That said, I'm not Google either, and I'm happily using django and love using it.
[0] http://www.techempower.com/blog/2013/03/28/frameworks-round-...
http://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r7
Python didn't beat NodeJS in Database queries though.
Yes Go is fast, but Go is also cluttered with its static type system.
Personally I feel pain to deal with flexible JSON marshal/unmarshal, in Python dict() is nearly 100% identical with JS objects in value.
I can't find what you're referring to. Node was still infront of Django in the JSON benchmark.
Django (until 1.6) hasn't had connection pooling for the database either. Updating those benchmarks with pooling should make significant differences.
But my point was that the framework itself can have a huge impact. Database and other I/O does have overhead, and it may even be significant. But it's not necessarily the biggest factor.
The Nodejs web framework is Express, behind Bottle and Falcon.
But the original point was that database and I/O make the largest difference. After restricting the set of languages and frameworks to python and javascript, I can only (now) agree.
109,000-5700 rps for JSON requests, and 4800-117 rps for multiple database queries. Quite significant.
Go or Java are wonderful languages if you have serious number-crunching needs or if cutting your server budget in half would save you a billion dollars. My server budget is $500 a month and if you doubled the performance of all of my servers it would be $500 a month. I'll elide the detailed explanation of the whole "User clicks a button" to "User sees something happen" HTTP request waterfall chart but my Rails app is generally less than 5% of it.
YMMV if you're Google, but I'm not Google.