"What doesn't kill you, only makes you stronger." - that nasty guy in the Fifth Element -- Personally, I think this is A Good Thing. -- The undisputed leader in programmer's narcotics on the east coast was the DC Gang, whose leader, master Zope, developed a bold plan for stealing clients from the Perl gang by secretly pushing Python through free code and a framework to hang it on. --- "Psst. Hey geek, need some control over that heap-o-Perl you got?", asked the DCer. "Ah, yeah, sure.. How much?" replied the Perler. "Oh, its free .. free. try it, you've got nothing to lose.", answered the DCer "Hey, looks pretty good. Uh, wait, thats got that Python stuff in it, doesn't it?", asked the Perler. "Its just a little Python, but you don't need to worry about it!", answered the DCer "yeah, ok, just a little Python .. no worries", replied the Perler. <two weeks later> "Hey, I'm having a little problem getting my Perl function working in Zope", quipped the Perler. "Oh, what's your function do?", asked the DCer. "It generates an amortization table for a loan", replied the Perler. "Really, I'd never have guessed by looking at your code", said the DCer. "Well, I'm not sure what's wrong. I wrote this function just two months ago but I can't really see where the problem is", replied the Perler. "You know, you could re-write that in Python in an hour, and it'd be easier to understand", said the DCer. "Python! No way", exclaimed the Perler. "It's just one little function. It can't hurt you, try it...", soothed the DCer. "Well, I don't know. Maybe just one function, but that's all, just one!", replied the Perler. "Sure kid, just one little function. Here's how you do it ... ", said the DCer, inwardly smiling to himself. <two weeks later> "How do I write a Zope Product in Python?", asked the former Perler. ... Brad Clements, bkc@murkworks.com (315)268-1000 http://www.murkworks.com (315)268-9812 Fax netmeeting: ils://ils.murkworks.com AOL-IM: BKClements