I'm wondering if there's such a thing as Django-like ease of web app development combined with good deployment, debugging and other tools?
Django is a very productive framework for building content-heavy sites; the best I've tried and a breath of fresh air compared to some of the Java monstrosities out there. However it's written in Python which means there's little real support in the way of deployment/packaging, debugging, profilers and other tools that make building and maintaining applications much easier.
Ruby has similar issues and although I do like Ruby much better than I like Python, I get the impression that Rails is roughly in the same boat at Django when it comes to managing/supporting the app.
Has anyone here tried both Django and Grails (or other web frameworks) for non-trivial projects? How did they compare?
You asked for someone who used both Grails and Django. I've done work on both for big projects. Here's my Thoughts:
IDE's:
Django works really well in Eclipse, Grails works really well in IntelliJ Idea.
Debugging:
Practically the same (assuming you use IntelliJ for Grails, and Eclipse for Python). Step debugging, inspecting variables, etc... never need a print statement for either. Sometimes django error messages can be useless but Grails error messages are usually pretty lengthy and hard to parse through.
Time to run a unit test:
django: 2 seconds.
Grails: 20 seconds (the tests themselves both run in a fraction of a second, it's the part about loading the framework to run them that takes the rest... as you can see, Grails is frustratingly slow to load).
Deployment:
Django: copy & paste one file into an apache config, and to redeploy, just change the code and reload apache.
Grails: create a .war file, deploy it on tomcat, rinse and repeat to redeploy.
Programming languages:
Groovy is TOTALLY awesome. I love it, more so than Python. But I certainly have no complaints.
Plugins:
Grails: lots of broken plugins (and can use every java lib ever).
Django: a few stable plugins, but enough to do most of what you need.
Database:
Django: schema migrations using South, and generally intuitive relations.
Grails: no schema migrations, and by default it deletes the database on startup... WTF
Usage:
Django: startups (especially in the Gov 2.0 space), independent web dev shops.
Grails: enterprise
Hope that helps!
However it's written in Python which
means there's little real support in
the way of deployment/packaging,
debugging, profilers and other tools
that make building and maintaining
applications much easier.
Python has:
a great interactive debugger, which makes very good use of Python REPL.
easy_install anv virtualenv for dependency management, packaging and deployment.
profiling features comparable to other languages
So IMHO you shouldn't worry about this things, use Python and Django and live happily :-)
Lucky for you, newest version of Django runs on Jython, so you don't need to leave your whole Java ecosystem behind.
Speaking of frameworks, I evaluated this year:
Pylons (Python)
webpy (Python)
Symfony (PHP)
CakePHP (PHP)
None of this frameworks comes close to the power of Django or Ruby on Rails. Based on my collegue opinion I could recommend you kohana framework. The downside is, it's written in PHP and, as far as I know, PHP doesn't have superb tools for debugging, profiling and packaging of apps.
Edit: Here is a very good article about packaging and deployment of Python apps (specifically Django apps). It's a hot topic in Django community now.
The statement that grails deletes the database on start-up is completely wrong. It's behavior on start-up is completely configurable and easy to configure. I generally use create-drop when running an app in dev mode. I use update when I run in test and production.
I also love the bootstrap processing that lets me pre-configure test users, data, etc by environment in Grails.
I'd love to see someone who has really built and deployed some commercial projects comment on the pros / cons. Be a really interesting read.
Grails.
Grails just looks like Rails (Ruby),but it uses groovy which is simpler than java. It uses java technology and you can use any java lib without any trouble.
I also choose Grails over simplicity and there are lots of java lib (such as jasper report, jawr etc) and I am glad that now they join with SpringSource which makes their base solid.
I have two friends who originally started writing an application using Ruby on Rails, but ran into a number of issues and limitations. After about 8 weeks of working on it, they decided to investigate other alternatives.
They settled on the Catalyst Framework, and Perl. That was about 4 months ago now, and they've repeatedly talked about how much better the application is going, and how much more flexibility they have.
With Perl, you have all of CPAN available to you, along with the large quantity of tools included. I'd suggest taking a look at it, at least.
The "good deployment" issue -- for Python -- doesn't have the Deep Significance that it has for Java.
Python deployment for Django is basically "move the files". You can run straight out of the subversion trunk directory if you want to.
You can, without breaking much of a sweat, using the Python distutils and build yourself a distribution kit that puts your Django apps into Python's site-packages. I'm not a big fan of it, but it's really easy to do.
