[Plone-developers] Re: [Zope-CMF] CMF NewsFeed / News aggregation

[alan runyan]

> >  > > It shouldn't be too hard to write one myself, but I
> >  > > can hardly understand ZClasses now as it is.... *sigh*
> >  >
> >  > Don't worry, no one understand ZClasses ;-)
> >  > If you need to do this stuff, learn how to write a Python Product,
it's much
> >  > easier :-)
> > As often, I disagree with Chris...
>
> Then perhaps you could give some reasoning rather than just making the
> statement? ;-)

I started w/ ZClasses, moved to Python and today was at Rice University
where I saw a really clever use of ZClasses and have found new
respect.  It appears ZClasses are somewhat understandable (i.e. people
can figure out how to use them, although namespace issues get kinda
tricky -- I think) but they have unpredictable behavior.  Earlier I heard
someone
say "Yeah, we like ZClasses but occassionally we get a Unpickleable
Exception
- after I restart the server it goes away".  I have never had a Python
Product
act unreliably on me (errm, except this ;context not found; race condition
stuff that still appears to exist in CMF HEAD).  But for rapid prototyping
ZClasses were a huge win for the team I met today and think they do serve
a place in ZOPE - especially if they were hardened.

They also make a *excellent* sales demo ;-) -- look! you dont have to be
a geek to create content *point* *click*.

As far as *understanding* ZClasses implementation - yikes.  from a glimpse
it
looks pretty hairy.

~runyaga