Andreas and others,
Thanks for your response. I think my confusion lies in the idea that not
everyone uses Java (though they may talk about it). I do not see everyone
using Java. In fact I see very few large or successful companies using it.
Even Sun and IBM develop their core components in C/C GNU, Linux, MySQL
all C/C Ditto In my market, we've been able to easily
outpace and perform competitors going the J2EE route, and for a lot less
money.
In regards to web development, the list of technologies being implemented is
overwhelming. It took extensive research to find and settle down to Zope.
In my research, I found it took 57 complex files to develop a simple and
ugly J2EE application to display a list of cars from a database (various
Ant, xml, jar, war and other files). In Zope this can be done in 2 objects,
and it integrates nicely with apps like Dreamweaver, so it looks and feels
nice.
We often find the need to integrate with other products and when we do,
either the product's manufacturer a) is interested in market share, or b)
they avoid change.
For companies who are into market share they often use a greatest common
denominator technology such as C, Perl, or HTTP. Java does not play nicely
here.
Companies who avoid change usually do so because they produce large-scale or
small market systems, and change is too expensive and hard. In this case
Java, again, does not play nicely.
In Java it seems that not only do you have to figure how to interface with
others, you have to figure out how to do it in Java as well (which is not
trivial). Zope and Python seem better at translating thoughts into code,
and doing so with the right balance of object orientation, and scalability.
Zope provides a solid framework for development and scalability, while
providing mechanisms to include and deploy very custom and specific features
in a standardized way.
Message
From: Andreas Jung [mailto:lists (AT) andreas-jung (DOT) com]
Sent: Sunday, January 01, 2006 4:03 PM
To: David Johnson; zope (AT) zope (DOT) org
Subject: Re: [Zope] Java vs Zope
1. Januar 2006 14:04:16 -0600 David Johnson <djohnson (AT) jsatech (DOT) com
wrote:
--
Good afternoon. I am new to Zope and I am excited about its
possibilities. We are an ASP and plan to use Zope to improve our
development process. I see that many people use J2EE based environments.
Does anyone
understand why? Why would anyone use Java?
Because everyone uses Java! When you work in an environment were Java is
already used then you usually use Java instead of Python. And there are
environments where Python is possibly the better solution. You just need to
compare the efforts to integrate an existing environment with your
solutionthen you choose your tools.
-aj
Zope maillist - Zope (AT) zope (DOT) org
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Asad Habib wrote:

>From my experience, Java development has been a lot faster when
>
applications have middle to high level complexity. Since Java is
inherently object-oriented, reusability is much easier to achieve then
when using Zope. Also, Java has mature development and debugging
environments and well organized API's. Zope is seriously lacking in
this regard.

Zope is good for building simple interfaces but any application that
does data processing and requires session management should be left
for Java. The closest comparison to Zope that I can think of is PHP.

Again, this is just my opinion based on my own experiences.

- Asad

Asad,

Python is also object oriented. In python, x = 10 creates an object not
a simple type - if I recall the same is true in Java.

The comparison should first be between python and java. I've used both
and prefer python.

The next compare should be between developement platforms for each: e.g.
Zope vs some java IDE.

Lastly, I think Zope is more than capable of handling "complex
applications" using external databases. I've not run into a single
barrier doing this using Zope (other than fleeing braincells).

All best,
David

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Tue, 03 Jan 2006 21:12:06 -0600, David Johnson wrote:

David - I am new to Zope, but I feel your assessment is correct. We have
developed and deployed very large applications using PHP/C++, and are now
looking to Zope to take us into the next stage. Python seems excellent at
object orientation and neatness with minimal effort by the developer.

Asab - Do you know any types of large applications that are in Java? I have
seen only a few, and they are particularly bad, such as the
installer, Star , and Eclipse. All are excessively large, slow, and
buggy. We have one competitor using J2EE, and it requires them 10 times the
resources (both financial and labor), as it does us using PHP, and their
application is poor and difficult to modify for customer needs. highly
trained engineers can understand and use Java, making maintenance expensive
and challenging. initial efforts in Zope lead us to believe we can be
even faster and better using Zope and Python than we were able with PHP (we
use PHP with classes). Have you not found this to be case? I'm not trying
to be difficult, but I have so much trouble understanding the appeal of
Java. Thank you.

I've worked with Java for 10+ years (yes, ever since you could first get
hold of it!) and the last couple of years with Zope/Plone/python. There is
no doubt that both are great environments to develop in! I agree that
python is great for putting an application together very simply and
rapidly. However, in general programming, there are some things I really
miss from the Java world, and I will run through below. I'm not saying one
is better than the other, but simply that you have to weight up the pros
and cons when deciding which to use

thing is static type checking: developers detecting type errors at
compile time, rather than some hapless user running into it at run time
(i.e. after release to the public). I see many of those types of errors
in Zope and Plone products, particularly as the API of one product
changes and another product tries to use it. With Java, such
problems are likely to be detected at compile time. Runtime errors produce a negative public
perception of software products, as well as being dangerous in critical
systems. Pervasive use of unit testing will help avoid such problems, but
that level of discipline is hard to find in Zope/Plone projects (but well
done those who do it!). the downside, static type checking makes Java
less flexible, and requires more programming effort, and of course there
is that tedious compilation step.

