2py have some inherent limitations that make it less than ideal for building polished, larger scale web apps? In other words, could a site like Basecamp (www.basecamphq.com) be built just as easily with web2py as with ROR, or is web2py not really suited for that level of development? I'm also wondering about the long term viability of web2py. I don't want to adopt a framework that ends up fizzling out in a couple years. Is web2py on an upward trajectory, or is its future uncertain? For example, I notice that the web2py-developers group has only about one tenth as many members as even the Pylons and TurboGears developer groups (and one one hundreth as many as ROR and Django). Is web2py too dependent on just one or two key developers who may lose interest over time? Any insights and advice would be much appreciated. Thanks.
