[Python-Dev] InfoWorld July 17 looks at Zope and Python (original) (raw)

James C. Ahlstrom jim@interet.com
Tue, 01 Aug 2000 09:28:40 -0400

Paul Prescod wrote:

Would you mind giving me the jist of the review? 20-word summary, if you don't mind.

Please note that I don't necessarily agree with the reviews. Also, there is no such thing as bad publicity.

Page 50: "Zope is a powerful application server. Version 2.2 beta scales well, but enterprise capability, Python language raise costs beyond the competition's."

Author claims he must purchase ZEO for $25-50K which is too expensive. Zope is dedicated to OOP, but shops not doing OOP will have problems understanding it. Python expertise is necessary, but shops already know VB, C++ and JavaScript.

Page 58: "After many tutorials, I'm still waiting to become a Zope addict."

Zope is based on Python, but that is no problem because you do most programming in DTML which is like HTML. It is hard to get started in Zope because of lack of documentation, it is hard to write code in browser text box, OOP-to-the-max philosophy is unlike a familiar relational data base. Zope has an unnecessarily high nerd factor. It fails to automate simple tasks.

My point in all this is that we design features to appeal to computer scientists instead of "normal users".

JimA