I’ve been working on a demo site using web2py for the last week and a half. I think this really has a lot of potential to make me a productive web app developer – which is especially impressive given that I was never a) a web app developer, really, before, and b) I never coded a line of python before starting this project. Now, I did read a Python book, but that was a while back and if you don’t mix book learning with practice it tends to fade.

As great as web2py is I’m finding that I’ve been hampered in my progress by the combination of it’s ease of use and my ego. It’s easy enough to grasp that you can really look at a fairly simple example and use it as a template to do your own fairly straightforward stuff. For example, data modeling and getting data into your new tables, setting up domain lists to drive UI elements, etc. is really really straightforward. A lot of stuff just works (once you see the general pattern) like you think it should. But when this experience is filtered (or magnified) through my ego I start to think that everything will just work like I think it should, and then I spend a lot more time than necessary testing, poking and prodding before retreating to the docs, code or mailing list (usually in that order) to find an answer.

So for me, web2py is actually too easy to use. If I were an experienced web developer, and had some working experience with python I think web2py would be dead simple, delightfully simple. But I need to remember that not only am I moving to a new type of app development, but also to a new language – a language which has it’s own idioms and natural ways of expressing things that I don’t quite grok right now.

So to be more efficient, I’d be well suited to go back and review some fundamentals before heading recklessly into the bush (so to speak). The problem is, it’s more fun the way I’m doing it. I really prefer discovery to more methodical alternatives. The joy is in the journey. Also, I know from experience that these lessons I’m learning more painfully than necessary will stick more because of the effort. I wonder if that last bit qualifies as ‘irrational justfication’…