[Zope] Giving up in frustration

[Andrew M. Kuchling]

Martijn Faassen writes:
>Just organize the documentation effort better. Our biggest need, I think, is
>an organization of the documentation infrastructure. Someone needs to be get
>pretty radical there -- ripping apart everything and putting it all together
>again in a better way. I'll definitely be around to give my help.

       Part of the problem is that Zope has been a fast-moving target
       in the last few months.  I would hope that things will settle
       down a bit when Zope 2 is finalized, so we can write a bunch of
       interesting add-on Products, implement some attention-getting
       Zope sites, and write FAQs and tutorial docs.  (This recent
       kerfuffle also made me start writing a chapter on Zope for the
       Grimoire last night.)

And I quite agree with Bradford Hull that the Zope learning curve is
steep.  There are a lot of components in Zope, and how to mentally fit
them all together isn't obvious.  It's worth noting the frequent use
of the phrase "Zope Zen", implying that knowledge is suddenly gained
in unpredictable flashes of insight.  (For example, I had tremendous
difficulty with calling other objects from DTML, until I suddenly
realized how the namespace stack behaves.)  Reading the source code
may not always help; some portions of it are filled with impressively
cutting-edge Python technique; even Guido would have to go slowly.

-- 
A.M. Kuchling			http://starship.python.net/crew/amk/
Think until it hurts.
    -- Roy Thomson