Hi john

could you tell us a word or more ;) on acquisition?
Or a pointer
I'm preparing a lecture of OOP so I would like to avoid to miss 
something that sounds interesting.

Stef

On Mardi, oct 28, 2003, at 00:57 Europe/Zurich, John Maxwell wrote:

> Giovanni Giorgi  wrote:
>
>> In Zope? Someone can show some successful stories?
>> The lack of a debugger is not a big problem if Zope could provide a
>> goood dev env,
>> but the Browser-based interface is difficult to use for editing python
>> scripts.
>
> In defense of Zope (I have been working with it for years)...
>
> I'm interested to hear the ST/Squeak community's (often negative) 
> reaction to Zope, coming from a "cleaner" model, but it is important 
> to appreciate what Zope presents from another angle, that is comparing 
> it to the common script+database web applications environments (PHP, 
> ASP, mod_perl, etc).
>
> What Zope offers, significantly, is an OO model that is entirely 
> web-oriented. Where a system like Squeak gives you an OO playground 
> based on a desktop-and-widgets working environment (not that you're 
> confined to that, just that this is what's offered as the starting 
> platform), Zope begins with a webserver's file-and-folders as the 
> working environment. For someone whose business card says "webmaster," 
> this is a comfortable place to begin; once that "webmaster" then 
> begins to explore the advantages of having a comphrensive object 
> model, you indeed get a wonderful system (Zope's inheritance and 
> aquisition alone are worth the price of admission, compared with most 
> other web app environments).
>
> Admittedly, Zope is imperfect. It's learning curve isn't so much steep 
> as "jagged" (parts of it as easliy learned, others are learned at the 
> expense of handfuls of hair from one's scalp). The comprehensiveness 
> of the Zope object model is currently being severely tested, as the 
> version 2 line reaches the end of its usefulness. The challenge for 
> Zope.corp is to come up with a cleaner model with v3.
>
> It may not look stellar to the computer scientists among you, nor to 
> those of you steeped in "purer" OOP systems, but Zope represents a 
> huge leap in conceptual elegance compared with most of its rivals.
>
> BTW, on the detail level, you can indent Python with spaces (as long 
> as you're consistent and don't mix with tabs). Plus, Zope's support 
> for DAV and FTP mean you're not at all restricted to the browser for 
> development.
>
>
>  - John Maxwell
>    jmax at sfu.ca
>
>