It does have its fair share of small idiosyncrasies here and there, but none of them really get in your way, it’s just peculiarities that make you go “.. Oh. Okay.”

I find its the perfect mix between flexibility, and enterprise-components-doing-everything-for-you-but-impossible-to-extend everywhere approaches. It keeps things simple, never appears overly complex, provides everything if you need it, but optionally stays out of your way.

You ARE kinda stuck in the MVC pattern, but since that’s what I wish to use, I see no problem there.

It comes with its own dev server, and has a really, really great admin interface so you can quickly get an application prototype working — and then extend it to the point where it becomes complex. Or not.

Its database ORM (sqlalchemy) integration, simple erb(rails)-like templating, its CRUD and forms scaffolding helpers are unmatched, in my humble opinion. It provides tons of help for glue code like “novice” frameworks (like, say Codeigniter for PHP) but I have yet to encounter an aspect I couldn’t rather easily extend.

The documentation is okay, could use slightly more polish here and there, but it is really simple to follow, and easy to grasp. The book is great. Also the main author is very responsive and actively develops it, and post tutorial videos for beginners on vimeo. I wish this framework had more visibility, I think it’s a rare gem that could easily bloom into something amazing.