Related
I am about to start a new project and I am hung up on which language/framework to use. I've been a PHP programmer professionally, but it wasn't on the scale of this project. I've played around with RoR and i've been very impressed so far. Right now, the two leading candidtates are RoR and Symfony2.
My major hang ups with RoR:
- i don't know ruby, or i hardly do. i can read it ok, but get stuck writing the code.
- i've read complaints about it being slow, and it seems to be slow just at the CLI.
My major hang ups with Symfony2:
- there's practically no documentation for it. Symfony1.x? sure..but not symfony2
- there's also little support. the BB on their site is like 80% spam.
- went to install it on a local dev enviroment haven't been able to even get that running (see my first hang up)
this project will be fairly complex and go beyond the basic CRUD operations. it isn't under a super-tight timeline, but there is one. ~3 months for milestone1 which is basically a calendar, some financial organization stuff (not transactions with financial institutions, just personal finance organization type stuff), and a project manager/cms.
also, i'm open to using other frameworks, but symfony2 seems to be the best right now. if symfony2 had RoR's support/documentation/tutorials/etc it would be a no brainer.
i'm really interested in hearing what the stackoverflowverse has to say on the matter. im constantly impressed with the quality of the answers/replies on this site.
some other sub-questions (that are in my head right now):
- if you recommend a different php framework, why?
- what are you biggest gripes with any of the options mentioned?
i know CakePHP is the closest to RoR, but i've been reading that the models are a bit wonky (Many to many relationships and such).
right now, i'm leaning towards RoR. Simply put, i really want to learn it and it could do the job. i just don't know ruby and i've ready a lot of good about symfony2.
any advice you could offer will be greatly appreciated. thanks!
Personally, I'd recommend that if you're starting a new project which happens to be the largest project you've ever had to do then you should stick with what you know best. This happens to be PHP.
I've used Ruby or Rails. In fact, we have some production apps at our company that use RoR. The best way I learnt RoR was to work on small projects. I would never have considered to choose a programming language which I'm not familiar with and then on top of that learn a new framework to start coding a big project.
As for Symfony2, we started using it a couple of weeks ago. Symfony2 is an excellent framework and looks very promising. It's clean, nicely decoupled and fast. However, we ran into too many bugs/headaches/inconsistencies in Symfony2 to continue using it. We will start working on it again once it has matured and the documentation grows (lots of the docs are now out of date). Hopefully, they'll release some sort of Jobeet tutorial but for Symfony2.
Moving on to CakePHP. CakePHPs code base is old. In fact, it works fine on PHP 4.3.2. It doesn't take advantage of all the goodness that PHP5 has to offer (absract classes, interfaces, private & protected properties, exceptions, magic methods, annotations, pass objects by reference etc.) CakePHPs database abstraction layer, whilst it has had improvements, is not incredibly efficient once your database structures becomes too complex (many joins for example) it crumbles quite badly.
Moving on to Symfony 1.4 which I've used for many large projects
I enjoy using because:
PHP5
Event system
Dependency Injection
Caching system
Forms (nice integration into Doctrine 2) In fact, this is my favourite feature.
Many plugins (sfGuard for user management, for example)
Twig (nice templating language)
Highly configurable
Scalable (although not as fast as Symfony2)
A lot of documentation (Jobeet tutorial is great)
If PHP is for the moment your forte and you need to start working on a large project then start using a PHP based framework as you know the language syntax and functions the best.
Move onto RoR when you have a small project to do.
Just my 2 cents.
Best of luck.
To me Symfony2 has been great so far. Documentation is scarce compared to Symfony1.x but it's much easier to get started in Sf2 and, with things being very explicit, requires less knowledge of how the framework works internally.
There's an app/check.php script that will warn you of any dependency needed to run it, and support mostly happens in their mailing list which is very active (didn't even know there was a BB). Some components, like Twig, also have their own lists.
This is an old topic but things have changed a bit and I would recommend Symfony2. Their current documentation is great (symfony.com) and its much easier to learn for newbies. I did try RoR but with symfony I just got into it much quicker.
I'm amazed of how no one has mentioned the super rich GEM community for Ruby and therefore for Ruby on Rails, there is simply just so much functionality out there, so many people working on some many MIT/open source projects. To me, community is what drives me to go choose one framework over another. The amount of configurations and different template engines, there is just so much out there for ruby on rails.
