[Zope] Product Creation Comments

[Kent Polk]

> From: Paul Everitt <Paul@digicool.com>
> 
> It's hard for us to know where to start.  We got a <FLAME> yesterday
> from the exact opposite: more examples with no Python, all DTML.  We
> also get complaints about debugging the process of getting it started
> (apparently Apache configuration is our business as well).
> 
> Do you feel that a format like Amos' tutorial is the best one?  Or a
> bunch of sample products?  Or a reference guide?

Amos' product development tutorial was a big help in my attempt to
understand this stuff. Part of the problem is that not only are you
using a level of OO design methodology that few people actually 
manage to deal with here, you are using some completely new paradigms
which simply take (some of us, like me) time to comprehend. I make
little steps, which are executed to the flash of a 1000 candlepowered
strobe (to me) but it just serves to illuminate the next stairway. It's
hard to make progress when we are so far behind what Jim, Brian, etc
are putting out. :^)   

What I'm saying is that this stuff isn't trivial, and there is a tendency
for the frustration to mount as the learning curve is tremendously steep
here. I figure it's kinda like trying to explain Relativity back in
the '40's when the only real tools available were fairly primitive
mathematical tools which pushed their users to their mental limits. That's
why there were only a few people who really had a chance to comprehend it
back then. As tools and techniques got better and analogies were developed
to assist the non-mathematicians in understanding the complexities, it
began to seem fairly simple.

Now I'm sitting here, trying to figure how in the heck to lay out the
classes for this custom (scientific) file-table database product such
that it can operate inside of Zope. First, it has to acquire attributes
and methods in it's environment, then via class heirarchies. Basically
a heirarchical table-of-tables filesystem-based TinyTables :^) And of
course, I'm currently hopelessly lost because I don't understand how to
create the relationship between a class heirarchy (traversing classes
to locate a method) and the database hierarchy, not to mention the
filtering heirarchy that I also want to implement which should be
inherent in Acquisition.  But how?

Is supect that I'm somewhat in the same boat as the original poster
of this thread - I'm attempting to implement behavior that is implicit
in Acquisition, but I simply don't know how to 'let go' and let it do
it's thing. What do I hold on to when I let go? I don't see anything
there! :^)

I agree that to a large extent, the reference material is probably
close to complete, but the *comprehension* of what is in the reference
material just isn't occurring.  

That's why, for me, iterative examples of a simple example such as
Amos gave (and Mark Lutz's example in 'Programming Python') are so much
of a help. As the example grows through the permutations that are possible,
both comprehension of Zope technology and Zopeish design 'ethics' become
more clear.

I see I've covered science, technology, ethics and religion in one posting.
Only left out politics...  Wait! I'm lobbying now, aren't I???  :^)

Kent