I wish thanking you for this piece of history about pylons, which I really appreciate because it helps in getting a better understanding of the full picture. I personally think it is always good transparently sharing background, reasons of choices, pros and cons about a topic.
Also I like your suggestion for a clear statement about phased-out packages (authkit in this case or maybe others). It would give to new pylons adopters a safe feeling, which is not the case when they discover the obsolescence of a package through posted comments. So to my view the second rule in marketing pylons (the first is in line with what you say are already doing: write good code with long term in mind) is to make clear, transparent and frequent communications on both bad and good recommendations, so that pylons adopters feel always comfortable. The fact that pylons allows for choosing from a broad range of solutions does not contrast with giving a structured information about past good and bad experiences. If authkit has not fitted most of the last pylons experiences, it should be said in a clear and strong manner, because it is beneficial to pylons users, especially to pylons newcomers. For instance I ended to the conclusion of using instead repoze.who/what after a week of googling and pylons-discuss, it could have been a matter of a few minutes if it were clearly recommended on pylons site I've been in electronic products marketing for more or less the last 20 years and I'd be glad helping one day in some way in marketing pylons as soon as I reach myself a decent technical knowledge about pylons (i.e. go through a few pylons based projects) cheers daniel On Jun 5, 6:16 am, Mike Orr <[email protected]> wrote: > On Fri, Jun 4, 2010 at 3:03 AM, Graham Higgins <[email protected]> wrote: > > I would recommend that all developers who are currently using AuthKit (or > > who plan to do so) should read and inwardly digest the statements on this > > page: > > > <http://jimmyg.org/work/code/index.html> > > > in which James lists those of his Python modules that are currently > > maintained and those which he is personally moving away from: > > > 1. "Currently maintained Python modules:" (the list does not include > > authkit) > > > 2. "Phasing out of my own projects: > > * Pylons - I'm using Flows ... instead. > > * FormBuild 1 and 2 - use FormBuild 3 instead. > > * AuthKit - I'm using [... other packages ... ] instead." > > This is consistent with what James has been telling me over the past > year. I guess we should take AuthKit off the recommendation list and > just say it's an ex-solution. Repoze.who/what does essentially the > same but in a more modular way, and is the only one that has gained > acceptance by several frameworks. > > On Fri, Jun 4, 2010 at 4:09 AM, daniel <[email protected]> wrote: > > After a look at <http://jimmyg.org/work/code/index.html> , where > > Pylons appears in the list of phased out projects (by the co-founder, > > although it seems there is still a community maintaining the project) > > and where I can read the following : > > « Phasing out of my own projects: Pylons - I'm using Flows (which I > > absolutely love) instead. It corrects all the problems with WSGI and > > Pylons which I discovered when writing the Pylons Book and is a > > complete re-write of the whole codebase and core dependencies from > > scratch, with complete conceptual integrity and with a far more > > modular architecture than even Pylons », > > James co-founded Pylons with Ben in 2005 because it met their needs at > the time. They (or at least Ben) were extending Myghty (a template > engine) with frameworkish features, and that clearly was not a > long-term solution. Paste was new at the time, and looking for a > full-stack framework to go on top of it, and Pylons became it. But > writing a book makes you acutely aware of the pros and cons of a > framework because you have to explain it in full detail (and justify > the bad parts :). That's why I stared but eventually abandoned a book > on using Pylons with App Engine. App Engine's early flaws just made it > really hard, and by the end I felt like, would I really use App Engine > myself, and if I did, wouldn't I be better off with one of the small > WSGI frameworks that was designed for App Engine? > > After the Pylons book was published, James began working on something > that wasn't even a recognizable web framework, much less WSGI > compliant. I didn't understand it so I can't explain it. If Flows is > it, it may be something too different to just drop in place as a WSGI > framework. > > > my questions are : > > > 1. Is still wise starting new long term projects based on Pylons ? > > 2. How strong and motivated remains the Pylons development community ? > > 3. Which are, if any, the long term python web frameworks to > > eventually consider as alternative to pylons ? (should I re-evaluate > > django , which I don't like technically so much but it seems can count > > on larger stable development community) > > Ben and I are using Pylons in production, and I've been spreading it > among the programmers at my organization. We'll be maintaining and > upgrading those applications for the next few years at least. Phillip > Jenvey has done a lot of work this past year to get Pylons to run on > Jython. Ian Bicking has never used Pylons much himself but remains an > indirect supporter, maintaining half of its dependencies. And the > TurboGears folks tell us what they need, or when something breaks. > > I know Ben and myself have been looking beyond Pylons to see what > might be better, but there's nothing concrete at this point, just some > ideas. I originally chose Pylons because it's modular to the core. I > got sick of rewriting applications when they outgrew their framework. > Marco promises to extend that modularization into the Pylons core, > although it sounds like Ben has something non-Marcoish in mind too. > But the zen of Pylons is, "How much can you change before it's not > Pylons anymore?" It's not PasteDeploy or Routes or Beaker or Mako > because those are all optional. To me it's PylonsApp. If you replace > PylonsApp or subclass it so much it's unrecognizable, then it would be > hard to call the thing Pylons. But now we're looking at modularizing > PylonsApp itself. So if I someday wrote my own SOPless dispatcher and > stricter Routes and non-INI front end, would that still be Pylons? It > would interoperate with most of Pylons' components and would adhere to > the spirit of Pylons, so to me it would be, even if had a different > name. > > All the WSGI developers have been sprinting together for the past two > or three years. So to us it's one family of frameworks, not > disconnected islands. The islands are Django, Twisted, Plone, and > Zope. (Zope the entire product, not Repoze or BFG.) > > On Fri, Jun 4, 2010 at 5:47 AM, Graham Higgins <[email protected]> wrote: > > One particular characteristic of this community which I personally > > appreciate (but which may act to mislead people at times) is a distinct and > > deliberate absence of evangelism. IMO, that attests to a very level-headed > > engineering perspective and a solid understanding of where Pylons is located > > in the landscape of Python-based web app development frameworks. > > It's a personality thing probably. The Pylons developers like to > program more than they like to market. We've also suppressed marketing > so as not to distract from finishing 1.0. Now that that's done, you'll > see development slow down, fewer changes in Pylons, and more emphasis > on marketing. > > But I think we've agreed that Django has overmarketed, overpromised, > and gets extremely insistent at times, and we don't want to do that. I > don't know how much of it is due to the core Django developers > (because they're nice to us :), or how much is fanboys and marketroids > on the fringes of the developer base/userbase. But the Pylons tendency > is more to keep our heads down and write code, and let people come to > us. Because that's how we all came to Pylons ourselves. > > We know we need somebody with good marketing experience, but we know > we're not it. So we're just waiting for somebody to say, "I'm that > [marketing] person." > > -- > Mike Orr <[email protected]> -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "pylons-discuss" group. 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