web2py vs TurboGears

web2py documentation does not follow the common pattern of using Sphinx, MkDocs or ReadTheDocs which is goos for exeperienced developers. Although documentation in form of a book is very easy and good for beginners. Turning web2py the most easy and comprehensive framework to learn and also to teach.

Web2py apps are designed to be portable. With some minor restrictions web2py apps can run on any VPS on SQL databases and/or Mongo, as well as on Google App Engine with the Google Datastore. It is truly code ones and run everywhere. For example at Camio.com we use web2py internally to access a GAE datastore which contains more images than Instagram.

The web2py community is open and friendly and it gives concrete support to newbies and old timers. It's not difficult to get answers from the BDFL Massimo Di Pierro himself.

One really positive aspect of web2py application is their maintainability over the years. Old code works even if the framework is updated to the latest version. Not only that, if code is written well it is very short and a new team can pick it up over in little time.

While web2py has its own web based IDE which is convenient, it works with WinIDE, PyCharm, and Eclipse. The first two explicitly support web2py. The latter requires some configuration.

web2py is very easy to learn for beginners, yet it has a great deal of power and flexibility as application needs become more complex. It includes an impressively comprehensive set of features, making development very productive without the need to integrate a lot of third-party libraries.

The framework is really fast in production after some optimization and fine tuning which can minimize the memory footprint in order to make it run on a really small VPS or slice.

Allows users to easily extend functionality by using external libraries.

Models and controllers live in the context of the HTTP request. So the developer does not have to import the API to access this context at every request.

In other words, the models, controllers and templates in web2py use a domain specific language which uses pure web2py syntax and allows to import any module but exposes a few additional objects.

web2py includes an "admin" app that serves as a web-based IDE for web2py applications. It includes many features, such as application creation, compiling, and packaging; an error ticketing system; a code editor; a debugger; a controller doctest runner; Git and Mercurial integration; and one-click deployment to PythonAnywhere, Google App Engine, and OpenShift.

It is not intended as a full desktop IDE replacement, but it includes some helpful web2py specific functionality and can be convenient for basic editing and debugging tasks and quick prototyping, even for those who primarily work with a more full-featured desktop IDE or editor.

Allows developers to build quick, simple web prototypes or scale up to create complex web applications.

SQLAlchemy is a powerful ORM which is highly regarded in the Python community. TurboGears' ORM is built with SQLAlchemy, which gives it a great deal of flexibility and power.

TurboGears allows for horizontal data partitioning, which allows the division of logical datatabases into smaller elements.

Allows for creating extendable Pluggable Applications which extend the framework itself through endpoints provided by TurboGears.

The template engine is XHTML based and so is validated for errors when compiled to HTML. You will never serve a broken page again due to a forgotten close tag.