[clug] Higher level CGI frameworks?

[Michael James]

On a LAMPerl, LAMPython, or LAMJava platform
 what is a better web app development framework than CGI?

In the bad old days, I wrote simple web apps in Perl CGI.
Hand hacked everything from the ground up.
Tied my mind in knots working out the flow,
 that page POSTs to this page,
 this page also does the next confirmation screen,
 any errors redirect to the other page, ...
Thought and wrote in HTML and Perl simultaneously
 embedding HTML in Perl print statements,
 hating the layout of polyglot code on the page.
Invented a half-arsed template system, replacing %DATA% strings.
Used an IDE consisting of 3 editor windows,
 and a browser with the refresh button still visible.
Did test printouts to STDERR running into a tail on Apache's error_log.

Ended up with some ugly un-maintainable mazes that still haunt me.


So what's better?
What offers more structure through the pages,
 connections to databases,
 auto-generation of the red error messages
 when data doesn't pass validation,
 useful error messages when it breaks,
 the chance to re-use its components,
 whole-of-site style and function(s).
 

I'm not learning PHP; "Trainer wheels without the bicycle" doesn't appeal.

Mason sounded good, except I couldn't get it installed on SLES9
 and scope among the fragments turned into a nightmare.
I felt like the trainer whose elephant wouldn't stand up.
In the beginning I'd stride in issuing commands,
 by the end of the day I'd be morosely poking it with a stick, hoping...

Django sounds cool, comes with a set of really good tutorials
But they peter out, and it's all magic-in-python.
I'd like to learn python, wanted higher level...
Well this is so high-level that it can extrapolate
 your dream website from a fragment of fairy-cake.
But what do you have to do to the fragment to make it write the file I need?

Java servelets, that's what the boss wants.
Is it just back to the horror of CGI in an unfamiliar language?

Any comments, suggestions more constructive than Holy Writ?

michaelj

PS: The verbosity of java is a turn-off.
-- 
There is no perl one line hack
 that a page of java won't do more elegantly.