[Zope3-dev] Complexness of Zope3

[Phillip J. Eby]

For some apps, I use even less of Zope than you do.  Currently, just 
ZPublisher and DTML!

Keep in mind, though, that Zope 3 is more modular than Zope 2.  I expect to 
use more Zope 3 pieces than Zope 2 pieces, and in Zope 3 I'll be more able 
to separate them.

I have some of the same concerns about the enormous breadth and depths of 
what's in Zope 3.  In some cases, I expect to replace Zope 3 components 
with my own, because my needs are much simpler and I don't want to pay all 
of the various overheads that come with the Zope 3 components.  For 
example, zope.app has a fairly complex set of tools to manage dynamic 
adaptation of interfaces to views.  I expect to replace this with a much 
simpler, relatively static, context-free adaptation mechanism that should 
have better cacheability and much simpler configuration.  I can do this, 
because I write applications, and applications don't ordinarily need the 
ability to throw random components into random places and somehow all just 
work.

If you're an application developer, you need to recognize that Zope's core 
audience is non-developers.  Zope is trying to make it easy for them to 
build things from components, not to write software.  This often implies 
additional system complexity, in order to have ease of use.  That 
complexity sometimes gets in the way of the pure application developer, 
whose needs are more basic.

On the other hand, there are many benefits to be had from using 
well-engineered infrastructure.  In the last six years, I haven't seen 
anything better out there than ZPublisher, except for Zope 3's zope.publisher.



At 05:43 PM 5/23/03 +0200, Thomas Guettler wrote:
>Hi!
>
>I think there are more people like me who think that zope is too
>big. In my python product I only use very little of the available
>tools. I don't use: acquisition, DTML, ZPT, ZClasses ...
>
>I only use python, ZODB and ZCatalog, usermanagement and sessions.
>
>Zope3, I though would clean up a lot of things. But when you look at
>the documentation, zope3 seems very complex.
>
>Since the problems you want to solve with tools like zope3 are complex
>you need some easy to use tools. You can't teach your colleagues the
>tools for several weeks, before starting with the project.
>
>Aren't you afraid that many people will switch to e.g Quixote+ZODB
>because Zope is to complex?