I'm leaning toward Rails because I've been using it since its early stage. I also wrote stuffs in Django just out of curiosity, and it feels just as good. I think they're both highly productive environments, and with the time it takes to read all the comparison articles, we could've written entire apps.
INTERESTING QUOTES: '... although there is no reason why fastcgi couldnt be used ...' ~ except it's slower! ~ http://superjared.com/entry/quick-django-benching. '... here is no equivalent of a model-specific SQL refresh something that could drop a specific models tables and regenerate the needed SQL automatically ...' ~ true, recognised & being corrected ~ http://www2.jeffcroft.com/blog/2006/jul/20/top-ten-things-suck-about-django.
SOME POINTS: Two things come to mind that are not mentioned. The first is hosts. What is the comparison between hosts? The second is how mature the language is. If I want to use python and I need a particular module that does 'fo '. it is probably out there somewhere (though it may be alpha or beta it will most likely out of date) unless you want to re-invent the wheel. I can't say the same for Rails. Ruby is just a younger language with less code mass.
QUESTIONS TO ASK: In the end what really matters is how good the idea & business is. There are plenty of Rail based companies I can think of making a go of it. The same applies to Python based companies. If you accept that technology is an amplifier of ideas, will using Rails or Django alone make a better choice? Is the difference between them compelling enough to make a difference? One area that could tip in Rails favour is "susinctness". But Django with it's python code base has more tools to choose from.
I've been using django, but I picked it because I enjoy python more than ruby. I think that they are close enough that the selection comes down to whether you've any pre-existing experience with either framework or language. If not, then I claim the decision really lies between which language you want.
My biased and un-researched opinion is that you'll find more support for learning python than ruby.
I'm leaning more towards Django currently. I've worked with Django for a longer time than RoR so that may be the source of my bias.
I prefer it because it gives me more out of the box. I can set up logins and accounts very easily for example. It is however a complete pain to install. Chances are you will spend days fighting with it and may even give up before you ever get it working!
Rails, but I can't judge Django because I haven't played with it on more than a superficial level. It seems like it really comes down to preference. I love the Ruby (and Rails) community right now and there are a lot of hopes for Ruby 1.9 as far as speed goes (supposedly an order of magnitude faster than 1.8.5).
Rails, because that's the one I started with, and it works well enough. I like Ruby, too.
Basically, Rails doesn't have defects that are bad enough that they make me want to ditch it, and it's a pretty subjective call in any case, so I'm sticking with it. Best to get on with actually creating some sites...
My understanding (after watching the "Snakes and Rubies" video of DHH and the Adrian Holovaty) was that Django is for best for content-centric sites, while Rails is for apps...
So prompted by another recent long discussion on the merits of these two frameworks, I quickly threw together this little poll for giggles: http://www.railsordjango.com
Clicking on either logo logs your vote. Done my best to prevent vote spamming, so hopefully the results won't be too inaccurate.
If you have any great resources or comparison articles I missed for either stack, please let me know and I'll throw them in.
it is apparent from this article that the author is a lot more familiar with Django than Rails and misses a lot of things. (e.g. I haven't seen a project in the last year that uses salted hash login generator - acts_as_authenticated is great - and there are admin interfaces available as plugins that are similar to what django offers by default.) Each framework has its advantages, but its unfair to compare them (in a which one is better sense) without equal knowledge about both.
