At 21:29 10-6-99 , Paul Everitt wrote:

Hmm, I'm surprised that you'd advocate automatic reloading, as it would (at a minimum) stat a file on each request. Do you think it should be an optional knob to specify whether to check for changes? If so, what should be the default?

Off, and on when in debugging mode.. Oops, the CVS version already does this =) I also like the -D flag to z2.py. Now all we need is a interactive DTML debugger through the web.

...

2) A fair amount of source code reading is still required, and Zope is so full of cutting-edge Python technique that it's not easy even for a long-time Python like me; for a new Python user, it would be deadly.

I didn't have too much trouble with it. Went from zilch python knowledge to a fair grasp of Zope (and bothering the DC people with patches) in about two weeks.

Would better documentation help? For instance, we intend, once Zope2 has landed, to begin the process of doing a UML model for all of Zope. We are already doing it for all new work. This includes many of the diagrams, including use cases. How helpful would that be?

UML's will help clarifying and understanding what I find in the source. Saves some grepping and debugging steps.

Farther out, we'd like to look at moving to Jim's "interfaces" proposal that was mostly agreed to at SPAM Houston. If we did (and then lived by it :^), how much would that help?

If all Zope developers lived by it, it would definitly help. The Ptree protocol file (now gone in the CVS, I think) helped me understand the #tree tag.

I agree that debugging DTML is maddingly hard. In fact, I think about this probably fifty times a day. I sure hope, after Zope2 comes out, we step back and think HARD about things like usability.

See above remark on the interactive debugger. Not too hard to do, but we'll need multithreading to keep the rest of Zope moving. Oh, Zope 2 has that.

I presume by the leading part of the question that you would feel more comfortable doing your processing in Python than all-DTML. If Zope had a "Python Method" object, perhaps only usable by VERY privileged users, perhaps only in the Control Panel (say, in a Product), would that help?

Only when someone with system level access has turned this on! It should be off for many hosting sites, me thinks.

Heh heh, if I had a dime for the number of alpha volunteers for the portal toolkit :^)

I'll give you a dollar? -- Martijn Pieters, Web Developer | Antraciet http://www.antraciet.nl | Tel: +31-35-7502100 Fax: +31-35-7502111 | mailto:mj@antraciet.nl http://www.antraciet.nl/~mj | PGP: http://wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0xA8A32149 ------------------------------------------