It's sort of refreshing to see "anti-Zope" postings. I haven't used ACS or OpenACS (I work for Digital Creations, I use Zope 😊), but its clear that Zope could learn a thing or two from them. It's also clear that we need better intro documentation.
I worked with Zope pretty extensively before I started at DC. During that period, I was pretty much on the same learning slope as Titus when he wrote the "Why Zope Sucks" article. Working with Zope at that time, well, it was hard. After I worked for DC a little while, I wrote a "HowTo" about my experiences named "Gaining Zope Enlightenment by Grokking Object Orientation" that's available at
http://www.zope.org/Members/mcdonc/HowTos/gainenlightenment.
One of the things that makes Zope so hard to get a hold of is that you can't really leverage most of your existing skillset against it and still do super-customized sites. You need to learn about the ZODB and acquisition, DTML syntax, object orientation, the difference between a "document" and a "method", ZClasses, etc. I have the feeling that this isn't as true of ACS, and that ACS makes it a little bit easier for the newbie by providing things in a context in which he or she is already familiar. Is this pretty accurate?
