Zope Documentation (was RE: Python Popularity: Questions and Comments)

[Bill Tate]

djmitchell <djmitchell at optushome.com.au> wrote in message news:<3c2f03f4$0$2592$afc38c87 at news.optusnet.com.au>...
> Bill Tate wrote:
> 
> > I understand the "zen" thing, but it's not something that business
> > people are going to care about when they making a decision about
> > whether to use it or not.
> 
> Yep, exactly.  
> 
> My last boss was a "who cares what it is?  If it's open source and you 
> techos recommend it, we'll give it a try" kind of guy.  If we could present 
> a justification in terms of risk/benefit that looked good, he gave us his 
> blessing.  I switched him from thinking development=C++/Java to Perl and 
> Python, we replaced Solaris and AIX boxes with Linux, and we saved our 
> employers enormous quantities of money.  When I tried to talk him into 
> looking at Zope, I found there was no frame of reference I could use - no 
> comparisons with J2EE or n-tier COM, which are probably about the closest 
> alternatives in terms of development approach  If he was to let me take on 
> some work using Zope, his problems were:
> - trying to convince his superiors that this unheard-of Zope thing was 
> better in some vaguely-defined way than J2EE and large COM solutions
> - how to estimate the design/dev times using Zope.  At least with J2EE and 
> COM there's some body of evidence out there as to how long projects take 
> from conception to production.  We'd proven that Python compared to C++ 
> gave something around 10:1 reduction in dev times, but Zope isn't Python
> - how was Zope going to perform on hardware from vendor X.  We already had 
> reasonable expectations as to how J2EE performed on specific hardware, and 
> could budget our hardware purchases with some degree of confidence.  The 
> Zope web site suggests "it runs fast", but there's no data at all that I 
> could find to back it up
> 
> I knew I was on a loser even as I was saying something like "it's a better 
> Java than Java" as I was describing Zope's platform independence.  When I 
> had to resort to crap platitudes like this, even though I believe it, I 
> knew nobody holding development purse strings was going to let me finish 
> the spiel.
> 
> Zope seems to have an "it's better than the rest; just take our word for 
> it" mentality attached to it, and solid comparisons with other tools or 
> performance data just doesn't appear to be out there.  Sun took this tack 
> with Java in the early days, and MS did with COM/MTS a few years ago, and 
> large corporates had a belief that Sun and MS wouldn't let their customers 
> down (else they'd lose market share and shareholders would get upset).  
> With Zope not having a major corporation behind it, and the NASDAQ collapse 
> in 2000, there's that much less blind faith available for Zope.  Even a 
> small pilot or proof-of-concept implementation costs serious dollars, and 
> that type of money just isn't around any more.
> 
> I'd LOVE to use Zope for something grander than my personal site holding my 
> resume and pictures of my kids, but if I couldn't convince one of the most 
> receptive managers I've ever had, it seems like an impossible task.  It's 
> sort of like the conceptual leap that was required to embrace OO 
> development several years ago; there was a large body of evidence as to how 
> non-OO development worked in "best practice" scenarios, lots of project 
> managers skilled in non-OO development and a general feeling of comfort 
> that the old ways worked.  Why change to OO, and take on all the unknown 
> development risks?
> 
> Based on the available documentation, Zope seems to need this sort of 
> "death or glory" approach, and hardly anyone seems willing to take these 
> risks at present.  Although I'd love to see the next Yahoo! or Amazon 
> startup use Zope, there's just no way the men holding the chequebooks would 
> allow it.
> 
> If anyone's got any suggestions as to how Zope can be made into less of a 
> perceived business risk, I'd love to help make it happen, but it seems 
> beyond me at present.

 I couldn't of said it better if I tried - its this aspect of zope
that I would like to help the community address.  Can't get by on -
try it you'll like it.