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Asked: 2026-06-01T20:04:05+00:00

I’m a amateur developer with a little experience in PHP. I recently learnt Python,

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I’m a amateur developer with a little experience in PHP.

I recently learnt Python, I’ve to admit that it is awesome as a programming language and its great libraries, but using that for web development seems to be a big pain in the ass. As far as what i read, I’ve to use CGI, mod_wsgi, etc. to deploy (http://docs.python.org/howto/webservers.html), Restart the server to see the changes (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/581038/python-web-programming)

My question is, Python being used so widely for web development, Why cant it be as simple as PHP?

ie i would love to write index.py:

print """
<html>
<head>
<title>Hello world</title>
</head>
<body>
Hello world
</body>
</html>"""
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    [If] Python being used so widely for web development, Why cant it be as simple as PHP? ie i would love to write index.py…

    Python can be as simple as PHP, as per your example. The simplest way to make the above work is to use CGI (and call your file index.cgi rather than index.py, then your script will work just fine. Though you should really specify the content type first, like this:

    print 'Content-type: text/html'

    This would apply in PHP as much as Python. Python’s CGI module will get you up and running very quickly.

    As far as what i read, I’ve to use CGI, mod_wsgi, etc. to deploy

    You would normally choose one or the other, and realistically you would most likely choose a framework which is based on the more modern WSGI and not worry about the low-level stuff. But if you don’t want to, you don’t need to bother with these low-level interfaces.

    Restart the server to see the changes

    Probably not. Having to restart the server is a limitation of the framework and deployment configuration, and is typically not required. If you use mod_python this may apply, but generally not (many frameworks support auto-reloading, for example).

    Python has a great wealth of resources for web development. There are bare-bones systems (eg. CGI, mod_wsgi), lightweight systems (eg. CherryPy) and entire frameworks (eg. Zope). You can choose one that best suits your needs.

    Being able to create a simple file and produce some output might help get something going quickly, but it is not really a sign of a rich, mature, featureful framework. Sure, you can start displaying something straight away, but what then? All of a sudden you will need to either import or write all the same sorts of functionality that web frameworks provide. For a non-trivial web app, you need non-trivial framework.

    For example, something like Django will give you a persistence framework, auto-generated admin interface, a tempting language, URL dispatch system, and much more. You can focus on your app logic, and not worry about the lower level details. Django is a good place to start, as it has great documentation and the tutorial will get you going very quickly.

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