[Zope-dev] Re: stacks != easy to explain

[Adrian Hungate]

Don't even get me started on that one!

I don't think this is neccessarily a criticism of Zope though, or ZPT. We
are all human, and apt to err. ZPT is imperfect, but the balance of opinion
would appear to be that it is better than what has gone before. It is
irritating to learn a new syntax, it is hard to read (Some of us design Zope
sites TTW...) the flow of logic is obscure and sometimes downright
impossible to follow, but people seem to work around it anyway.

Much the same is true of the failure of Netscape, Microsoft, and all the
others to even read, let alone follow, the defined standards on, well, just
about anything.

There is one important point being missed here though - Why should the
non-programmers be interested in the coding? If the concept of a stack is to
hard for them to understand, so what? Shouldn't they be designing plain
pages, which the coded templates simply render? Or are we now passing off
the task of designing look and feel to non-experts? Anyone want to find
another area of the industry to dilute? Now, return to the Marc and Chris'
last comments, why exactly can't leading browsers follow standards, because
they are written by people that can't program, in languages that were made
"simple" for the sake of "non-experts".

I put it to you that this argument is invalid and of no merit.

Adrian...

----- Original Message -----
From: "Marc Lindahl" <marc@bowery.com>
To: "Chris Withers" <chrisw@nipltd.com>
Cc: "zope-dev" <zope-dev@zope.org>
Sent: Tuesday, May 14, 2002 4:33 PM
Subject: Re: [Zope-dev] Re: stacks != easy to explain


> on 5/14/02 4:43 AM, Chris Withers at chrisw@nipltd.com scrivened:
>
> > Marc Lindahl wrote:
> >>
> >>> Sorry, but I don't see a 'stack' of any sort being easy to explain to
a
> >>> newbie
> >>> or not programmer.
> >>
> >> I'd disagree - HTML has this concept - for example the way table tags
> >> inherit properties.  Key is that the 'stack' idea is hidden within the
> >> hierarchy idea.
> >
> > Hmmm... do you knnow how many people get confused by that specifc issue?
> > Especially as
> > different browsers inherit different levels of formatting...
>
>
> I think the confusion on that issue with tables has only to do with the
bugs
> in the implementation on certain browsers.  Which points to the inability
of
> supposedly real programmers to understand stacks, parsing, state
machines -
> not the poor HTML coders :)  - if you read diatribes by the layout guys
> (like alistapart) you'll see their frustration is based that the heirarchy
> (stacking) isn't working as expected.
>
>
>
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