[Zope3-dev] Re: Introduction and very-high-level question

[Garrett Smith]

Dave Harris wrote:
  > And now a comment/question. As I stumble around the construction site
> known as Zope3, I'm constantly flummoxed by the number of places I have 
> to look to find something.

I empathize. There are a lot of developers on this project who have been 
working with this codebase for *years* and for whom most answers come 
very quickly. I'm not one of those :-) and I know what you're facing.

My only advise here is to prepare yourself mentally to learn without 
well crafted learning aids :-) I.e. you'll have to put some sweat into 
making forward progress early on.

But the good news is, as I'm sure you know from your own experience, 
things get easier over time until most how-tos become second nature.

> much of 
> what I see reminds me of the C++/Java/Delphi object-oriented inheritance 
> trap where enlightenment arrives only when you have understood the 
> base-base-base class. 

I don't think this is the case with Zope 3. One of the goals of the 
project is to break up on large learning curve into several smaller 
learning curves. There are fairly well defined 'tracks' in Zope 3 for 
content authors, web designers, web admins, application developers, etc.

I'm not sure this necessarily makes things easier today given the state 
of flux and lack of comprehensive docs. But again, with some effort, 
you're going to make progress and things definitely get easier.

If you decide to dive in, post questions to this list. I keep an eye out 
for anything I can answer and would be happy to help wherever I can. 
Really, it's a good list :-)

> Practically speaking, is the grand design of Zope3 meeting 
> everybody's/somebody's expectations? 

For our part, yes, though I'd love to see things wrapping up soonish.

I understand the fearlessness of the recent refactoring and mark it as a 
very good thing. One of the reasons we opted for Zope 3 (over J2EE or 
other options) is Jim and team's committment to a) not rushing and b) 
getting thigns right. I'm happy to wait additional weeks/quarters 
(please, not years *cringe*) to work with a platform that has legs into 
the next half decade or so. I think Zope 3 is on that track.

Will it be sprouting still further
> offshoots or is it due for a pruning? The recent retirement of 
> zope/context makes me wonder how much of the code base is experimental 
> and/or deadwood. I'm not looking for arguments or justifications - I 
> really wouldn't be able to understand most of it right now. I'd simply 
> like to get a feel for the entropy level - will Zope3 be getting bigger 
> or smaller?

One last observation...despite the rather aggressive refactoring, our 
codebase has remained essentially unaffected. Jim and team have an 
extremely high committment to stable states, where possible. This is not 
a "rip, tear, deal with it" crowd.

Hope that sheds some light, for my part anyway. I encourage you to keep 
up your inquiry here, with hard-hat and all :-)

  -- Garrett