Sure, I was able to cheat by using some of the code from the boot camp. But it was also simple to customize using the Django documentation for things like uploading files, etc.

All of the concepts seemed to make sense all of the sudden, which = good.

I love how the two frameworks force you to think about relationships and proper database design. As I said on my blog, things like Caspio seem to encourage you to take the easy route and just plop everything into a single table. You know full well it’d be better to have multiple tables, but it’s kind of a pain in the ass when you’re using Caspio.

It seems to me the harder thing is not learning the frameworks, but, say, learning something like MySQL (I’ve been a MS SQL Server guy) and doing things like importing legacy data, etc. Or if you have legacy data that’s in a single table and you want to convert it into your properly designed NEW database tables.

Jacob is dead on, though, that there are fundamental functional differences between Rails and Django that may make one preferable to the other depending on your situation. It might be good to document some of those in future posts, particularly for newsrooms. (I know your Python/Django sympathies, Derek, so don’t worry — I’ll keep you honest.)

Rails, for examples, is in many ways a more mature framework. But many people (even the Rails faithful) are starting to feel like it’s becoming a little too bloated and are looking at more stripped down frameworks like Merb. Ruby, however, is far less mature than Python, particularly when it comes to certain types of libraries. It’s also a lot faster, though 1.9 should narrow the gap somewhat there.

The bottom line is you really can’t go wrong. Learning one will give you a huge head start on the other, both in terms of Rails/Django and Ruby/Python.

It’s well worth anyone’s time to spend a few days or a week playing with each tool, reading available documentation and books, hanging out on IRC channels and mailing lists, etc. Look at the available libraries for Rails/Ruby, Django/Python and think about how they’ll fit into what you’re working on. If your app’s going to involve really heavy XML workflow, the crummy XML tools in Ruby are really going to bite; it’s worth knowing that up front. Think about deployment. Are you going to need to deploy on a JVM? Well, you’re probably going to need to wait at least a couple months until Django runs on Jython, but Rails runs on JRuby today.

Of course, the good news is that if you’re deciding between Django and Rails you really can’t go too far wrong; you’ll be far happier using either than you would rolling something by hand in PHP or (#DEITY forbid) J2EENAMBLA.