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

[Ian Bicking]

Martijn Faassen wrote:
> I've sighed a few times the last months when I ran into more and more 
> Python-based schema and form frameworks. I developed Formulator for Zope 
> 2 pretty early on, and was involved in 2002 in setting up Zope 3's 
> schema framework, so I've contributed to the problem. In the Zope world 
> there's also Archetypes, and I heard Archetypes is now working on a new 
> generation which redesigns everything.. And I ran into Schevo and I saw 
> formencode, which both have a history too, and then finally what made me 
> sigh was running into a weblog post by Philip Eby on Spike. It all looks 
> all very cool, but how many more do we need here?
> 
> I believe that what we, framework developers, need is a bit more 
> humility ("We're open, you just all plug into our great solution!" is 
> not humble), and more active outreach to include pieces of other 
> frameworks. While we also need to do a bit of work of opening up the 
> neat bits of our frameworks to reuse by others, but that rather easily 
> turns into the non-humble "Use mine!", so I think what we really need to 
> do more of is the "Let's look for something to reuse!" variety of 
> outreach than the "look, I made mine real great!" outreach (we'll do the 
> latter automatically anyway :). I think Ian Bicking has been saying 
> similar things.

Well, since I show up in both paragraphs (having written FormEncode), 
and both sides of the issue, I guess I should reflect on why.

The duplication of work did occur to me (and I was looking to give up at 
one time: http://blog.ianbicking.org/where-next-for-formencode.html). 
And I realized that I was spread too thin to give the necessary 
attention to all my still independently-developed projects.  The 
resolution of such a situation can go a couple ways -- I abandon the 
project entirely, I somehow get other developers involved, or I try to 
fold the ideas into someone else's project.  All three are very 
difficult, some in practical ways (how to get other people interested, 
how to find a compatible project) some emotionally (abandoning code, or 
the humility required to abandon code *and* work on someone else's project).

I've gone through all three processes at times too -- FormEncode went 
dormant for a long time, then I kind of reminded myself of what it was 
useful for, then I looked around for other similar projects -- but I had 
no idea what to do once I found them.  Say "hey, stop using what you are 
using, I got some better ideas"?  I feel like an interloper.  What I'm 
doing might apply to Archetypes or Zope schemas, but I'm not involved or 
invested *at all* with those projects, so my connection is tenuous.  I 
feel like we have to meet in the middle somewhere, some neutral ground 
where people can be equally invested and involved... but I'm not sure 
how to do that, because what seems like a Big and Difficult Problem to 
me (form generation) may seem (at least at the moment) to be incidental 
to another project; useful, but not worth the coordination effort.  Not 
to mention, what I think is important and distinguishing isn't what 
other people feel is important.  (The other direction I considered was 
documentation: http://blog.ianbicking.org/a-theory-on-form-toolkits.html 
-- but is documenting a design aimed at decoupling that different than 
distributing the code that informed that design?)

I need to figure this out, because WSGIKit is in the same position -- 
I'm trying to factor out something that I think deserves to be shared 
among projects, but how to I get other developers to adopt the project 
or participate in the development?  Make It And They Will Come isn't 
that reliable.

I think people are comfortable letting projects Compete In The 
Marketplace, i.e., put a bunch of stuff out there and see what comes out 
on top.  But in reality nothing comes out on top, and reimplementation 
is common -- especially with something that tends to be mixed with an 
object model, like form generation.

Everyone pretty much agrees that simple is better, but "simple" can be 
hard to define.  Some projects -- Zope 3 in particular -- build up a 
bunch of new metaphors for programming, like adaptation, interfaces, 
utilities, and declarative glue.  To a core Zope 3 developer these 
aren't complexity, they are fundamental ways of thinking about 
development.  They are the prerequesites for understanding everything 
else.  These prerequesites always exists -- I consider some level of OO 
understanding a foundation that I expect, and so I don't consider (many) 
OO techniques to be a sign of increased complexity.  But for someone 
with only procedural experience this won't be the case.  This is okay, 
because The World has agreed that OO is a fundamental concept.  But 
there isn't a consensus on these new object models that people are 
working on, not even within the domain of the web.

-- 
Ian Bicking  /  ianb at colorstudy.com  /  http://blog.ianbicking.org