For a comparison chart check this out:
http://vschart.com/compare/doctrine-php/vs/ruby-on-rails
At the end of the day it all boils down to whatever you know, but do not overlook the community and the functionality that has been written for you already, free of charge...
I'll echo solarc's comments about Symfony 2. I used it for a couple small projects, and am starting something more ambitious with it this week. I would like to see a complete Jobeet-style tutorial, but the main documentation is good enough to get started with IMHO. I'm giving that a thorough read, and have learned a few things that I missed using the documentation as a simple reference.
Finding bundles was my biggest frustration, but the documentation mentions knpbundles.com, and that seems like an excellent resource.
So I know this has been asked before here:
How to start facebook app?
But I am banking on it being a little old and also hoping I have something slightly more specific to ask. So here goes:
I want to build a basic Facebook app, that would require a basic database, a simple front page, and obviously the ability to share/Like over the feed. Now my main concern is I want to do this quickly and easily, without having to deal with as many mundane details as I can avoid.
I was thus looking at CakePHP and Ruby on Rails as frameworks. However, I am not familiar with either of these technologies (I do have a software background, but it is mostly C/C++/Java). So which do you think would be best for me to pick up for this project that will enable me to quickly and easily just 'build' something like this for Facebook?
(Also note that I need a free hosting provider as I don't have money to finance this hobby now, so I'll need to know which hosting companies support these frameworks for free).
Any help is appreciated!
Rails, definitely, there are infinitely more and better resources available to learn from and you can get fantastic free hosting (for small scale apps, plus easily scale for cheap) on Heroku.
To get started, see:
Rails for Zombies (free)
Rails 3 Tutorial
Railscasts
I was in the same situation as you last fall, I knew a fair amount of PHP but had never worked with an MVC web framework before. I tried to learn CakePHP, struggled for a while, then thought I'd spend just one weekend giving Rails a chance. I had never touched Ruby before, but I was so curious about Rails that I picked up a copy of Beginning Rails 3, and I figured I would just take one weekend and see how hard it was to learn some basic Ruby and get an idea for how Rails works.
I thought going into that weekend that there was really no way learning a whole new language could be worth it, even if the framework suited me better. I'm so, so glad I gave it a chance. Ruby is awesome, the community behind it is phenomenal, and the amount of documentation, screencasts, tutorials, etc. are out of this world. Ruby is also a lot of fun to work with, and very easy to learn. Try for yourself and see what you think.
Rails is definitely the way to go (vs CakePHP at least).
The answers so far only scratch the surface!
CakePHP is to PHP what Rails is to Ruby. From the onset, CakePHP was developed to mimic the "Rails" way on things, and has done really well so far; but if you're starting from scratch; you need to remember you have to:
Set up a development environment, which in turn involves
Install the language (PHP / Ruby) and Database (MySQL?)
Learning some basic server configuration(s)
Choosing which one is right for you, and setting it up (Apache, Nginx, Passenger etc)
Get the framework up and running
Learn the underlying language
Learn the framework
Learn the Facebook API, and their developer guidelines
Actually Build the application
Test it, debug and submit for approval
Launch it
Having developed in both CakePHP and RoR - if you're coming with no web development background and you're looking to start; dive in with either. Honestly, it'll be the same learning curve for you! You will find the setup, learning, development and deployment easier in CakePHP - PHP is one of the most popular languages. If you want to learn a language and framework also to improve your skills as a programmer and developer, then you want RoR - it's got strict conventions that do twist your mind but once you get the hang of it, there's no looking back (and these are the same conventions that CakePHP is trying to bring to the PHP world!).
The official documentation for both is excellent, they have amazing (and very active!) communities where even the silliest question is answered. There are also excellent (free) hosting platforms available, that make use of Git and make deployment a snap (PHPFog and Heroku).
It might be worth mentioning that RoR is considered the new boy on the scene, the trendy framework thats bringing with it a lot of rapid changes in development methodologies, and that RoR developers also are in very high demand.
Also - considering the simplicity of the App - have you considered using Sinatra (a very minimal framework for Ruby)? You may find that the easiest, and it'll be an excellent stepping stone if you later wanted to get into Ruby on Rails.
OK, this thread is about 1 1/2 years old by the time I write this. But wanted to add something to the discussion for anyone finding this, as I did doing a search on RoR vs CakePHP.
