How to Adopt a Large Framework

[Peter Hansen]

Sam Penrose wrote:
> 
> Peter Hansen wrote (heavily snipped):
> > When I started with Twisted...I just wanted to be able to accept a
> > socket connection and disconnect if a particular pattern was not
> > received within a timeout.
> > Only after I got that much working did I start thinking about the next
> > step, ...Short, simple stories, easily implemented (whether with raw
> > sockets, Medusa, or Twisted).
> > ....
> > At no point did I worry about the presence of "Cred", or "IM", or
> > "Spread", since they didn't seem likely to be of help at that point.
> > Heck, I still don't really know what they're supposed to do, except
> > in a vague, hand-waving kind of way.
> > To anyone struggling with something like Twisted, feeling that it's
> > "too complex" to get a handle on, I strongly recommend learning more
> > about agile methods of development
> 
> With all due respect to Peter (whose insights I always enjoy), Agile
> Methodologies (which I love), and Twisted (one of whose developers I
> worked side-by-side with for several months), I think Peter's experience
> had a lot to do with the simplicity of what he was trying to accomplish
> and not much to do with Agile Methodologies. Twisted is complicated.

In very many ways, that's exactly the point I was making.  

Or, if I could take another stab at saying it slightly differently,
yes, Twisted is complicated, but only if you approach it that way.

If you want it to be simple, then it can be simple at every step of
the way.

I'd even venture to say that my difficulties with some other frameworks
in this area were because they could *not* be taken in small bites,
but had to be grokked as a whole, before you could do much with them.

My experiences with Twisted are quite different so far, due I believe
largely to the excellent design as seen in the modularity and relative
simplicity of each individual piece.

But, Sam, I'll readily admit I have deliberately stayed very far away
from a number of areas of Twisted, and someone who tried learning more of
it all at once would suffer greatly.  (Again, that's just my point. ;-)

-Peter