[Zope] ZPT tutorial

[Paul Winkler]

On Tue, Jun 21, 2005 at 10:10:06PM +0100, John Poltorak wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 21, 2005 at 03:15:33PM -0400, Paul Winkler wrote:
> > On Tue, Jun 21, 2005 at 07:29:20PM +0100, John Poltorak wrote:
> > re. zopelabs.com:
> > 
> > > It probably is very useful, but I know I'd get hopelessly lost because 
> > > there is just so much stuff on it.
> > 
> > So you prefer to ignore it?
> 
> Just how much time should you spend on something when you are deriving no 
> benefit just increasing frustration?

Sometimes, answering questions on the mailing list feels exactly 
like that :-P

> I was on a course over the weekend where ordinary people in their 70's 
> with no technical ability were knocking together websites in just a few 
> hours with no prior training and no understanding of the 
> underlying concepts involved. Why should Zope be just as easy?

I highly doubt the stuff they were "knocking together" was
a sophisticated application, e.g. anything on the order of CMFDefault, not
to mention CPS or Plone.  There's a big difference between developing
web apps and slapping together some static HTML.

> There is a quantum leap between the tutorial and being able to do anything 
> useful with a website. What the tutorial needs to to handhold you through 
> putting together something like the homepage of zope.org.

That would be an immense tutorial!
There are some case studies of similar sites in Andy McKay's excellent
"Plone Book". But they depend on reading and understanding
many chapters before you get that far.

Jon, I know this is frustrating for you. You are encountering
the (in)famous "Z-shaped learning curve".  You have hit the upslope.
At this point, the trivial stuff (mostly) makes sense to you, but
there's a vast-looking chasm between where you are and where
you want to be. We've all been there. It *does* get better. Really.
But it can take months of perseverance to reach the other side.
And there's not really any way to skip the hard part.

You might find this interesting.
It was written by Chris McDonough years ago (back in the
pre-ZPT days).
http://www.zope.org/Members/mcdonc/HowTos/gainenlightenment

-- 

Paul Winkler
http://www.slinkp.com