As of this date, and during the last 12 months, RoR is trending about 3 times what CakePHP is, according to Google Trends. Now, this is just RoR vs CakePHP.
When I add Facebook into the mix, RoR/Facebook is still about 3 times CakePHP/Facebook, but if you look at the last 3 months, CakePHP/Facebook drops to zero. Link.
Right now, the trending languages for Facebook apps are C, Java, & C++. Link.
If you are more familiar with C/C++ then you will most likely find the learning curve for PHP a lot less steep : )
For something like a Facebook app and already knowing C, I would look into CakePHP. If you have time in the future look into RoR as it is an amazing platform.
Don't get me wrong, I love CakePHP. But if you don't have a background in web programming (PHP in particular), even CakePHP can take quite some time to be familiar with. RoR would be at the same learning curve, I suppose.
Besides, to deal with facebook API, you'll have to interact with it at 'base' level (by which I mean, the framework can't help you much with it). So to "quickly and easily just 'build' something like this for Facebook?" I don't think it's quite possible.
Anyway, if you still want to do it, CakePHP would be easier for you because PHP syntax would be similar to C and Java. But Ruby is an interesting and unique language if you have the time to spend on it.
I want to make a community based site, which is Drupal's strength. However I also want to try other frameworks, especially Rails.
One of the best things about drupal is its huge modules library. If I were to switch to Rails, would I be able to find similar functionality freely available as plugins, or would I have to rebuild?
Does Rails have the equivalent of (as plugins or gems):
CCK/Fields?
Node Reference?
Views / Views Relationships?
PathAuto?
Threaded Commenting?
Multisite Functionality?
Apache Solr (or equivalent) Integration?
Thanks.
I'm afraid you'll probably hear this answer a lot, but it's not a suitable comparison.
Drupal is a ultimately a CMS, Rails is a framework. Apples to oranges, or perhaps even Apple Juice to oranges. Out of the box, you fire up Drupal and it does 'things': it has a database structure, the concept of nodes, interfaces blah, blah. If you fire up Rails you have an empty project.
As far as I know there isn't a "Drupal-on-Rails" project that would be a suitable equivalent. However, I can attest to the fact that there is an awful lot of Ruby/Rails community and O/S work out there and you might find something suitable. I'd also say that the level of modularity in Ruby and Rails tends to mean that the range of plugins/modules/gems one can use is much greater.
My personal $0.02. If Drupal does what you need, just use Drupal: it's mature and has a great community. It's never a good idea to try to port Project X over to a new language as a learning exercise because you'll inevitable fall into the "Well that's how it's done in language X!" trap and become disenchanted with the new system.
If you're wanting to learn Rails (which you should, it's awesome) I'd suggest you'd be best working on a small project and seeing what the ecosystem offers before deciding if it's suitable for the needs of your bigger projects.
I have to second what Govan said, but add to it.
With Drupal, unless you really want to get into building your own modules and extensions you are really interacting with an application. Even when you start using CCK, all you are really doing is flipping switches, filling in forms and defining new options for content on the site.
Ruby on Rails is two things, and neither of them bares much similarity to Drupal. You asked "How hard is it really?". To answer that you need to understand what both Ruby and Rails are. Ruby is a programming language designed to make the life of the object purist programmer simpler and more pleasant. So, the first part of how hard is it is simply to answer "how long do you feel it would take you to learn a completely new programming language, like PHP but different".
Rails is an 'opinionated' framework. It's opinionated in that it lays out how a Ruby web project should be structured, as well as providing multiple APIs for everything from database access to web presentation. To answer the "how hard is it" question for Rails then (assuming you know Ruby by this point), you have to answer how much do you need to learn about cacheing, database design, page design, RESTful programming etc etc.
It's not a short journey. you asked if there is an equivalent to CCK for Ruby and Rails which implies to me that at this point your knowledge of programming is somewhat limited. Ruby and Rails interact with the database. CCK lets you define things in a database. Thus, with Ruby and Rails you are effectively bypassing the wonderful dialogs and forms that CCK provides you with and doing the data definition bits yourself, by hand, in code.
From experience, when I've hired experts in another programming language and framework into my Rails teams, it has taken them between 1 and 3 months to get productive, and a further 3 to 6 months for their productivity to start to raise and approach that of the Rails experts on my team.
Thus, in your particular case, I would not recommend a switch away from Drupal to Ruby on Rails.
