Using python on the web

[Patrick Phalen]

[spenrose at my-deja.com, on Thu, 20 Apr 2000]
:: We build medium-busy, CGI-intensive sites in Python. We were briefly
:: quite excited about Zope, but once we realized it locked us into Yet
:: Another Programming Language, we lost interest.

The only programming language Zope "locks you into" is Python.

:: DHTML is particularly problematic,
:: AFAI can tell, because it doesn't appear to allow the
:: segregation of HTML development from coding the way Python string
:: substitution does.

How did DHTML enter into this discussion?

Oh -- perhaps you mean DTML? If so, Zope's DTML is best viewed as a
reporting language, certainly not a programming language, although it
has support for variable substitution and conditionals, etc. And it's
aim IS precisely to separate HTML from coding. In fact it's
considerably more powerful in that role than string substitution. Sounds
like you didn't look at it very closely.

For heavy lifting in Zope, or to extend it, you use Python. Having the
combination of DTML and Python is particularly flexible and powerful.

:: We hire very skilled HTML people to do HTML and tell
:: them to leave our sustitution tags alone, rather than taking the time
:: and money to create novice DHTML people to do the same work. If we were
:: going to learn another language for production purposes, Perl, Java, and
:: C++ all have vastly larger infrastructures (code bases, labor pools,
:: documentation, etc.) than DHTML ever will. There are enough hassles in
:: using Python, which I love, because of its relatively small installed
:: base. No way am I going to something which is an order of magnitude less
:: supported.

Zope is an application server and content management framework. On
the one hand, as an application server framework, it seeks to provide a
superior alternative to CGI. It is object oriented from the ground up.
People deploy it because it provides technology to publish Python
objects over the Web, a powerful concept.

On the other hand, as a content management solution, Zope shines in
situations where you need to grant control to web producers in a
fine-grained, hierarchical, and secure way. These producers can use
HTML. They can also, if you like, learn a smattering of DTML, but that
isn't necessary. You can set things up so that they don't even need to
know how to *spell* DTML and they can be very productive -- in HTML.
You, as a developer, can continue to be productive -- in Python.