From: Paul Everitt <Paul@digicool.com>
It's hard for us to know where to start. We got a <FLAME> yesterday from the exact opposite: more examples with no Python, all DTML. We also get complaints about debugging the process of getting it started (apparently Apache configuration is our business as well).
Do you feel that a format like Amos' tutorial is the best one? Or a bunch of sample products? Or a reference guide?
Amos' product development tutorial was a big help in my attempt to understand this stuff. Part of the problem is that not only are you using a level of OO design methodology that few people actually manage to deal with here, you are using some completely new paradigms which simply take (some of us, like me) time to comprehend. I make little steps, which are executed to the flash of a 1000 candlepowered strobe (to me) but it just serves to illuminate the next stairway. It's hard to make progress when we are so far behind what Jim, Brian, etc are putting out. :^) What I'm saying is that this stuff isn't trivial, and there is a tendency for the frustration to mount as the learning curve is tremendously steep here. I figure it's kinda like trying to explain Relativity back in the '40's when the only real tools available were fairly primitive mathematical tools which pushed their users to their mental limits. That's why there were only a few people who really had a chance to comprehend it back then. As tools and techniques got better and analogies were developed to assist the non-mathematicians in understanding the complexities, it began to seem fairly simple. Now I'm sitting here, trying to figure how in the heck to lay out the classes for this custom (scientific) file-table database product such that it can operate inside of Zope. First, it has to acquire attributes and methods in it's environment, then via class heirarchies. Basically a heirarchical table-of-tables filesystem-based TinyTables :^) And of course, I'm currently hopelessly lost because I don't understand how to create the relationship between a class heirarchy (traversing classes to locate a method) and the database hierarchy, not to mention the filtering heirarchy that I also want to implement which should be inherent in Acquisition. But how? Is supect that I'm somewhat in the same boat as the original poster of this thread - I'm attempting to implement behavior that is implicit in Acquisition, but I simply don't know how to 'let go' and let it do it's thing. What do I hold on to when I let go? I don't see anything there! :^) I agree that to a large extent, the reference material is probably close to complete, but the *comprehension* of what is in the reference material just isn't occurring. That's why, for me, iterative examples of a simple example such as Amos gave (and Mark Lutz's example in 'Programming Python') are so much of a help. As the example grows through the permutations that are possible, both comprehension of Zope technology and Zopeish design 'ethics' become more clear. I see I've covered science, technology, ethics and religion in one posting. Only left out politics... Wait! I'm lobbying now, aren't I??? :^) Kent