Drupal (core) on ohloh (130k lines of code) is estimated to be 34 years of work worth.
Drupal (contributions) on ohloh (modules for Drupal 4-6 (7M lines of code)) is estimated to be 2113 years of work.
That is the power of a community, and that is something that you can never replicate. I remeber there was a guy, who tried to port Drupal to python calling it drupy, but that project died before something useful ever came out of it. Even if you copy the code, you can never copy the community.
The thing you need to realize, is that each community is different. So even if you find a project that can solve your code needs in a RoR or a different language/framework, it will never be like Drupal and vice versa.
So don't try to find a replacement for Drupal, but go explore and try new things. You might end up learning new things, that you can use for your Drupal projects.
I've read this times and times again that people saying comparing drupal an ror is comparing apple to orange which is wrong.
I think the saying itself BS. Yes we want to compare apple to orange and find out which is better. We even want to compare apple to steak. Said that, they are different. Yes, we all know. I have limited experience with either. I first thought Drupal was great and can help me build the website I wanted overnight (or over a week or month) then it didn't happen (not blaming Drupal).
My impression is that, Drupal maybe still great but it has a learning curve and needs a lot of other knowledge or talents to use it well and tweak it. RoR on the other hand is a more general framework and needs programming (Drupal needs too actually).
If you are more of a web designer person with a little PHP maybe Drupal is better fit.
If you are more of a web developer type don't want to spend time looking for modules and make them work but rather do them yourself (not really from ground up) then maybe RoR is for you (with the same amount of learning). So yes they are both good for different purpose, background, etc.
For now I will go with RoR (or dJango and other ORANGEs). My 2 cents.
Rails, since version 3.0, has officially adopted the once-controversial engine way of incorporating third-party apps. this is roughly the equivalent of Drupal's modules/plug-ins, from a 10k foot perspective. To build a community-based site, you could make use of an engine called, appropriately enough, "Community Engine." http://communityengine.org/features.html"
The Rails ecosystem doesn't have anywhere near the same number of modules Drupalists have available to them, but there are enough good quality ones to cover the chief basics.
Drupal has so many strong areas, its hard for just one or two people to recreate it in a decent amount of time with any language. PHP, Ruby, Python, etc.
You have the core node system, taxonomy, aliasing, menus, users, permissions, and modules, the database api, and form api, among others.
You'd have to know how to assemble all these pieces independently and create the structure necessary for it to all work together.
It would take more than 'a few hours'. I would say, even if you are a ROR master, you're looking at a year to two years of solid consistent work to get the best parts of Drupal for a new system.
I'm about to start building a tumblr clone that handles multiple users (so premade clones like Gelato won't cut it) and I'm not sure which framework I'd like to build this is.
Right now, I'm only intending to build a prototype. Something I can get a dozen friends on to test the concept and grow to maybe a couple hundred users to prove the market, so I'm not worried about long term scale. My biggest concern right now is quick deployment. I'd like to get from zero to signups in as short a time as possible, with as little customization to the framework of choice as possible.
I have experience with PHP, but not Ruby. However, I don't think the learning curve would be too steep so I'm not ruling out rails. I just want the framework that is most appropriate for a system like a multi-user tumblr clone so that I can build it with as little hassle, and as quickly, as possible.
If anyone has experience with a similar project, or with these frameworks and can offer an insightful perspective, I'd be very appreciative.
Thanks for taking the time to read.
Cheers,
~Jordan Feldstein
Definitely Rails. It'd much faster to develop project like this in Rails.
As far as I saw, PHP is lightyears behind from Rails in ORMs. And Rails routing is much better than any PHP framework's as well.
I have been developing in PHP since 2000, and still have a bunch of PHP systems in production (using both CodeIgniter and CakePHP).
I have found Rails to be incredibly more efficient to develop in ... easily 50% more productivity, depending on the use-case. Faster, higher quality. Easy choice for me.
+1 for Rails.
I can't speak about Codeigniter. My general understanding echoes the above statements. Lightweight and no fully object oriented.
I have developed in CakePHP since Jan 2006, after trying to get Rails deployed on my own server and failing badly. Rails was not easy to deploy back then...at least not for me. At the time Cake was the best alternative, and still is in many ways.
Cake is a very competent framework. However, I agree with the statements that it is in many ways far "behind" Rails. Some features are not as well designed, less integrated or simplified in comparison.
