[Zope3-dev] Big import blocks

[Jeffrey P Shell]

On Thursday, March 20, 2003, at 09:26  AM, Guido van Rossum wrote:

> Jim's always on a crusade against "dead chickens" (arbitrary things
> you have to do before you can do what you want to do).  I'm beginning
> to count the blocks of "from zope..... import ...." at the top of
> every Python module a huge dead checken.

Those big import blocks, and being able to follow them, is the only way 
one can even figure out Zope 3 right now.  "zapi" is a good idea, but 
it better be documented extremely well and that documentation better be 
extremely easy to get to.  The only real documentation right now is the 
code, and the code isn't always easy to follow (nicely - the code is 
more explicit and predictable than Zope 2, but there's also a lot more 
going on).

So all of those 'zapi' things better have real docstrings, so I can at 
least try to learn them by using help(zapi.getService) in the 
interpreter without being told "see IGetServices".

The dead chicken right now is not the amount of imports, it's being 
able to grasp what you need to do, what you need to import, how things 
work (enough to feel confidant in doing your own work), and of course, 
ZCML (I still think most new users will spend more of their time 
getting comfortable with ZCML than with anything else, at least - based 
on my own experiences).  I'd rather someone tell me what the ObjectHub 
is, and when, where, and how to use it, than make it easier for me to 
import.