Since my stuff runs in Linux, I have simple "install.py" scripts that move stuff out of the Subversion directories into /opt/this and /opt/that directories. I use an explicit path settings in my Apache configuration to name those directories where the applications live.
Patching can be done by editing the files in place. (A bad policy.) I prefer to edit in the SVN location and rerun my little install to be sure I actually have all the files under control.
cakephp.org
Cakephp is really good, really close to ruby on rails (1.2). It is in php, works very well on shared hosts and is easy to implement.
The only downside is that the documentation is somewhat lacking, but you quickly get it and quickly start doing cool stuff.
I totally recommend cakephp.
Personally I made some rather big projects with Django, but I can compare only with said "montrosities" (Spring, EJB) and really low-level stuff like Twisted.
Web frameworks using interpreted languages are mostly in its infancy and all of them (actively maintained, that is) are getting better with every day.
By "good deployment" are you comparing it with Java's EAR files, which allow you to deploy web applications by uploading a single file to a J2EE server? (And, to a lesser extent, WAR files; EAR files can have WAR files for dependent projects)
I don't think Django or Rails have gotten quite to that point yet, but I could be wrong... zuber pointed out an article with more details on the Python side.
Capistrano may help out on the Ruby side.
Unfortunately, I haven't really worked with either Python or Ruby that much, so I can't help out on profilers or debuggers.
Related
I have a couple of Python 2.7 scripts I need to have them run from a webpage. I've never done this before, although I'm comfortable coding in Python and well versed in Linux, Apache, Nginx.
I see many different frameworks like the old CGI, WSGI, Django, etc.
I need some recommendations for a framework that would require not much changes on my Python code for it to run on a webpage.
It seems CGI would be fairly easy for me, but since there are many newer frameworks, I need some advices.
Thanks!
Flask is probably the most straightforward Python web framework to use. It touts itself as a micro framework, and is very, very fast to get up and running with.
If you have a relatively straightforward set of requirements, I'd highly recommend giving it a look over. You can find the "hello" world example on the project's homepage here: http://flask.pocoo.org/
Depending on your project's requirements (does it need to be highly available/resilient?), you may even be able to get by using Flask's built-in development webserver along with a process control system such as supervisord. I wouldn't recommend this for heavy or production workloads, but for something running out of production this set up would work just fine for you.
If you're looking for client side browser frameworks in Python, there are skulpt and brython.
When I was looking for a similar framework, I decided to learn leave python for a javascript framework (particularly AngularJS and Node JS) for a client side language. I personally felt that the size of community and learning resources available in those two areas were more robust, and provided greater opportunity to master the framework.
I am a web developer working mainly with C# on ASP.NET (Webforms and MVC)..
I have worked previously with PHP and Other Frameworks and languages of the sort..
I am currently looking and focusing all my development on 2 platforms..
One Proprietary and Industry Class Framework (ASP.NET MVC)
and
One Opensource and Free Framework (Insert framework of choice here)
I have no experience with python or ruby but would like to learn one and use either django or rails..
While i understand both are very different from ASP.NET please advise me which one would be the smoothest transition.. (or the one most worth the migration pain is better!)
Thanks
Daniel
I've been learning rails and loving it. The pain point with it is the documentation - version 3 of rails has just come out, and not all of the documentation you will come across will be up to date. However, you can pretty easily get by.
That said, I'm loving it. Ruby is a very elegant language. You can get a feel for rails by reading through this guide:
http://guides.rubyonrails.org/getting_started.html
I did ASP, then PHP, now ASP .NET for the last 5 years, dabbled with Python now I'm doing some RoR. Don't learn something 'similar' just to get outside of the MSFT stack. Check out Ruby on Rails, it's a different mindset, and you will learn a new way of thinking about a lot of things that will make your ASP .Net code better.
For me Python / Django felt much better and easier. Less magical, but Ruby on Rails is pretty amazing and has a lot going for it.
I would suggest you check out www.tekpub.com where Rob Conrey a MSFT .Net guy does a ton of tutorials including video tutorials on RoR 3.
With open source frameworks, I would choose between RoR and Django. Just stay away from anything PHP-based.
First, I would say learn the base language first, to an extent, and go with the framework built on the language you prefer. For example, I do django because I learned python, not ruby. I tried ruby when I was hired for a rails project (for frontend work, but nevermind), and it just felt too... "fluffy" for my taste.
