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I picked Django because:

* The documentation was better than Rails * Python is more useful outside of Django than Ruby is outside of Rails * The Python syntax seemed easier to read

Since then, I've become a big fan of Django and Python. With that said, plenty of smart people are using Rails. I agree with some of the other commenters that you should do the tutorial for each framework before deciding.

As for jobs, both Rails and Django have tons of open positions available and hot startups using them.

2 comments

Arguable, but I think Rails haw way more docs than django: http://railstutorial.org/book , http://guides.rubyonrails.org/ , http://railscasts.com/ to name a few

"was" being the operative verb. This was two years ago.

Nonetheless, I just looked at those three links and IMHO, the Django docs are more concise and well-organized:

http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.2/

For me at least, it's all about maintainability and parsimony, two things that Django/Python has in spades and for which excellent central documentation is a necessary requirement.

"Python is more useful outside of Django than Ruby is outside of Rails"

In what way? I was a heavy Python user for a number of years and then moved to Rails/Ruby. I use Ruby for a lot of non-web projects, and I've never found it to be lacking.