Python and Zope

[Ken Egervari]

Thanks for comments.  I agree that I should stick to the same paradigms that
we are used to working with.  Apache/Mod-python is very close to what we are
doing and even though .NET isn't ready, it's also very close to the typical
web development paradigms that we are used to dealing with.  Zope is very
far offbase and I don't think it's for us.  I think I've figured that out
and we are persuing apache/mod-python right now.  Java is another desirable
option, but we don't have 3x the money to put in the hardware to make java a
viable solution.  Python simply takes less memory and is faster so that is
desirable enoguh for us.

Thanks again and I will heed your advice.

"Paul Boddie" <paul at boddie.net> wrote in message
news:23891c90.0109100209.187bd4 at posting.google.com...
> "Andrew Murray" <mr.murray at mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:<9nettc$ce1$1 at slb7.atl.mindspring.net>...
> > Frankly I was pretty unimpressed with Zope. After one gets over the
> > 'gee-whiz' factor, I've found that the learning curve behind Zope and
the
> > relative non-portability of the code you must write for it far outweigh
the
> > benefits (what are they again btw?) of using Zope.
>
> I found that there were a lot of nice things about some of the
> technologies - back in the days before Zope, the whole idea of
> dispatching requests through an object "containment hierarchy", whilst
> templating the whole lot in DTML, was rather exciting. When Zope came
> out, it just seemed to raise the level of effort to do the same things
> as one would with Bobo, and I had to study the vague documentation
> about writing products and experiment with the framework for a long
> time before I could get back to doing things as complicated as I had
> been doing with Bobo.
>
> Of course, things may be a lot different now, but Zope slipped into
> irrelevance for me after lots of features were added without any
> decent explanation of what they did. The mailing lists seemed to be
> continuously increasing in "noise" too; a new feature would be added,
> 358 messages expressing wonder at the new feature's coolness would
> then follow, and yet one would still be wondering where such a feature
> would be useful. Secretly, I suppose the authors of those 358 messages
> also had their doubts too.
>
> For me, Webware has taken over the role of innovator in my area of
> interest. However, as Mr Murray notes, it is especially important to
> work out what it is you want to develop and what it is that Zope can
> help you with. The latter investigation might take longer than you
> expect - for a while, Zope was advocated as the "one size fits all"
> Python Web application server, but the experiences of many seem to
> suggest that Zope's "one size" doesn't fit all, and this observation
> seems to be supported by the number of alternative frameworks for Web
> development in Python:
>
>   http://www.paul.boddie.net/Python/web_modules.html
>
> (Although it does seem rather too fashionable at the moment to invent
> one's own templating framework, different only from its nearest
> competitor by the slightest of nuances.)
>
> > If you've used mod_perl, mod_php or mod_python before, I'd suggest going
> > that route.
>
> It's probably good advice to stick with what you know, if that can let
> you do what you want to do. Only if Zope and competitors can let you
> do that thing much more easily is it worth it to learn those
> technologies. I would also suggest investigating the deployment
> options for your application and the different frameworks; for a
> while, people really seemed to be having problems with Zope and
> Apache, even though the main focus of Zope development seemed to
> concentrate on more exciting areas (ZKitchenSink?), but if you can't
> deploy your application with other, desirable technologies then the
> whole affair seems somewhat pointless.
>
> Paul