Java also tends to lead to cleaner and more understandable software
architectures than python because of its fundamental and neat/easy use of
interfaces, classes, packages and even threads (not that concurrent
programming is ever that easy). Mainly good & easy abstract interfaces,
and their widespread use in APIs, is what I miss.

As to whether J2EE is better than Zope/Plone for web applications, I'm
undecided. Before I started with Plone, I would have used Java if I could
find a suitable FSS platform that did all the things that Zope & Plone do
- but there were none available. It looks like that is changing now
though with all the FSS J2EE environments, workflows, etc. coming
along, so I may sway back to Java sometime in the future.

I would generally say that, for the *same* amount of testing, Java is
much safer (in terms of less defects) than python. I'm not sure if it is
true that an equivalent python application using similar APIs is quicker
to write.

I suspect it is also true that Java is available in more environments that
python, and perhaps is has more consistent feature sets (APIs)
on each platform, leading to greater portability of applications. For web
apps perhaps this is not such a problem.

I have also used PHP quite a bit, but I am disappointed by its abysmal
lack of decent , exception and name spaces. For those that don't care
about , probably this doesn't bother them. For me, I find it hard to go
back and use PHP after experiencing python.

Finally, while I don't think execution speed is much of a issue these
days, the horrendous use of memory resources by Java can be a
problem.

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6. Januar 2006 10:06:55 -0500 Asad Habib <ahabib (AT) engin (DOT) umich.edu
wrote:

Well, the class is simply a construct that Java uses to define an object.
Also, the concept of object is well defined in Java which makes it easier
for the programmer to know what can and cannot be done. In Python, it is
not as explicit. Java is a programming language and hence cannot be
compared directly to a scripting language such as Python or PHP. These 2
types are designed for different purposes.
--

Python is not a programming language? huhthe difference is that
Java is compiled and Python is interpreted. I agree that PHP is not a
programming language but just a weird mixture of HTML and _something_
programming-language-like :-)
-aj

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6. Januar 2006 16:39:18 +0100 Martijn Pieters <mj (AT) zopatista (DOT) comwrote:

1/6/06, Andreas Jung <lists (AT) andreas-jung (DOT) comwrote:
>Python is not a programming language? huhthe difference is that
>Java is compiled and Python is interpreted
>
*Bzzzzt* Wrong again. :)

Hairsplitter :-)
-aj

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At the risk of contributing to the usual "my programming language is better
than yours" holy war, I'll throw in $0.02(US):

There are a few things that make Zope a noteworthy alternative to a HTML +
Java web server:

1. Python is much less rigid in terms of types than Java, and it has
nifty stuff like getAttr(). I've never seen an easy-to-use, built-in API in
any other web-oriented programming language that lets me locate and use
object fields and methods by entering a string value for the identifier.
This often means that knowing the type of an object becomes less important -
it just needs to contain the methods and attributes you need to use. If the
object doesn't have what you need, Python gives you plenty of facilities to
discover which methods/fields are missing and recover gracefully. Computer
science purists often perch themselves on soapboxes and preach the value of
rigid type-safety; Python is a shining example of when type-safety isn't
always desirable.
2. Python has simple syntax for tuples, lists, and dictionaries.
3. Zope is anal-retentive about valid XHTML and XML - a wonderful
feature as the web moves into the future. Zope just won't let things fly if
they don't validate against the parser.
4. ZPT - a scripting language that integrates itself within the DM.
ZPT dissipates many of the easy-to-miss mistakes regarding
programming-language constructs like conditional blocks and iteration, as
well as exposes the contents of those iterated or condition-protected blocks
to XML or XHTML validation.
5. Acquisition - a wonderful feature that helps to unify a large
application by making objects easily reachable without having to memorize
and use long paths.
6. Permissions - Zope has a fine-grained permissions model built in.
This is a life-saver for web applications that require authentication,
especially if they accommodate different classes of users.
7. database storage - this puts all the power of
acquisition, containment, and security into your storage backend with
minimal marshalling from the database storage into the web page.

IMH, Java as a web language is still much better suited for stuff like
applets. However, you could conceivably take a language like Java and build
a Zope-like server around it, and probably reap some benefits from Java that
you would have difficulty acquiring from Python.

fm

1/6/06, Andreas Jung <lists (AT) andreas-jung (DOT) comwrote:
>
>
>
6. Januar 2006 10:06:55 -0500 Asad Habib <ahabib (AT) engin (DOT) umich.edu>
wrote:

Well, the class is simply a construct that Java uses to define an
object.
Also, the concept of object is well defined in Java which makes it
easier
for the programmer to know what can and cannot be done. In Python, it is
not as explicit. Java is a programming language and hence cannot be
compared directly to a scripting language such as Python or PHP. These 2
types are designed for different purposes.
>
>
>
Python is not a programming language? huhthe difference is that
Java is compiled and Python is interpreted. I agree that PHP is not a
programming language but just a weird mixture of HTML and _something_
programming-language-like :-)

-aj

Zope maillist - Zope (AT) zope (DOT) org

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--

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6. Januar 2006 11:52:48 -0500 Asad Habib <ahabib (AT) engin (DOT) umich.edu
wrote:
and just because I don't think it's optimal for large-scale applications
(the keywork here is I, not everyone).

There is nothing optimal in this world and there is no perfect programming
language but Python is good enough for large-scale applications (depends on
how you define it :-))so what is _your_ definition of large-scale?
-aj

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