for bigger problems use a smarter hammer

PHP won't detect faces anymore. The OpenCV extension does not support the last PHP and I'm sick of using a small screwdriver to put big nails in place. I will build a set of utility APIs that can be used by all my web apps. They will run on Python and I'll tame the snake using a lightweight framework.
Enter the perfect Python wsgi hammer:

Werkzeug, das
Wortart: Substantiv, Neutrum
Worttrennung: Werk|zeug
Gesamtheit von Werkzeugen, die für eine Arbeit gebraucht werden

duden.de

After a couple of hours of getting familiar with the tool and going trough the tutorial I figured out that for now I only need the HTTP utilities and a base application.wsgi with all the code inside will do. If you want to go deeper I recommend looking at this to-do sample app. It's a really good example of how to run it on wsgi and is simple enough to grasp but still uses all the stuf you would normally need like DB and persistence.
Now I'm convinced that is order to learn a new programming language is better to study a framework and not a book. Because a popular framework with all the resources already available is really the best cookbook you can get. Sure you need to familiarize yourself with the syntax of the language but if you go trough the simple tutorial you're more than half way there.
Hammer on!