[Zope] Giving up in frustration

[Kent Polk]

On 17 Aug 1999 09:35:01 -0500, Michel Pelletier wrote:
>Ah yes, the Zen of Zope.  Not magic, just some really different and
>powerful technology that no one else has thought of yet.  Nobody really
>knows where the 'Zen' moniker came up but it's not a bad analogy; when

It was presented by two of us at almost the exact same time when
the Zope name was first announced. I don't remember who the other
person was. My reference came after finishing my first Principia
project (the PDMS) and had contracted Ty Sarna to help me develop
a Principia/SQL-based QA tracking and reporting system. I mentioned
to Ty that I considered Principia a Zen 'thing' and he applied a
number of good examples of why it was so. A couple of days later,
after the name 'Zope' was announced and the name games were started,
I added 'Zope Zen' as a response to 'Zope Zuds'.  Whomever the
other person was mentioned 'Zen of Zope' within I think one posting
as I received them from the maillist. The context made it pretty
certain that it was derived independently :^)

Ty commented that the Zen analogy was probably more correct than
first appeared because not only is it hard to learn a particular
methodology until one has achieved a particular 'Zen level' in 
Zope, it is also hard to explain that methodology to those at a 
lower level.

FWIW, my problems with Principia and Zope have been the inconsistencies.
Differences in how DTML, SQL methods, External Methods pass and
accept information; in what information is available at a given
'path'; in how variable values are managed via different methods
(getattr/getitem vs bobo_traverse). I have literally spent hours
trying to figure out how to pass information from one place to
another in Principia, usually with little or no success. Zope source
has made progress possible, but Zope source is still darned hard
to thread through and the error messages are often not very useful.

But Zope isn't entirely the problem here. Zope makes it reasonable
to bind together various products and technologies into workable
applications. The 'bandwidth' of experience and background required
to develop these applications is often quite a bit wider than
required for standalone or standard client-server models. Examples
are often crutial to comprehension, but examples often require an
education in some technology that isn't necessary for the task.
Another problem with questions and examples is that it is often a
bit difficult to wrap a given situation into a simple set of objects.

The greatest progress for me was when I decided to drop back and
write some Bobo applications.  Much Zope behavior became clearer
in that light.

Kent Polk