[Grok-dev] Re: Benefits of Grok -- please contribute

[Martijn Faassen]

Hey,

Sebastian Ware wrote:
> These would be useful questions to get answered from as many different 
> perspectives as possible in order to create a strong and compelling 
> message:
> 
> (you can keep the answers short, just so one gets the point)
> 
> 1 What does a developer look for when choosing a web development framework?

Ease of use. Power. Flexibility. Evolvability over time. Reusability. 
Scalability. Maturity. Community. Fun.

Unsophisticated developers will look for Ease of use. They will also 
look for power, but may not be able to understand power. They will also 
look for scalability, but may not be able to evaluate what is scalable 
and what is not. They look for reusable components they can simply use 
to have great effect.

Sophisticated developers will look for the things unsophisticated 
developers look for, but are able to evaluate it better. In addition 
they look more for flexibility and evolvability of existing code over 
time. They also look for reusability of code that's already there 
(powerful components), as well as the ability to create reusable code 
themselves.

Community and fun is appreciated by everybody, but more by a developer 
with a social, open source mind set.

Whether a developer looks for maturity depends on the project and the 
personality of the developer.

> 2 What does a manager look for when choosing a web development framework?

Maturity. Support. Vendor backing. Interoperability. Can they hire 
people? Can they hire consultants?

Sophisticated managers will look for something that makes their 
developers enthused. They might also look for community, scalability, 
reusability, evolvability. Many of the concerns will overlap with that 
of developers.

Some managers will lean very strongly towards vendor backing, maturity, 
support, etc. So strongly we're bound to lose them to, say, Java, no 
matter what we say. I think we shouldn't target that mindset as it's a 
battle we can't win.

> 3 Which frameworks are direct competitors to Grok?

Classic web systems: PHP, ASP, CGI scripting

Large enterprisey systems: Java or .NET

Modern, open source dynamic language based web frameworks: Django, 
TurboGears, Pylons, Ruby on Rails.

I don't consider Zope technologies to be competing with Grok, as the 
synergy effects are much bigger than the competitive effects. A win for 
Grok is a win for Zope and vice versa.

For people within the zope community we should help people make the 
choice between a range of frameworks:

* classic Zope 2

* Zope 2 + CMF

* Plone + archetypes

* Zope 3

* Zope 3 + Grok

I'll work on question 4 and onwards later.

Regards,

Martijn