[Grok-dev] Re: What is Grok anyways... time for a name change? :)

[Martijn Faassen]

Hey,

I took some notes from this thread (thanks Sebastian for starting it) 
which would be a good starting point to start working on 
changing/expanding/new texts for grok.zope.org. Martin, I'd be happy if 
you could produce something here - from what you write we seem to have 
been effective in communicating what Grok is all about to at least you. :)

We can then work together at giving it the proper place on the website.

Now to the digression:

Martin Aspeli wrote:

>> A programming language named after Monty Python's flying circus?
> 
> Actually, in the types of circles I work, Python is seen as a poor 
> cousin to Ruby, because people have heard of Rails (a lot, if you read 
> thins like InfoQ or TheServerSide, it's like the cool new thing), and 
> say "Python needs something like that". Hence the whole 
> Guido-chooses-a-framework thing (yay, that made a whooping great amount 
> of difference). Actually, Python is (from what I can tell) a lot broader 
> in scope and possibly more widely used than Ruby, it's just that to most 
> people (at last among certain groups) "Ruby" is a shorthand for 
> "Ruby-on-Rails" and Rails has had ridiculous hype.
> 
> But I digress...

Right, Ruby (through Ruby on Rails) has definitely been hyped extremely 
effectively.

I'd say Python is *definitely* more widely used than Ruby, by the way. 
(though of course that might be changing if Ruby on Rails grows). 
Python's very extensive library support is a witness to that. I think 
there are few programming languages out there that have the range of 
choice in libraries that Python has by now.

I was actually pleased to discover recently some *negative* discussions 
on Ruby, and Rails, in the blogosphere. I wish them well, but after so 
much hype it was a breath of fresh air. A bit more realism will do them 
good - they're probably going to learn a lot of lessons the Zope 
community has learned years ago. As a nice bonus, and ironically so, 
Python is gaining the reputation of actually being *fast* in the Ruby 
world. :)

Anyway, to bring this back to Grok, Grok wants to have the cake and eat 
it: we say Grok is cool and exciting and new *and* grounded in years and 
years of hard-won experience. It is built on a solid mature platform but 
it's *not* crufty and messy. One of our main assets in the Zope 
community is a deep history and deep experience. If we can associate 
maturity/experience with new/cool in people's minds, we stand a chance 
of making an impact.

Note that I've seen Rails, Django and TurboGears use something like this 
strategy: "yeah, this is new, but based on years of experience/in house 
work/existing other frameworks we're reusing". Zope can do that better 
as we have our experience in the public record.

Regards,

Martijn