Zope 3.0, and why I won't use it

[Martijn Faassen]

Carlos Ribeiro wrote:
> On Sun, 14 Nov 2004 19:41:13 -0500, Steve Holden <steve at holdenweb.com> wrote:
> 
>>You managed to get it to run? I found the whole load opaque beyond
>>belief, and removed it after an hour's examination.
> 
> 
> From time to time, I download Zope, try it a little bit, and uninstall
> it. Perhaps I am too dumb for it (which may be the case) :-( ... but I
> somehow feel that there is a problem, for I am not alone in this
> feeling. For me, Zope lacks Python's inherent clarity; it seems that
> it requires a 'mental mode' of its own. Many things are not obvious,
> in the way they normally are when I am working with Python. This
> places a lot of burden on the documentation, which - as said elsewhere
> - is confusing. It's a shame.

I agree that this is the case (and I've been working with Zope for many 
years). Zope 2 is many ways rather unpythonic. There's a lot of stuff 
that could be a lot more clear and Pythonic.

On the other hand, Zope 2 suffers like any large framework does. While 
they (hopefully) offer a lot of power, it is inevitable that parts of a 
framework are not ideal, and it's also inevitable you have to invest 
time on how to use it effectively. So in part I think this lack of 
clarity is inherent to what it tries to be.

Zope 3 tries, and in most part succeeds, to be a lot more Pythonic than 
Zope 2. That should help in part. Zope 3 is of course a large framework 
as well -- it'll be inherently take time to get into it and use it 
effectively. Nonetheless, Zope 3 also tries very hard through its 
component architecture to be a framework that is a lot *easier* to 
integrate with than Zope 2 ever was.

Regards,

Martijn