I am guilty! After publicly complaining about the existence of too many Python based web frameworks, after praising the merits of Django, Pylons, TurboGears, CherryPy, and web.py, after having used them professionally and taught them in University level courses, I could not resist and created one more: web2py.

Why did I commit such a crime? I did it because I felt trapped by existing choices and tempted by the beautiful features of the Python language. It all started with the need to convince my father to move away from Visual Basic and embrace Python as a development language for the Web. At the same time I was teaching a course on Python and Django at DePaul University. These two experiences made me realize how the beautiful features of those systems were hidden behind a steep learning curve. At the University for example we teach introductory programming using languages like Java and C++ but we do not get into networking issues until later courses. In many Universities students can graduate in Computer Science without ever seeing a Unix Bash Shell or editing an Apache configuration file. And yet these days to be an effective web developer youmust know shell scripting, Apache, SQL, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and perhaps Ajax.