It might be my attention deficit disorder talking here, but I just can't tolerate extra steps from "here's a concept I want to try out" to "hmm, it seems to work". One particular aid conquering extra obstacles, I've found, is Jython servlets. I know that if you setup an environment with state-of-the-art servlet containers and IDEs, the deployment of Java servlets can be quite easy and straight-forward, but I bet it still won't beat Jython servlets. All I have to do is change the .py file that is the particular servlet and reload the corresponding web page, and that's all there is to it.

If you want to know how to do it, read Sean McGrath's Jython Webapp Tutorial.

(This entry is a kind of an annotated bookmark, in case you're wondering.)