"I'm sure Don will jump in here and claim that this is not meaningful because I haven't
presented their resumes to him nor mine. Nyaaah."
No, just the opposite. I don't care about their resumes, nor how smart you think they are. That's the point of more than one of my previous posts. Just show me the code, baby.
Reading through the pieces you describe - which correspond pretty much to my understanding (your claims that I've not looked at Zope are incorrect) - I'm still left feeling that the solution is far more complex than the problem warrants. Perhaps I've been ruined by frittering away my long-distant youth writing optimizing compilers designed to wean those who write the code to fly airplanes and the like from assembly code - I have a great tendency to favor lean and mean solutions to problems that are easy to read and learn.
I'm just naturally suspicious of software development systems that have a steep learning curve. While at times such complexity is justified, generally it isn't.
So ... exactly what's so tough about writing a large website that justifies Zope's complexity and resulting steep learning curve? If I invest the time to overcome that steep learning curve, what benefits will I see that I won't get from the ACS approach of building a relatively thin layer on top of a relatively complex datamodel? Why is a complex and hard-to-learn framework needed to solve such relatively simple programming problems?
That initial time investment is costly, and can only be justified if there's a measurable benefit compared to approaches that are, well, more approachable. Answers like "well, you'll be well versed in the Zope philosophy" won't cut it.
Did I really see the initials "UML" up there? I've contracted for Rational off-and-on for the past several years and my experience there has only strengthened my prejudice against unecessary complexity. (actually with Verdix, far more rational than Rational, at least until they were bought by Rational).
Of course, Rational calls itself the "e-development company" these days. I shouldn't pick on Zope when folks like this are claiming to have the One True Answer to web development...
