Django vs other Python web frameworks?

the religious debates between the Django and WSGI camps

It would seem as though you're a tad bit confused about what WSGI is and what Django is. Saying that Django and WSGI are competing is a bit like saying that C and SQL are competing: you're comparing apples and oranges.

Django is a framework, WSGI is a protocol (which is supported by Django) for how the server interacts with the framework. Most importantly, learning to use WSGI directly is a bit like learning assembly. It's a great learning experience, but it's not really something you should do for production code (nor was it intended to be).

At any rate, my advice is to figure it out for yourself. Most frameworks have a "make a wiki/blog/poll in an hour" type exercise. Spend a little time with each one and figure out which one you like best. After all, how can you decide between different frameworks if you're not willing to try them out?

I'd say you're being a bit too pessimistic about "not learning anything" using Django or a similar full-stack framework, and underestimating the value of documentation and a large community. Even with Django there's still a considerable learning curve; and if it doesn't do everything you want, it's not like the framework code is impenetrable.

Some personal experience: I spent years, on and off, messing around with Twisted/Nevow, TurboGears and a few other Python web frameworks. I never finished anything because the framework code was perpetually unfinished and being rewritten underneath me, the documentation was often nonexistent or wrong and the only viable support was via IRC (where I often got great advice, but felt like I was imposing if I asked too many questions).

By comparison, in the past couple of years I've knocked off a few sites with Django. Unlike my previous experience, they're actually deployed and running. The Django development process may be slow and careful, but it results in much less bitrot and deprecation, and documentation that is actually helpful.

HTTP authentication support for Django finally went in a few weeks ago, if that's what you're referring to in #3.

I suggest taking another look at TG2. I think people have failed to notice some of the strides that have been made since the last version. Aside from the growing WSGI stack of utilities available there are quite a few TG2-specific items to consider. Here are a couple of highlights:

TurboGears Administration System - This CRUD interface to your database is fully customizable using a declarative config class. It is also integrated with Dojo to give you infinitely scrollable tables. Server side validation is also automated. The admin interface uses RESTful urls and HTTP verbs which means it would be easy to connect to programatically using industry standards.

CrudRestController/RestController - TurboGears provides a structured way to handle services in your controller. Providing you the ability to use standardized HTTP verbs simply by extending our RestController. Combine Sprox with CrudRestController, and you can put crud anywhere in your application with fully-customizable autogenerated forms.TurboGears now supports mime-types as file extensions in the url, so you can have your controller render .json and .xml with the same interface it uses to render html (returning a dictionary from a controller)

If you click the links you will see that we have a new set of documentation built with sphinx which is more extensive than the docs of the past.

With the best web server, ORM, and template system(s) (pick your own) under the hood, it's easy to see why TG makes sense for people who want to get going quickly, and still have scalability as their site grows.

TurboGears is often seen as trying to hit a moving target, but we are consistent about releases, which means you won't have to worry about working out of the trunk to get the latest features you need. Coming to the future: more TurboGears extensions that will allow your application to grow functionality with the ease of paster commands.