Cocoa (OS X) vs. Lift Framework vs. Tornado

Much of Cocoa is implemented in Objective-C, an object-oriented language that is compiled to run at incredible speed, yet employs a truly dynamic runtime making it uniquely flexible. Because Objective-C is a superset of C, it is easy to mix C and even C++ into your Cocoa applications.

Lift creates abstractions that allow easier expression of business logic and then maps those abstractions to HTTP and HTML. This approach differs from traditional web frameworks which build abstractions on top of HTTP and HTML and require the developer to bridge between common business logic patterns and the underlying protocol.

By using non-blocking network I/O, Tornado can scale to tens of thousands of open connections, making it ideal for long polling, WebSockets, and other applications that require a long-lived connection to each user.