[Grok-dev] First Experience with Grok

[Shane Hathaway]

Luciano Ramalho wrote:
> On 9/14/07, Shane Hathaway <shane.list.grok-dev at hathawaymix.org> wrote:
>> I've just started trying out Grok.  It looks very good so far!
> 
> Hey, Shane! How wonderful to hear from you! Better still to learn that
> you're interested in Grok!

Good to hear from you too.

>> A more general impression: while Grok has clear goals and a clear
>> audience, I feel like Zope 3 has always had an identity crisis.  But
>> Grok puts Zope 3 in its place.  Grok establishes that Grok is a
>> framework while Zope 3 is an integrated set of libraries.  Grok adds to
>> Zope 3 the kind of stuff required to compete with popular frameworks
>> like Rails or Django.  That's the way things seem to be headed, anyway.
> 
> I totally agree. The way I see it, today there is a carrot and a stick
> attracting new developers to Zope 3. Grok is the carrot, and Plone 3
> is the stick.

Still, I feel like Zope 3 is a block of cheese that's moldy on the edges
but otherwise good.  We need to trim away the parts of Zope 3 that
didn't work out well (such as the Rotterdam skin) so that people who
don't spend 8 hours per day on Zope 3 don't have to dig so much to find
the good stuff.  I'm hoping that Grok makes it easier to figure out what
belongs in Zope 3 and what doesn't.

(Don't get me wrong--the Rotterdam skin was a great experiment, but it
turned out less usable than Zope 2 and it's quite far from the usability
of the latest web apps.  I hope to see something that emulates Zimbra.
Now there's a nice user experience.)

Shane