Snakes on the Web:
The history and future of Python on the web
Jacob Kaplan-Moss
http://jacobian.org/TO
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kejhu/3751877257

Web development sucks.

“
How can I make this
suck less?
”

1. What sucks now?
2. How will we fix it?
3. Can we fix it with Python?

In the beginning…
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tonythemisfit/2904911703

Hand-rolled HTML
“The Stone Age”

The Stone Age
http://www.flickr.com/photos/schoschie/3421072476/

Suck.

“ What if we
didn’t have to write
HTML by hand?
”

CGI
“The Bronze Age”

Suck.

“ How can we
make CGI better?
”

(Not really a big question.)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/randomurl/446209957/

PHP
“The Iron Age”

Same idea, (slightly) better tech.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jerhoyet/2377140741

Page-oriented
http://www.flickr.com/photos/just_jump/2972461681

“
“What if we thought of
these as applications,
not pages?”
”

Frameworks
“The Industrial Revolution”

The modern
web framework:

High-level
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nikonvscanon/2128705916

Application-oriented
http://www.flickr.com/photos/joelaz/2868356069

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ppdigital/2329405081/
Large building blocks

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jasephotos/2913135232/
Rapid development

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nattu/1190083977
Fun!

What’s next?

What sucks?

Interoperability sucks.

Frameworks: good.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/amberandclint/3266859324/

Lock-in: bad!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/striatic/2191404675/

Rule 1:
Don’t piss off your users.

Software becomes
domain-specific.

Cede control gracefully.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aidan_jones/3575000735

Framework inter-op:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kpwerker/421386062/

Django’s not helping.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mafleen/1694900141/

WSGI sucks.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jacobian/408227408

Rack’s better.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lependu/3563742168/

Gateway ≠ API

Inter-language
inter-op:

VMs, Proxies, SOA, ROA, …

Gateway ≠ API !

http://www.flickr.com/photos/vgm8383/2381791019/
This’ll be hard to fix

Disparate,
mostly volunteer
communities.

Little overlap.

Rich applications suck.

HTML 5

The best thing to
happen to web
frameworks?

Current frameworks don’t fit.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/oskay/156280584/

State of the art:

1. Parallel MVC stacks
Lots of work to keep in sync.

2. Coupled frameworks
(GWT, Cappuccino, SproutCore)

☹

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280 Slides:
a site so complicated it needed a new language!

Python?

Deployment sucks.

Writing the app is easy…

The rest is hard!

• API Metering • Distributed Log storage, analysis
• Backups & Snapshots • Graphing
• Counters • HTTP Caching
• Cloud/Cluster Management Tools • Input/Output Filtering
• Instrumentation/Monitoring • Memory Caching
• Failover • Non-relational Key Stores
• Node addition/removal and hashing • Rate Limiting
• Auto-scaling for cloud resources • Relational Storage
• CSRF/XSS Protection • Queues
• Data Retention/Archival • Rate Limiting
• Deployment Tools • Real-time messaging (XMPP)
• Multiple Devs, Staging, Prod • Search
• Data model upgrades • Ranging
• Rolling deployments • Geo
• Multiple versions (selective beta) • Sharding
• Bucket Testing • Smart Caching
• Rollbacks • Dirty-table management
• CDN Management
• Distributed File Storage http://randomfoo.net/2009/01/28/infrastructure-for-modern-web-sites

Lots of pieces
http://www.flickr.com/photos/restlessglobetrotter/448362507/

Huge opportunity
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nuclearsummer/2665337803/

Python’s been a very
good glue language…

It could be again.

Scaling sucks.

Web audiences

Complexity

Traffic

Generic doesn’t scale.

Generic Specific
Simple
Complex

Specific
Generic
My first blog
Simple Complex

Specific
Generic
Public launch
My first blog
Simple Complex

Specific
Average site
Generic
Public launch
My first blog
Simple Complex

Specific
Twitter
Average site
Generic
Public launch
My first blog
Simple Complex

Specific
Twitter
Frameworks
Average site
Generic
Public launch
My first blog
Simple Complex

Most sites aren’t big.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/b-tal/163450213/
What do we do?

Concurrency sucks.

All roads lead to multi-core.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/marc_buehler/3053243413

I’m scared.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/amatuer_44060/2831112854/

Nehalem

UltraSPARC T2

128 hardware threads

http://www.flickr.com/photos/daninrgb/3406117892
Ted thinks we’re screwed

StartServers 128

I don’t think so.

Lots of exciting work
in concurrency today:

Actors
STM
Persistent data structures
Dataflow
Tuple spaces

Ted Leung,
A survey of concurrency constructs
http://tinyurl.com/mmbqe6

Scala
Erlang
Clojure
Haskell

Python?

Unladen Swallow?

No more GIL!

No more GIL?

Better threads.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/splityarn/3469596708/

Threading sucks.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sillydog/9844703/

I want actors!
(Or STM, or whatever.)

Help!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/zaia/3475695085

2020

I want to be
using Python!

Let’s make Python
kick ass in 2020.

“ Good software
takes ten years.
Get used to it.
— Joel Spolsky
”
http://tinyurl.com/ca4pr

So we need to start now.

1. Better inter-op.

WSGI 2

Django needs
to do better.

We need leaders.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/salimfadhley/26306549

http://www.flickr.com/photos/psd/3649586425/
A BDFL?

2. Get in front of HTML 5.

3. Rethink web
development, again.

Pages

Applications

Sites

Full deployment stack,
highly integrated,
centered around WSGI 2?

Yes, please!

4. Scale from day 1.

Be skeptical.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/colorblindpicaso/2747637336

Plan to be replaced.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/taurusaficionado/2099239684

Holy crap please give
me better concurrency!

Thank you!
Me: Jacob Kaplan-Moss
This talk: http://jacobian.org/TO
Email: jacob@jacobian.org
Twitter: @jacobian