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Comment by nicolasvan | Hacker News Reader

Yes, of course, who didn't :). That was the way to learn html in the nineties.

No, seriously, if you want to compare with an old stuff compare with PHP because that's precisely what I copied. But as far as I know there was no other project that ported that quick&dirty approach to Python.

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  > if you want to compare with an old stuff compare with PHP because that's precisely what I copied. But as far as I know there was no other project that ported that quick&dirty approach to Python.

mod_python has been around for something like 13 years.

mod_python is more like CGI than PHP. What was missing was reversing the whole paradigm from "Start with a programming language, and add HTML generation" to "Start with an HTML page, and add little dynamic bits" which is what PHP did so amazingly well that it is still more or less the top server-side programming language despite its many deep flaws.

I was speaking more of the PSP[1] (python server pages) component of mod_python, but I guess that component was released later in 2004[2].

Note: I make no recommendation for its usage. I personally consider 'start with html and add dynamic bits', for anything beyond the trivial, as an anti-pattern.

  [1]: http://www.modpython.org/live/current/doc-html/pyapi-psp.html

  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python_Server_Pages

I could not agree more with you. Even if I created Pygreen I would not use it for big projects. But I know what I'm doing when I create my small web sites and I know for a simple static web site 'start with html and add dynamic bits' is just fine. See it as a bash script, it's not meant to be readable nor reusable. It's quickly created code that serves for one purpose.

I'm the first to say it's quick&dirty. Yet quick&dirty has its advantages in some cases, even for good programmers that know how to make solid and maintainable applications.

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