At the risk of contributing to the usual "my programming language is better than yours" holy war, I'll throw in $0.02(US):<br>
<br>
There are a few things that make Zope a noteworthy alternative to a HTML + Java web server:<br>
<ol>
<li>Python is much less rigid in terms of types than Java, and it has nifty
stuff like getAttr(). I've never seen an easy-to-use, built-in
API in any other web-oriented programming language that lets me locate
and use object fields and methods by entering a string value for
the identifier. This often means that knowing the type of an
object becomes less important - it just needs to contain the methods
and attributes you need to use. If the object doesn't have what you need, Python gives you plenty of
facilities to discover which methods/fields are missing and recover
gracefully. Computer science purists often perch themselves on
soapboxes and preach the value of rigid type-safety; Python is a
shining example of when type-safety isn't always desirable.</li><li>Python has simple syntax for tuples, lists, and dictionaries.<br>
</li>
<li>Zope is anal-retentive about valid XHTML and XML - a wonderful
feature as the web moves into the future. Zope just won't let
things fly if they don't validate against the parser.</li>
<li>ZPT - a scripting language that integrates itself within the
DOM. ZPT dissipates many of the easy-to-miss mistakes regarding
programming-language constructs like conditional blocks and iteration,
as well as exposes the contents of those iterated or
condition-protected blocks to XML or XHTML validation.</li><li>Acquisition
- a wonderful feature that helps to unify a large application by making
objects easily reachable without having to memorize and use long paths.</li>
<li>Permissions - Zope has a fine-grained permissions model built
in. This is a life-saver for web applications that require
authentication, especially if they accommodate different classes of
users.</li>
<li>Object-oriented database storage - this puts all the power of
acquisition, containment, and security into your storage backend with
minimal marshalling from the database storage into the web page.<br>
</li>
</ol>
IMHO, Java as a web language is still much better suited for stuff like
applets. However, you could conceivably take a language like Java
and build a Zope-like server around it, and probably reap some benefits
from Java that you would have difficulty acquiring from Python.<br>
<br>
fm<br>
<br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 1/6/06, <b class="gmail_sendername">Andreas Jung</b> <<a href="mailto:lists@andreas-jung.com" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">lists@andreas-jung.com
</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<br><br>--On 6. Januar 2006 10:06:55 -0500 Asad Habib <<a href="mailto:ahabib@engin.umich.edu" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">ahabib@engin.umich.edu</a>><br>wrote:<br><br>> Well, the class is simply a construct that Java uses to define an object.
<br>> Also, the concept of object is well defined in Java which makes it easier<br>> for the programmer to know what can and cannot be done. In Python, it is<br>> not as explicit. Java is a programming language and hence cannot be
<br>> compared directly to a scripting language such as Python or PHP. These 2<br>> types are designed for different purposes.<br>><br>><br><br>Python is not a programming language??? huh......the difference is that
<br>Java is compiled and Python is interpreted. I agree that PHP is not a<br>programming language but just a weird mixture of HTML and _something_<br>programming-language-like :-)<br><br>-aj<br><br>_______________________________________________
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