Second, there's the issue of documentation. Django's docs are always up-to-date (keeping them so is part of the django development process) on 99% of topics you would want to look up, and are fairly easy to follow once you get the basics. The other 1% of things you would want to look up are generally completely undocumented, derivable from the source or else not possible (often possible with a third-party app, though, which are easily found). I can't speak too much for rails, but I was able to find little usable documentation in my short foray into it; perhaps I'm just too used to Django's docs.
Finally there's the development environment -- you're likely to have multiple projects on one machine, possibly with conflicting dependencies. With django/python, you get virtualenv and pip as part of the python dev process (or at least you should). These tools work very well for setting up secluded environments for separate projects. Ruby doesn't have any standardized tools for this purpose, but there is a gem called sandbox that worked well enough toward this purpose when I used it; IMO though, it seems as if it has to fight against ruby's natural behavior to get the concept to work. It looks like it hasn't seen active development in a couple years, unfortunately.
Other factors to consider include mass of third-party apps for a framework and size and attitude of the community behind a framework. In the end, though, I guess it comes down to your comfort level among the languages you know and personal preference.
And I will freely admit that I'm rooting for django.
I am a .NET guy and also worked on PHP for a couple of months. At present I am learning Ruby and after completing basics, I am going to move on Rails.
I would suggest you to go with Ruby and than Rails. Career-wise also, Ruby guys are in demand these days, at least in my country.
For a .Net developer try to start with www.pradosoft.com/ prado framework,
it's PHP framework which looks exactly like ASP.NET ..
try it
Which framework has the most mature, flexible, intergrated, centralized and easy-to-use plugins/extension system.
My main requirements are:
a centralized system/repository where i could find a extension i need
no need to make changes in the source code, the plugin should be easily enabled and disabled
large plugin/extension database
something like http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/
http://www.symfony-project.org/plugins/
I can't speak for Django, but I can tell you about Rails' open source community. GitHub is the central location for all Rails open source code.
Most ruby libraries/plugins these days are packaged as "gems", which are easy to install, update, and remove. RubyGems is the place to go for these pre-packaged gems, when you care less about the code and more about dropping the functionality into your application.
There is now a new tool called RVM that keeps the gems (and even rails version) isolated from one application to the next, on your system. That way if one app uses version 1.0 of a gem, and another uses version 2.0, they don't conflict with each other.
All in all, a pretty sweet setup.
There are lots of reusable django apps around. You can find many on the CheeseShop, but even more on GitHub and BitBucket.
There is also django-packages, which is a bit like the CheeseShop, but just for django packages.
VirtualEnv is like RVM (or rather, RVM is like VirtualEnv), which is a great way to isolate your python packages (I even use it in production). It has been around for ages, and works well with pip (the best python package installer).
Both of them are mature frameworks. I don't use ruby so I don't know about the rails plugin land. Given how popular it is (and my information from my lurking time on local Ruby lists), it's pretty good.
With Django, you have (like Matthew mentioned) django-packages and a few other places. I've been working on a largish Django project and it's pretty easy to just search for something like "django facebook" on google and get what you need. The Pinax project is an integrated collection of Django apps that lets you have most things out of the box. That's another thing you might want to consider. The packaging of the plugins are using the standard Python distutils libraries so installation is a single command (or if you're using pip/virtualenv, directly off the net).
VirtualEnv and related tools are not really Django specific. They're good practice if you're doing any python development though.
You should take a step back and evaluate both languages as well in my opinion. Python and Ruby are quite different in their approach to good code and it's likely that one will fit your brain better than the other.
I need to write a basic website on Dreamhost. It needs to be done in Python.
I discovered Dreamhost permits me to write .py files, and read them.
Example:
#!/usr/bin/python
print "Content-type: text/html\n\n"
print "hello world"
So now I am looking for a basic framework, or a set of files that has already programmed the whole registration to be able to kick-off the project in a simple way.
By registration I mean the files to register a new account, log in, check the email (sending a mail), and edit the user information. All this possibly using MySQL.
