[Zope3-dev] Learning Zope3

[Roch'e Compaan]

Hi all

I must start out by saying that I'm struck with uncontrolable excitement
whenever
I read the postings to this mailing list, although I understand less than
halve of
what is said. This bugs me off course - in a good way - and I really want=
 to
dive
into the source and learn Zope3's innards. And I have made some atempts i=
n
doing
so only to come accross so many highways and byways that I leave dumbfoun=
ded
not
knowing at which mountain to start chipping away first.

Our company has used Zope for application development over the past 3 yea=
rs
and
we feel proud to say that we have and are making quite a number of people=
 in
Africa, particularly South Africa, aware of Zope. Given that in the Zope
world
we primarily play the role of application developers, and given our limit=
ed
resources, we should maybe focus on _using_ and _developing_ with Zope an=
d
giving
you feeback on our experience as best as we can and avoid the innards for
now.  But
over time we feel our investment in the Zope Architecture increases and w=
hen
Zope Corp.
and the community starts working on the next generation Zope and I feel t=
o
stupid
to say "is this going to be in there" or "are you gonna drop this" then I
_really_
want to understand what goes on under the hood.

I want to know what the best way is to approach learning Zope3's innards.
In my
first attempts I started out where Zope starts - z3.py.  Then I thought w=
ell
maybe
if I just understand each package that is imported and the modules and
packages
they import, and so on I must eventually understand Zope.  But this appro=
ach
makes
me think that I will be done when you start with the next version and if
that is the
case then let me get started. You see I don't know if it is neccessary to
know each
package or if i can skip this module or must only now how to use that mod=
ule
without
knowing it's innards, etc.

I'm willing to document my learning step by step, so if you feel that thi=
s
will benefit
Zope development please give me some pointers or just tell me your own
story.  I'm
sure y'all didn't just open your eyes one day and suddenly all of Zope wa=
s
revealed
to you ;)

--
Roch=E9 Compaan
Upfront Systems			http://www.upfrontsystems.co.za