[Zope] ANN: Perl For Zope

[Steve Alexander]

Chris McDonough wrote:
> 
> > The only badness I can see coming out of this is this:
> >
> > At present, I can consult at a client who is running Zope, and I'm
> > reasonably confident that I can read and understand all their code.
> >
> > When people can write their site half in Perl, I could well
> > be stuck...
> > unless I learn Perl :-)
> 
> I can see this being a genuine concern.  That's the first I've seen
> (it's a good one).

I think it is inevitable though.

At one time (a number of years ago), I knew the API and most of the
internals of every standard Java package.

Now, with the vast standard-edition libraries, and also the stanard
add-on classes for 3D, CORBA, 2D, and so forth, I have to rely on
reading and understanding published API documentation just-in-time :-/

The only way around it is coding standards and project standards. Whilst
DC can offer all sorts of different scripting language options for Zope,
I can ensure that projects I manage use only a "safe" and manageable
subset of those options.

It could be that projects that use an unregulated mixture of languages
have code maintainance problems down the line. Projects of this kind
that get into difficulty may find a shortage of able rescuers :-)

--
Steve Alexander
Software Engineer
Cat-Box limited