Let me share my own experience with django. My prerequisits:
average knowledge of python
very weak idea of how web works (no js skills, just a bit of css)
my day job is filled with coding in C and I just wanted to try something different,
so there certainly was a passion to learn (I think this is the most important one)
Why I've chosen django:
I've already knew bits and pieces of python
django has excelent documentation, including tutorial, which explained everything
in very clear and simple manner
It is worth to read complete manual first (it took me two or three weekends. I remember I could not remember/understand everything at first pass, but it helped me to learn where
the information can be found when needed. There is also another source of documentaion
called djangobook. Djangobook contains same information as manual, but things are explained more in detail. It's worth to read it also, it helps to catch up with MVC concept, if you have not tried that before.
And finally to answer your question best: there are already also OpenId modules ready for you. I'm considering to use django-authopenid for my new project. It supports OpenId, while providing fallback to locally managed users.
There is certain learning curve if you are going learn django. The more you know about the web and python the steeper the curve is. I had to also learn bits and pieces of javascript and it took me also some time. If you are able to spend full time learning django, then
you can expect you'll be able to deliver first results within 4-6 weeks. It took me 6 months, since I was doing my django studies in free time.
There are several blog entries &c pointing out some problems with Python on Dreamhost and how to work around them to run several web frameworks that could suit you. (Most of the posts are over a year old so it may be that dreamhost has fixed some of the issues since then, of course, but the only way to really find out is to try!-).
Start with this page, dreamhost's own wikipage about Python -- at least you know it's quite current (was last updated earlier today!-). It gives instructions on using virtual env, building a custom Python &c if you absolutely need that, and running WSGI apps -- WSGI is the common underpinning of all modern Python web frameworks, including Django which everybody's recommending but also Pylons &c.
Some notes on running Pylons on Dreamhost are here (but it does look like Dreamhost has since fixed some issues, e.g. flup is now the dreamhost-recommended FCGI layer for WSGI as you'll see at the previously mentioned URL) and links therefrom. If you do go with Pylons, here is the best place to start considering how best to do auth (authentication and authorization) with it. I'm trying to play devil's advocate since everybody else's recommending django, but for a beginner django may in fact be better than pylons (still, spending a day or so lightly researching each main alternative, before you commit to one, is a good investment of your time!-).
For Django, again there's an official dreamhost wiki page and it's pretty thorough -- be sure to read through it and briefly to the other URLs it points to. The contributed auth module is no doubt the best way to do authentication and authorization if you do decide to go with Django.
And, whichever way you do choose -- best of luck!
django framework
You can try starting with django-registration.
EDIT: You can probably hack something up on your own faster than learning Django. However, learning a framework will serve you better. You'll be able to easily ask a large community when you have problems, and build on work that's already been done. And of course, if you're doing something new in the future, your knowledge of the framework can be more easily reapplied.
Django is the way to go. You can try it locally on your PC and see do you like it. It is very nice framework and allows you to quickly build your applications.
If you want to give Django quick go to see how it feels you can download Portable Python where everything is preinstalled and ready to use.
You can also do what you are trying to do with apache module mod_python (which is also used to run Django) but it would require more coding. Your code snippet would work with mod_python (http://www.modpython.org/) right away. I think mod_python comes pre-installed on Dreamhost so you can try it.
For a more complete basic setup (with lots of preprogrammed features) I would point you at Pinax which is a web site on top of Django (which I praise of course, see the dedicated page on dreamhost Wiki at http://wiki.dreamhost.com/Django)
The introduction on the project's web site (pinaxproject.com) :
Pinax is an open-source platform built on the Django Web Framework.
By integrating numerous reusable
Django apps to take care of the things
that many sites have in common, it
lets you focus on what makes your site
different.
There you will have a complete web site to customize and add features to.
I've noticed that a lot of people recommend Django. If you're running on a shared host on Dreamhost, the performance will not be satisfactory.
This is a known issue with Dreamhost shared hosting. I have installed web2py on my Dreamhost shared account and it seems to work okay; search the google groups for an install FAQ.
Later edit: google Dreamhost Django performance for an idea of what I mean.
Another voice to the choir.
Go for django. It's very good and easy to use.
I currently work with .NET exclusively and would like to have a go at python. To this end I need to set up a python development environment. I guide to this would be handy. I guess I would be doing web development so will need a web server and probably a database. I also need pointers to popular ORM's, an MVC framework, and a testing library.
One of my main criteria with all this is that I want to understand how it works, and I want it to be as isolated as possible. This is important as i am wary of polluting what is a working .NET environment with 3rd party web and database servers. I am perfectly happy using SQLite to start with if this is possible.
