pcplantdb

[Chad Knepp <pyg@galatea.org>]

One of the mechanisms of some intentional communities that I really
appreciate is called a 'checkin', where folks share on an emotional
level where they are at in regards to different areas.  I think it
would be helpful to me and the group if I did a little of that right
now, because I have a rather rough time both in terms of the project
and on a personal level.

In terms of the project, developing in Zope is not at all what I
thought it would be.  I am very dissapointed in HG in terms of
progress and product, because developing on the level that HG needs to
interwork with Zope is much harder than I expected.  Most of the
issues that I've been encountering involve the 'all singing/dancing'
depth that Zope has, confirming Richards earlier concern.  Zope is
positioned as a web development platform that is relatively easy for
low to moderately experienced people to create applications based on
existing products (you can do a lot of neat things with Plone for
example).  Developing Zope products is not easy and many of the
powerful Zope features that make it easy to extend Zope products are
biting me in the ass at the moment.  In particular, I've really
struggled with Acquisition and Traversal and their interactions.  I
compromised an original development goal because I couldn't get them
to work as advertised for me and encountered a quantity of evidence
that you can't even do what I was trying to do.  Anyway, the current
release of HG is not representative of the quality or quantity of work
I feel I'm capable which increases the level of frustration I feel
when having to understand and work through another Zope complexity.
Currently developing in Zope feels very constraining and not very
creative.

On a personal level I'm going through a lot as well.  I'm currently in
process of leaving Dancing Rabbit (Nov 1st) and trying to start a
small family sized income sharing community as well as a larger
permaculture focuses land trust.  There are a number of low level
tensions between me and DR members mostly around a feeling that my
current direction is 'competition' for DR and that I don't really
respect the choices and direction of DR.  The process of moving has
disrupted my food/sleep/work scene and the last week of cold wet
overcast weather with no place to get warm has left me a bit
depressed.  I don't mean to complain as much as point out that my
judgement may be a bit skewed by other factors.

I haven't really done anything HG related for almost a week, although
the break hasn't yielded the clarity I had hoped for.  I have some
requests and some options to consider.  I would like to submit the 33
hours I have for payment for work up to the latest release.  The
actual time is much greater this, but a lot of it was being
stuck/learning and I don't feel the product merits anymore.  I can
buckle down and work on something I don't particularly enjoy, but both
my mental outlook and the final product will be WAY better if I'm
having fun doing it.  

Options:

  o Keep developing HG in Zope as planned.  This is a doable option
    although I'm currently not very excited about it.  I also am no
    longer sure that developing in Zope will be in anyway better or
    faster than alternate methods.

  o Develop from Eden.  Look into ORMs and/or take a week off to write
    one.  In my current frame of mind this sounds like what I would
    like to do, although it means we wasted 33 hours or about 5% of
    our current funding.

  o Do something even more radical like just use Medusa (ZServer) and
    ZODB together getting rid of all the Zope cruft.  Part of the
    reason I was so sold on Zope is that I really liked the
    development of ack! in ZODB.  It might be interesting to integrate
    ZODB with Twisted <twistedmatrix.com>.


Feedback appreciated,
Chad

-- 
Chad Knepp
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;