A few months ago I spent a couple of day porting one of my Cake apps to Rails2. Just as an exercise. The learning curve was very shallow for someone like me (with a decent grasp of the concepts that Cake and Rails are built on). We recently started porting one of our apps at work to Rails (also from Cake) because we found that support for a lot of things that are important to us are available in Rails or Ruby but not available or as complete in Cake and PHP.
If you are unsure about switching to Ruby you might want to look at Lithium (previously CakePHP v3). It is PHP 5.3 only and still a good way from 1.0 but the community is active and generally it looks like what Cake might have been if it had been started today and not 2005.
CodeIgniter is very lightweight, which is probably to the detriment of this project if you want to code as little as possible.
CakePHP is pretty much an attempt to port Rails to PHP, so choosing between those two frameworks will depend on other factors.
One factor would be whether you want to learn Ruby or not. I have dabbled in it, and feel it is superior to PHP, but more practical concerns keep me from experimenting with it more (have to use PHP at work).
Another concern would be hosting. I use Dreamhost, and the fee is the same for PHP and Rails. However, a friend of mine just got a GoDaddy hosting account, and he actually has to pay a higher monthly fee to have a Passenger-enabled host.
My company is in the process of starting down the Grails path. The reason for that is that the current developers are heavy on Java but felt the need for a MVC-style language for some future web development projects. Personally, I'm coming from the design/usability world, but as I take more "front-end" responsibilities I'm starting to feel the need for learning a language more intensively so I can code some logic but especially the front-end code for my UIs and stuff.
I've been trying to get into Python/Django personally, but just never invested too much time on it. Now that my company is "jumping" into Grails I bought the "Agile Web Development with Rails (3rd Ed - Beta)" and I'm starting to get into RoR. I'd still like to learn Python in the future or on the side, but my biggest question is:
Should I be learning RoR, and have a more versatile language in my "portfolio", knowing that my RoR knowledge will be useful for my Grails needs as well??
-OR-
Should I just skip RoR and focus on learning Grails that I'll be needing for work soon, and work on learning RoR/Django (Ruby/Python) later?
Basically the question revolves around the usefulness of Grails in a non-corporate setting and the similarities between Rails and Grails. (and this, while trying to avoid the centennial discussion of Python vs Ruby (on Rails) :))
Mmh, I don't know how to say this. Some people might bash me over this.
Language (Groovy and Ruby)
As a language I reckon Ruby is more funky compared to Groovy. Groovy only exists to ease Java programmer as you don't need to learn too much new syntax. But overall I reckon is not as funky as Ruby. Groovy wouldn't be the JVM language that is worth to learn based on attender's vote in this year's JavaOne but instead Scala is the one to go. Besides that, the original creator of Groovy himself does not have faith in the language he created himself in the first place.
Community and Job openings
As for the community, Grails community is not as big as Rails, though since the acquirement by Spring more and more people are using it in serious application. Rails has more job openings in the market compared to Grails (that is if you want to invest in looking a new job).
The framework (Grails and Rails)
But, as a framework, if you really care about maintainability and need access to Java framework and legacy Java system, Grails is the way to go as it provides cleaner access to Java. Grails itself is built upon several popular Java framework (Spring & Hibernate). Rails itself IMHO is funky like Ruby itself, but it's funkyness costs you maintainability. Matz himself prefers Merb over Rails 2 because Rails create a DSL on top of Ruby which is really against the Ruby philosophy. And I reckon because Rails itself is opiniated, which in turn if you don't have the same opinion as the creator, it might not fit your needs.
Conclusion
So in your case, learn Grails as that is the company's consensus (you need to respect the consensus) and if you still want to secure your job. But, invest some time learning Rails and Ruby too if you want to open a chance getting a new job in the future.
Just a bit of a question, is the reason they are choosing Grails because Groovy is closer in syntax to Java than Ruby, or because they want access to Java?
If it is the former, then I would say try to focus on Grails since that is what you will be using. If it is the latter, you might want to see if the development team is open to using JRuby.
I have never used Grails or Rails before, but I have used Groovy and Ruby before, and as a language I think Ruby is much cleaner and more consistent, and the team might enjoy production more. As a platform, Rails has been out longer and has a lot of attention, so I would imagine it is a more stable platform to use with more fleshed out features.
