Forum OpenACS Q&A: Response to Article on ACS x Zope

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Posted by Ben Adida on
Now I'm entertained! We need at least one good flame war on these forums, and now we have it.

What bothers me is that no real arguments have been presented here to make a point about Zope. If you're posting on the OpenACS web site (which you're more than welcome to do!), it behooves you to make a solid point about why you think Zope is good before we go out and take you seriously.

In particular, the idea that OpenACS / ACS is not as good as Zope because it includes "too many" differently named elements (Tcl, SQL, ADP) is laughable. So if we called it Qtcl, QDB, Qweb, would it be less confusing? Look, I'm perfectly open to the idea that we can learn something from Zope. But let's see some *real* arguments here, objective advantages, not warm-and-fuzzy arguments about what "feels more consistent" or how smart Zope developers are. Note that OpenACS is *not* willing to compromise on certain things: ACID compliance of the data store. Efficient calculation of aggregate information (this is why we like SQL). Scalability to millions of hits per day in practice, not just in theory. Quick learning curve and rapid development.

I'm sure Zope has a few things to teach us. I invite you to take into account these important restrictions and submit a real proposal for how we can benefit from Zope's approach. If you think Zope is simply better on every level, you should, by all means, use it!