[Zope3-dev] Re: IMPORTANT RFS: Through the Web Site Development

[Jeffrey P Shell]

On Wednesday, January 15, 2003, at 03:33  AM, Paul Everitt wrote:

> Shane Hathaway wrote:
>> Jon Whitener wrote:
>>  > Forgive me my ignorance: despite working in Zope nearly full-time 
>> for
>>  > several months now, I have never created a full Python module, let
>>  > alone a Zope persistent Python module.  I don't even know what they
>>  > look like (I've written a handful of Script (Python)s).
>> Here is a simple module.
>> class Document:
>>   def setText(self, text):
>>     self.text = text
>> There's really nothing more to it.  The setText method corresponds to 
>> a setText Python script.  The only thing you have to know that you 
>> didn't when using Python scripts is the "class" statement.  Modules 
>> can be even simpler than this.
>
> I think, though, that this misses an important point.  These people 
> aren't going to send an email to zope3-dev and say, "Convince me."  
> They might not even bother to locate the (usually well-hidden) 
> documentation that lays out the argument.

> Instead, they're going to say, "I'm not ready to learn another 
> programming language."

They're more likely to say "why should I convince my ISP to install and 
configure Zope when PHP and Perl are already there?".  This is the 
reality that I've seen.  I see many non-programmers take up PHP for 
small stupid tasks because they don't need or want the overhead of 
Zope.  We're not going to get these people - at all, ever.  They see 
Zope as a big foreign world.  It's not the programming language that 
keeps them away - it's just that they know they can add '.php' to a 
file name, get a PHP book and maybe a MySQL book, and they can generate 
a list of artists that they promote (if they're a booking agency, for 
example).  We could make it so that with Zope all you have to do is say 
"an artist is built out of these fields, make the whole application for 
me", and they'll still stay away from it if they only need one page 
that lists artists dynamically, unless their hosting provider is 
providing Zope without them knowing about it.

They see Zope as big thing suited to big jobs.  They see PHP as 
requiring little more than <?php ?>, or turning on the "dynamic code" 
feature of Dreamweaver or GoLive; or downloading WebMatrix 
<http://asp.net/webmatrix/> for ASP.NET development.  How are we going 
to compete with the notion that all you need to make a dynamic page is 
to change the filename extension?

As for the example of the booking agency above - I had a hard time 
convincing my friend why they should run their small site on Zope.  The 
only argument I could come up with is that I'd be able to answer his 
programming questions (he was under the assumption that as a web 
developer I would automatically know PHP).  He's experienced Zope 
before - we've delivered sites using it (he was usually managing the 
business/relationship end of things, not code).  I don't think he's 
tried to make anything with it himself.

--
Jeffrey P Shell
jeffrey@cuemedia.com