JRuby has full access to classes written in Java, so this is why I would say consider trying Rails. If it is too late in the decision time to consider it then I guess you can just ignore this post.
Basically, if you just want to hook in with Java, then JRuby is an option you should consider, but if the team is afraid of non-Java like syntax, maybe continue as is.
I would learn both. They are both up and coming technologies. Learning RESTful coding is a real benefit in any language.
I use GRAILS at work and RoR for side projects. I can say that the RoR community is much larger (I'm talking about RoR vs Grails not RoR vs Java) and very helpful.
Short Answer: They are similar.... what could it hurt?
Just skip RoR. There are really not a lot of similar things(besides the name)
I certainly believe that being enough familiar with Java, plus some experience programming with a dynamic language is more than enough if you plan to do serious development with Grails.
Comparing just only views(taglibs in Grails, RHTML in RoR) and the persistence stuff(GORM vs ActiveRecord) is just too different in the core, to invest time learning the nitty gritty details of RoR. Just dive into Grails, you won't regret.
Edit: corrected typo.
I've been learning RoR and Grails and the latter is far easier to learn.
Both frameworks share the same principles (agile, kiss, dry, duck typing and so..) but Groovy syntax is...well is simply great, something you can learn and use in a blink of an eye.
I truly feel that Grails has brighter future than RoR.
PD: Just in case you find it useful, a college of mine it's working full time with Grails and has a blog with some tips:
http://dahernan.net/search/label/grails
You should just skip RoR and focus on learning Grails that you'll be needing for work.
#Levi Figueira
For one thing, Grails is far more flexible than Rails. Rails is difficult to use with a legacy DB because ActiveRecord has too many design constraints that many legacy DBs didn't follow. Grails, oth, can use standard Hibernate mappings, which can accommodate a much broader range of DB designs.
The Rails community has been very vocal in evangelising RoR, with the result that high expectations have been set and not always met (programmer productivity is good, but ensuring good performance once deployed isn't so easy).
Grails has been designed as the scripted successor to Java, whereas the Ruby-Java integration used in JRuby on Rails, for example, has had to be retrofitted.
I would suggest that you stick with Grails; it may not have the same glitz as RoR, but it's a pragmatic choice; you get improved productivity and the re-use of existing Java libraries.
Jump straight into Grails. I'm sure Ruby/Rails is good but so in Groovy/Grails. I recommend this book.
http://beginninggroovyandgrails.com
Remember the errata is online. There are a couple of mistakes in the book.
http://beginninggroovyandgrails.com/site/content/errata
Also, check out the 3 minute and 30 second demo of creating your first Grails app.
http://grails.org/Grails+Screencasts
This tutorial will show you the basics.
http://grails.org/Quick+Start
Yes Grails is the way to go. RoR is good but it ties you in to the Ruby ecosystem. Part of the effort of learning a new framework or language is learning the class libraries as well as the language syntax. If your co-workers are all Java types you will be much better placed to receive help and support as they will all be speaking the same language as you.
The other advantage to learning a bit of Groovy and Java is that web frameworks like GWT will open up to you. Grails has a GWT plugin and as a front end developer you will appreciate the ease of use and cross browser compatibility.
Also there is at least one hosting company offering free Grails application hosting (http://www.mor.ph/) which means that you can prototype sites at small data volumes before having to pay.
I favor Grails over Rails, but learning Rails will give you a more balanced perspective and actually open your eyes to overlooked things that are possible in Grails.
At a first glance you would think they are completely differente stories, since they are based on extremely different languages (Ruby and Groovy).
Then, after reading a couple of tutorials, you'll realize they share the same principles, scaffolding, duck typing, .. and finally the same goal:
making agile programming feasible.
If you already feel comfortable with terms like IoC and MVC, you'll find any of these options easy and exciting to learn.
I would say no, I'm learning Grails as well, and I've considered this as well, but just learning Grails is pretty big, plus learning Groovy (which granted is easy, but still gotta learn it right?) and all that... so learning Rails would have been just too much.
Yes if we compare grails and rails I would choose grails (I developed some intranet applications in grails).
But Django is superior to both - as python is well hmm a perfect choice.
You might also want to take a look at Clojure, a JVM language that's just starting to get popular. It may be a good choice for a Java-based company since it's compatible with your old codebase, and has a lot of modern innovations going for it. There are some good web frameworks emerging, including Compojure.