Forum OpenACS Q&A: Response to ACS vs Zope?

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5: Response to ACS vs Zope? (response to 1)
Posted by G. Armour Van Horn on
OK, I did a BBoard search on "zope." Over an hour later, every link in the results page shows that I've read it, although I did Control+F to find the Zope parts rather than reading every single line.

No, this was not a troll - I have enough to read without generating new flamewars.

I didn't assume that Zope was better, although the "Will ACS keep up?" comment may have sounded like it. Looking at www.zope.org just shows an incredible amount of product, and though I see references to a lot of components for ACS there isn't anything resembling http://www.zope.org/Products in terms of quickly finding those pieces. (http://www.zope.org/Documentation shows a similar depth to the accessible documentation.) It's a lot harder to find a place to get started with OpenACS.

I asked "Is ACS ten times faster?" because one of the first things I read was from Philip (in Web Whore) talking about the inherent speed advantage of AOLServer. Performance is one of the reasons a developer would choose a more arcane or expensive system over a more easily deployed one. (It's certainly why I'm struggling with Linux after years of Macintosh and Windows use.)

Incidentally, I do expect to get a positive response here. Reading messages here over the last year makes it very clear that this is one of the more civilized and forthcoming environments in which to ask questions, including those that get right down to questioning the use of ACS itself.

And one point I didn't raise before: the impetus behind ACS was Philip Greenspun, where is he now? I haven't seen anything lately regarding his departure from AD and have to wonder what effect that will have on ACS and OpenACS over the next few months to years.

I've just become aware of the buzz around Zope. My personal style is that I'm slow to get going, slow moving once going, a bit lazy, but I tend to overcome this with tenacity. Which means it's really, really bad when I get started on a dead end.

Van