[Grok-dev] Re: Python UK meeting and Django

[Martijn Faassen]

Hey Peter,

Thanks for doing that presentation, I'm glad it went well!

Peter Bengtsson wrote:
[why is Django successful?]
> His answer was rather long but never mentioned a single hint about
> features or technology but primarily about how they prioritized the
> community adaptation. As he knew I was there to represent Zope he said
> "I respect what you've done with Grok but I think Zope is for
> developers whereas Django is for users".

I'm having trouble understanding what the words "user" and "developer" 
mean in this context. I thought Django is primarily targeting 
developers, saying it's a "web framework for perfectionists with 
deadlines". "Users" don't use web frameworks. They probably use bits of 
Django, such as the admin UI, to manage content. We don't have the 
equivalent of that yet in Grok, but hopefully we'll have that eventually 
with the CRUD/BREAD work.

What do you mean by "prioritizing community adaptation"?

> I'm tempted to exit at that but I think it's a point worth taking on
> board if we want to regain the traction we had when zope2 was hot. Or
> is that already what we're doing?

It's one of the reasons I'm so interested in the Back to the Future TTW 
project. This is still aiming for people who want to do developer-style 
things, but are far less hard-core developers than we can reach now. 
It's trying to lower the early stages of the learning curve.

Anyway, I see Grok at trying to aim towards beginning developers and 
experienced developers alike, mostly by lowering the learning curve for 
everybody (in the easy and the hard parts). We still have quite a ways 
to go lowering the learning curve more on the beginning part, I think.

For what it's worth, I personally suspect Django is successful because 
it offered a better experience especially for beginners than what was 
there at the time in the Python world (due to community attitudes, 
integration and documentation), it also tried to offer the virtue of 
simplicity for experienced developers (it fit people's brain), and it 
also importantly: it arrived at the right time (being placed explicitly 
in people's minds as the Python answer to Rails). They've also clearly 
mentioned their community very well as it grew.

I think there is a lot to learn from that and I'd like to hear more 
about your thoughts on this, Peter. I myself think that if we combine 
some of these approaches with the pile of advanced technology we're 
sitting on with Zope, we could go quite far.

Regards,

Martijn