[Web-SIG] Re: Just lost another one to Rails

[Martijn Faassen]

A.M. Kuchling wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 18, 2005 at 05:01:41PM +1000, Anthony Baxter wrote:
> 
>>If you spell it wrong, you either
>>get a broken web application with no useful traceback, or else a 
>>monstously hideous traceback that's almost entirely useless. 
> 
> 
> This is also part of why I've never been able to get anywhere with
> Twisted, and why I'm suspicious of systems that depend critically on
> interfaces, adaptors, and other such extensions to the object model.
> When they go wrong, diagnosing the problem is messy, and simple typos
> can get turned into huge debugging expeditions.

I think this fairly accurately describes the risk of strongly decoupled 
systems like Zope 3 and Twisted. In the beginning of OO, people had this 
complaint about inheritance hierarchies too. And they were partially 
right, but not entirely. I believe adaptation is a useful tool, but like 
inheritance, one shouldn't overdo it and use with it with care. I can 
certainly say Zope 3 in some areas goes overboard with this.

How would you deal with the flexibility requirements that these systems 
have, though?

Regards,

Martijn