[Grok-dev] Re: grok futures: the return of the ZMI

Fernando Correa Neto fcdoth at gmail.com
Mon Jan 7 16:20:13 EST 2008


Hey,

On Jan 7, 2008 5:13 PM, Paul Everitt <paul at zeapartners.org> wrote:

[good ZMI stuff]

Being a Zope integrator for quite a while a would like to say that ZMI
provides one of the best things about TTW development that thing is:
fast turnaround. I do agree that some may run into trouble using the
ZMI but the same happens in a hell of zcml files. Same headaches.
I know and follow some of the concepts/standards people introduced
like AGX, genesis, Grok itself and so on. I am quite familiar and had
explored them enough.
Things my clients like most when I get to meet with them, is that
spend a day at their office interacting. Interacting as an decorator
asking their clients about the color of the wall, the lights, the
paintings etc. And it wasn't just paintings....some times the wall was
missing ;).

ZMI was the great asset that you would use so at the end of the day
you'd  just tell the customer: "Gimme the contract because your
solution is already here". If you are a pro in zope you would attract
his attention all the time and you would never lose it.
Try opening a bash and ssh'ing into a server and doing all that hacky
stuff that we do today. No attention at all. For real...the "black
screen" is boring to them and they just don't get it. And they never
should IMO.
Even if it wasn't the final solution, the prototype was there.
Functional and proved. Ready to be pushed back into the FS to start
entering in real development cycle.

Martin Aspeli told us about TTW schema prototyping and that is a great
thing. That provides the UI interaction needed for agile development
in conceptual stages or even functional stages.

Like Paul, I've also been working on something at "closed doors" that
would provide what "I" believe it would be a "TTW 2.0" or "TTW
Reinvented" and this would not be a ZMI, but one would get the same
feeling after deploying those apps. I mean, real FS apps or eggs or
whatever it becomes.
So if people wants to declare death to ZMI, I will need to work harder
and get it from vaporware into real software.

I am still in love with the ZMI.

Regards,
Fernando


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