[Zope3-dev] Re: Zope 3 as a reliable platform?!?

[Philipp von Weitershausen]

Chris Withers wrote:
> For me, the irony is that when Zope 2's development process was at its 
> worst, this problem was at its best as there was so little change, 
> enabling people to gather more knowledge without having to stop to 
> re-learn their old knowledge.

It is my impression that it was Zope 2's obscenity towards API stability 
which provoked the Zope 3 rewrite. We are only doing now what could have 
been done (over the course of 4 to 5 years) much earlier. After all, the 
"new religion" idea (Component Architecture) dates as far back as 2001.

> Sure, having to do:
> 
> to_change = {}
> if obj.hasProperty(x):
>     to_change[x]=x_value
> else:
>     obj.manage_addProperty(x,x_value,x_type)
> obj.manage_changeProperties(**to_change)
> 
> ...and remembering that manage_editProperties is BAD isn't that pretty, 
> but it's been stable for so long that I can write it from memory now, 
> and that's a big win.

Well, prettiness (or rather ugliness) aside, I'm having a problem 
letting that argument count. C programmers could easily use the same 
line of argumentation to say that manual error handling via return codes 
may be more complicated than dealing with exceptions, but they've been 
doing it for so many years that they can write it from memory now.

I for one prefer exceptions over manual error handling. And I prefer 
straight-forward APIs over unnecessarily complicated constructs.

> So, for me, it would be great if developers would take more time to 
> weigh up the "what does this new feature or refactoring bring" against 
> the "how much of a PITA is it going to be for everyone else to relearn 
> this"...

Agreed.

Philipp