Two days ago, with the semester finally over and things quieting down (by and large) for a bit, I opted to finally endeavor to learn Django, a Python web framework.

Today, I've replaced a rather large PHP application with a complete rewrite in Django, and load times have improved roughly sixfold.

That PHP application is this blog! Django is simple enough (to anyone with Python experience) that, while still in the process of learning it, I was able to replicate a site that had taken me a few weeks to build in PHP.
 

Granted, the design process was done, so there was no time spent on that.
And I was able to more or less just drop in a pre-made module for rich text editing in the administration area, so that work was also done for me.
 

There are a lot of things Django does very right -- the templating system is phenomenal (custom blocks make life significantly easier) and the baked-in admin tools are very impressive. It manages your database in a well-normalized fashion for you. Added an object/model? No problem -- "python manage.py syncdb" and you're done. And it's fast. Did I mention that it's fast?

And while I haven't mastered Django just yet, there are a couple of things about it that take a good bit of getting used to. For instance, it requires FastCGI and custom htaccess rewriting rules on most webhosts. Any static media files (external stylesheets and javascript files, images, etc) live in a different location on the webserver than the Python that drives your site or application (though with some symbolic links, this is less of an issue). And the brilliant "syncdb" command of which I've already made mention is great -- except that it doesn't ever generate an "Alter Table" statement, which means that any alterations to existing models aren't detected.

Even with these small issues, it's still actually an enjoyable experience to use Django. Programming is fun again! It's a whole new world up here.