[Grok-dev] Re: What is Grok anyways... time for a name change? :)

[Martijn Faassen]

Hey Martin,

Thanks for this good set of answers to Sebastian, better than mine. :)

A few comments to your points:

Martin Aspeli wrote:
> That's probably a marketing thing. Also, bear in mind that Grok is 
> really very new. :)

Right, I want to do more about our web presence, tutorial, reference, 
and code before we try really spreading the message wide outside our 
community. I hope we get to doing this after the summer, though.

[snip]
>> I am still not entirely sure -- what is Grok?  
> 
> Maybe that's because it's evolving? Maybe it's something the Grok 
> developers need to make more clear on the website. For now, think of 
> Grok as a project which is rapidly producing a (small) framework and set 
> of patterns for increasing your productivity and letting you take 
> advantage of the incredible power of Zope 3. At least, that's how I 
> think of it.

Yes, good point and good description. I'll add it to my todo list to 
integrate this into the website.

>> As Zope 3 evolves, does Grok evolve too?
> 
> Of course. You can use any Zope 3 component from within a Grok-based 
> application. At least, that should be the aim.

It's something that you can already do. The other way around (using a 
grok-based component in a non-grok zope 3 app) we're working on.

Of course we keep looking out for patterns to allow people to more 
*effectively* use a wide variety of Zope 3 components. We got a lot more 
thinking ahead of us. I want Grok to make it trivial to define new 
widgets, I want Grok to allow us to get rid of the unittest and 
functional test setup boilerplate, and there dozens of Zope 3 extensions 
we need to check to see whether they could benefit from some grok 
configuration treatment.

[snip]
> Sure. But that's open source. I'd contest that Grok is quite different 
> from TurboGears or Django or Pylons, though. It's about taking something 
> with a very long history (Zope 3, which itself is learning the lessons 
> from Zope 2), and making it more accessible and easier to get started with.
> 
> Grok is not "using" Zope 3. Grok *is* Zope 3, in that you have the full 
> Zope 3 stack behind you. However, Grok helps you decide how to use the 
> Zope 3 components, by promoting certain patterns and providing certain 
> tools to make your life easier, giving you a smaller initial learning 
> curve and a better starting point.
> 
> It's not about inventing radically new concepts, nor, I suspect, about 
> writing lots of code. The Grok developers are also Zope 3 core 
> developers. I suspect that's the way it stays.

Well said!

Grok is Zope 3, differently presented. Mostly we work on taking existing 
ideas and innovations and making them easier to use.

I think there are some areas in which Grok might potentially push for 
innovation in the technology department. One area is pluggable 
templating languages. Another more high-concept area is patterns for 
templating-independent theming. I'm sure other areas might come along.

I think one reason templating innovation comes up for Grok is because 
easy templating has a high developer usability aspect, which is what 
Grok is all about. Of course it also helps that Grok has  less legacy 
code to worry about than pure Zope 3.

Regards,

Martijn