[Grok-dev] Re: an 'about grok' document

[Behrang Dadsetan]

Hi Martijn,

> ...snip... I am looking for suggestions
> to make 'about grok' stand more on its own by adding more information
> about Grok as Grok.

I guess it is also a question of target audience. Maybe if we do
multiple About_groks dependent on the target audience or multiple
sections we can really hit it.

I see the following target audiences that grok would attract very
easily if they knew about it:
1- Python developers new to web development
2- Python developers coming from other frameworks (which can not
possibly be as flexible/powerful/complex as zope3/grok)
3- Python developers coming from Zope2 (which already know about a few
concepts such as ZODB, ZPT, and loving those but looking for more)
4- Cavemen who tried to really work out how Zope3 works but failed at
it (this should not be confused with any of the above)
5- Zope 2 users that want to use the Powerful Zope3 framework through
Five. This is more about Zope3 target audience not so much grok but I
think it is important we see that people looking for the hard-core
framework are different from the people who want to develop a standard
app. What's the number again? 95% of all apps can be done without
monstrous complexity?

Or alternatively, we could maybe get the Zope 3 community to put up
Grok as its Front for target audiences 1-4. Once they became Grok
users we can always turn them into Zope 3 masters later (much later
though :) )

> But...
> I think our aim should be to turn the marketing weakness into a
> strength. You know, martial arts. :)
>
> Grok is its own thing. It has its own project name, its own website, its
> own tutorial, and no understanding of Zope 3 is necessary in order to
> get into it. That's as far from Zope 3 as we realistically can go.

While you might design in a similar way for Zope 3 than you with Grok,
at the end of the day working with it and implementing your app you
use quite a different approach. An approach that solves lots of the
implementation issues you have going with a bare Zope 3.

> Grok is Zope 3. It builds on Zope 3, and gains the features of Zope 3.
> Our website is on zope.org.
>
> We don't deny our background but instead are proud of it, and explain
> that it is a strength.

Can't argue that one too much :) I keep on saying I fell in love with
Grok but I forget to mention I fell in love with Zope 3's concepts
before that :)

Again, I feel Zope 3 giving a certain target audience Grok as a front
might be the thing?
I mean really integrating Zope 3's web site with Grok not just giving
a tiny hyperlink.

People who want to go the whole way will still buy Stephan's or
Philipp's books, figure the whole thing out and return back to mostly
doing Grok based things :)

> I think no other path is left open to us. We could try to minimize Zope
> 3 but that'd make people think we have something to hide. People who
> have an irrational dislike of all things Zope, no matter what the
> quality of the individual technologies, won't be convinced anyway.
>
> We aim for the people who have heard of Zope 3 and heard it is advanced,
> but also haven't made much progress with it, because Zope 3's lack of
> marketing and steep learning curve has made it hard to get into it. We
> now offer a way.

The list of audiences above is borrowed from all of you guys (what I
have followed from mailing list and so on). I don't have enough
imagination on my own :)

You are only mentioning audience group 4. It would be ashame to only
try to pick up audience that have failed on Zope3's large scope :)

Absolutely no reason to hide Zope 3 at all. It is beautiful in design,
and I for one see you guys poured in hell lots of experience and
cleverness into it (I am aware grok developers are typically zope3
developers :) ). We gotta tell the world that you came up with
something extremely powerful.

But as you mention yourself in your about_grok, you solved major zope3
issues with grok.
I am of the group of people who believe writing ZCML (and "debugging
it") is a torture as long as it stays manual. If someday that part
comes with proper Wizards and tools, I might not even use Grok any
more :)


Regards
Ben.