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I want to embark on learning a totally new language for web back-end development and I've narrowed down my choice between these three:

  • GWT
  • Ruby
  • Python

Do you know or recommend of any sites that walks you through building a simple site using these technologies that could be easily deployed and tested?

By the way, I am running a Windows OS, so please let me know if there is anything I may need to configure on my machine to start learning these tools.

On the front end side of development, I would also like to see some samples that greatly exemplifies being able to use the technologies in its full potentials.

Totally appreciate your suggestions and responses. Thank you.

Angelo

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  • Ruby vs Python!?! Cue the holy war ... now. BTW Python+Django is way holier than Ruby+Rails. Commented Mar 1, 2011 at 15:43
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    Not trying to raise some versus thread here. Just wanted to know which would be better for me (through browsing some simple examples and the merits of each language). I hope no one bashes another language because of their fanboy fanaticism. Commented Mar 1, 2011 at 15:49

6 Answers 6

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if you want to have fun and learn rails http://railsforzombies.org/.

if you dont appreciate the humor, http://ruby.railstutorial.org/

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If you want to build web applications with Ruby or Python, I think you'll want to use some kind of framework, so you'll have to identify some possible frameworks first before you start walking through examples. Here's a list of Python frameworks: http://wiki.python.org/moin/WebFrameworks. If you want to get started really quickly and just do some playing around, check out web2py. It requires no installation or configuration, has no dependencies, and even includes its own Python interpreter and web-based IDE -- you just download, unzip, and run. Then explore some of the other frameworks and see what suits you best.

Although the web2py Windows binary doesn't require that you have Python installed, other Python frameworks (as well as the web2py source code version) will require it. You can download Python here: http://www.python.org/download/. If you're on Windows, you'll also want to install Pywin32: http://sourceforge.net/projects/pywin32/.

Note, for web development, you should probably stick with Python 2.7 for the time being, as most Python web frameworks have not yet been ported to the newer Python 3 (note, you can actually use some of the newer Python 3 functionality in Python 2.7).

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GWT is really a frontend development technology. It includes components that make it play nice with the backend, but it is primarily a UI framework.

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GWT is not a language: it's java-based. That said, I spent some time last year learning GWT, and I think online documentation is very good: see Get started, and Tutorials. You also have plenty of resources and development/debugging tools: see this Overview. Of course you need java on your machine. Besides official Google documentation you find many examples and articles on the Web, and a lot of people here on SO answer questions about GWT.

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>>> Of course you need java on your machine That is, to develop with GWT, you need java on your dev machine... Clients/Users using/viewing a GWT webapp would do so in any javascript-enabled webbrowser.
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@Finbarr...but it contains a full fledged Java Servlet Backend. And this is probably why I'd suggest you to use RoR or Django or something too cook up a simple website.

GWT Applications are usually made of Server components written in Java and Client Side code (mostly JavaScript) that has been generated from Java. Ususally GWT is not what you want for a simple company website.

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I would personally go with Python/Django (you can get nice overview of the technology on djangobook.com) but Ruby/Rails is probably equally good.

And about GWT ... hmm we are about to start GWT project at work and I am really scared. Code looks terrible bloated , generated HTML is huge , performance can be a problem and no SEO.

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