Peter Bengtsson wrote: > I've read your blog and your replies here with great interest. > The points you make about understanding and progress are very interesting. > No wonder [some] people think Zope sucks because Acquisition is so > difficult to grok; but now after having understood its power I feel > this is one of Zope's best feature. The reason I didn't give up was > because I had a friend whom I trusted that I persist. If it wasn't for > him I would probably have avoided zope quite early.
Hi Peter - I knew someone would defend Zope, should have guessed it would be you :) I don't think difficulty of grokking is the problem with Acquisition really. I think it's a good attempt at solving a real problem that ultimately creates more problems than it solves. The problem acquisition tries to solve is a real issue - how do you provide "context" in a web application? Zope satisfies these requirements using Acquisition. My problem with it is that it is too promiscuous - your namespace ends up massively polluted, leading to name collision between multiple products. I spend a lot of my time working with Zope and this leads to real issues - only yesterday I had two products that had coincidentally named a method the same (one as a method one as a PythonScript) leading to bizarre failures when one acquired the other's version of the method. Ultimately I think Acquisition is a Glorious Failure - it was a brave attempt to solve a difficult problem, but it just doesn't scale. Zope Corp have realised this, and Zope 3 is fundamentally different, using Adaptation instead of Acquisition to provide a mechanism for object location. > I'm wondering Doug, what's your take on zope3 vs. TG? Zope 3 looks very good - they've fundamentally addressed the core architectural problems in Zope 2. I seriously dislike the XML configuration files, which might seem like a minor point but it really gets on my nerves. Zope 3 has a head start on the other frameworks like TG, in that there is a large body of existing code (such as CMF) which can be ported to it from Zope 2. Lots of that code is very crufty and horrible though, so how much of an advantage that is depends a lot on the extent of any rewriting that goes on I guess. TG is going to be using RuleDispatch instead of Adaptation, which is going to be really interesting. I have no idea how well that's going to pan out in actual use. There have been a lot of complaints about the diversity of web solutions for Python, as opposed to Ruby where there is just the one, as if somehow it was a bad thing. It may be confusing for newcomers, but I can't honestly believe that the genetic diversity of solutions, all able to take the best of each other's ideas, can be anything other than a very good thing. Cheers, Doug. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] / Isotoma, Open Source Software Consulting Tel: 020 7620 1446 / Mobile: 07879 423002 / Fax: 020 79006980 Skype: dougwinter / http://www.isotoma.com Lincoln House, 75 Westminster Bridge Road, London, SE1 7HS _______________________________________________ python-uk mailing list python-uk@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-uk