If I get on well with this I am also likely to want to set up automated build and ci server (On a virtual machine, probably ubuntu). Any suggestions for these would be useful.
My ultimate aim if i like python is to have similar sorts of tools that i have available with .NET and to really understand the build and deployment of it all. To start with I will settle for a simple development environment that is as isolated as possible and will be easy to remove if I don't like it. I don't want to use IronPython as I want the full experience of developing a python solution using the tools and frameworks that are generally used.
It's not that hard to set up a Python environment, and I've never had it muck up my .NET work. Basically, install Python --- I'd use 2.6 rather than 3.0, which is not yet broadly accepted --- and add it to your PATH, and you're ready to go with the language. I wouldn't recommend using a Ubuntu VM as your development environment; if you're working on Windows, you might as well develop on Windows, and I've had no significant problems doing so. I go back and forth from Windows to Linux with no trouble.
If you have an editor that you're comfortable with that has basic support for Python, I'd stick with it. If not, I've found Geany to be a nice, light, easy-to-use editor with good Python support, though I use Emacs myself because I know it; other people like SCITE, NotePad++, or any of a slew of others. I'd avoid fancy IDEs for Python, because they don't match the character of the language, and I wouldn't bother with IDLE (included with Python), because it's a royal pain to use.
Suggestions for libraries and frameworks:
Django is the standard web framework, but it's big and you have to work django's way; I prefer CherryPy, which is also actively supported, but is light, gives you great freedom, and contains a nice, solid webserver that can be replaced easily with httpd.
Django includes its own ORM, which is nice enough; there's a standalone one for Python, though, which is even nicer: SQL Alchemy
As far as a testing library goes, pyunit seems to me to be the obvious choice
Good luck, and welcome to a really fun language!
EDIT summary: I originally recommended Karrigell, but can't any more: since the 3.0 release, it's been continuously broken, and the community is not large enough to solve the problems. CherryPy is a good substitute if you like a light, simple framework that doesn't get in your way, so I've changed the above to suggest it instead.
Well, if you're thinking of setting up an Ubuntu VM anyway, you might as well make that your development environment. Then you can install Apache and MySQL or Postgres on that VM just via the standard packaging tools (apt-get install), and there's no danger of polluting your Windows environment.
You can either do the actual development on your Windows machine via your favourite IDE, using the VM as a networked drive and saving the code there, or you can just use the VM as a full desktop environment and do everything there, which is what I would recommend.
Install the pre-configured ActivePython release from activestate.
Among other features, it includes the PythonWin IDE (Windows only) which makes it easy to explore Python interactively.
The recommended reference is Dive Into Python, mentioned many times on similar SO discussions.
You should install python 2.4, python 2.5, python 2.6 and python 3.0, and add to your path the one you use more often (Add c:\Pythonxx\ and c:\Pythonxx\Scripts).
For every python 2.x, install easy_install; Download ez_setup.py and then from the cmd:
c:\Python2x\python.exe x:\path\to\ez_setup.py
c:\Python2x\Scripts\easy_install virtualenv
Then each time you start a new project create a new virtual environment to isolate the specific package you needs for your project:
mkdir <project name>
cd <project name>
c:\Python2x\Scripts\virtualenv --no-site-packages .\v
It creates a copy of python and its libraries in .v\Scripts and .\v\Lib. Every third party packages you install in that environment will be put into .\v\Lib\site-packages. The -no-site-packages don't give access to the global site package, so you can be sure all your dependencies are in .\v\Lib\site-packages.
To activate the virtual environment:
.\v\Scripts\activate
For the frameworks, there are many. Django is great and very well documented but you should probably look at Pylons first for its documentions on unicode, packaging, deployment and testing, and for its better WSGI support.
For the IDE, Python comes with IDLE which is enough for learning, however you might want to look at Eclipse+PyDev, Komodo or Wingware Python IDE. Netbean 6.5 has beta support for python that looks promising (See top 5 python IDE).
For the webserver, you don't need any; Python has its own and all web framework come with their own. You might want to install MySql or ProgreSql; it's often better to develop on the same DB you will use for production.
Also, when you have learnt Python, look at Foundations of Agile Python Development or Expert Python Programming.
Using Python on Windows
SO: Python tutorial for total beginners?
Take a look at Pylons, read about WSGI and Paste.
There's nice introductory Google tech talk about them: ReUsable Web Components with Python and Future Python Web Development.
Here's my answer to similar question:
Django vs other Python web frameworks?
NOTE: I included a lot of links to frameworks, projects and what-not, but as a new user I was limited to 1 link per answer. If someone else with enough reputation to edit wants/can edit them into this answer instead of the footnotes, I'd be grateful.
There are some Python IDE's such as Wing IDE[1], I believe some people use Eclipse[2] with a python plugin[3] as well. A lot of people in the #python channel of FreeNode seem to prefer vim, emacs, nano and similar text editors in favor of IDE's. My personal preffered editor is Vim, but if you've mostly done .NET development on windows, presumably with the usual Visual X IDE's, vim and emacs will probably cause you culture shock and you'd be better of using an IDE.
Nearly all python web frameworks* support the WSGI standard[4], most of the large web servers have some sort of plugin to support WSGI, the others support WSGI via fast cgi or plain cgi.
The Zope[5] and Django[6] frameworks have their own ORM's, of other ORM's the two most well known appear to be SQL Alchemy[7] and SQL Object[8]. I only have experience with the former, but both support all possible sane database choices, including SQLite which is installed together with Python and hence perfectly suited to testing and experimenting without polluting your .NET environment with 3rd part web servers and database servers.
The builtin unittest[9] and pyunit[10] frameworks seem to be the preffered solutions for unit testing, but I don't have much experience with these.
bpython[11] and ipython[12] offer enhanced interactive python shells which can greatly help speed up and testing small bits of code and hence worth looking in to.
As for a list of well known and often used web frameworks, look into the following frameworks**:
Twisted[13] is a generic networking framework, which supports almost every single protocol under the sun.
Pylons[14] is light-weight framework aimed at being as flexible as possible and leaving all the choices about what ORM, templating language and what-not to you.
CherryPy[15] tries to provide an interface to expose Python objects to the web.
Django[6] attempts to be an all-in-one solution, builtin template system, ORM, admin pages and internationalization. While the previous frameworks have more DIY wiring together various frameworks work involved with them.
Zope[5] is aimed to be suitable for large enterprise applications, I've heard nothing but good things about it, but consensus seems to be that for smaller you're probably better off with one of the simpler and smaller frameworks.
TurboGears[16] is the framework I know the least about, but it seems to be mostly competition for Django.
This is everything I can think of right now, I'll edit and add stuff if I can think of it. I hope this helps you some in the wonderful world of python.
* - The main exception would be Apache's mod_python, which you should avoid for exactly that reason, use mod_wsgi instead.
** - Word of warning, I have not personally used these frameworks this is just a very short impression I have gotten from talking to other people about each framework, it may be wildly inaccurate. (If anyone has any corrections, do comment and I'll try to edit and fix this answer).
(The http:// is missing since they're recognized as links otherwise)
[1] www.wingware.com/
[2] www.eclipse.org/
[3] pydev.sourceforge.net/
[4] wsgi.org/wsgi/
[5] www.zope.org/
[6] www.djangoproject.com/
[7] www.sqlalchemy.org/
[8] www.sqlobject.org/
[9] docs.python.org/library/unittest.html
[10] pyunit.sourceforge.net/pyunit.html
[11] www.bpython-interpreter.org/
[12] ipython.scipy.org/
[13] twistedmatrix.com/trac/
[14] pylonshq.com/
[15] www.cherrypy.org/
[16] turbogears.org/
Environment?
Here is the simplest solution:
Install Active Python 2.6. Its the Python itself, but comes with some extra handy useful stuff, like DiveintoPython chm.
Use Komodo Edit 5. It is among the good free editor you can use for Python.
Use IDLE. Its the best simplest short snippet editor, with syntax highlighting and auto complete unmatched by most other IDEs. It comes bundled with python.
Use Ipython. Its a shell that does syntax highlighting and auto complete, bash functions, pretty print, logging, history and many such things.
Install easy_install and/or pip for installing various 3rd party apps easily.
Coming from Visual Studio and .Net it will sound a lot different, but its an entirely different world.
For the framework, django works the best. Walk thro the tutorial and you will be impressed enough. The documentation rocks. The community, you have to see for yourself, to know how wonderful it is!!
Python has build in SQL like database and web server, so you wouldn't need to install any third party apps. Remember Python comes with batteries included.
If you've worked with Eclipse before you could give Pydev a try