ZClasses: Love 'em, hate 'em

people swore by them while other swore at them. Here'e my take on ZCLasses.

I started with zope in end of 1999. ZClasses were what attracted me. Here we have a framework(?) to build web apps thru the web. Pointy Clicky!

And i built myself a web app that runs a publishing site. And it's still running.

Here's what i learned:

• always use a python base class. it will make life easier. when i did my publishin app, i know 0 python. and i chose all base classes that were available. that was a mistake.

changing base class in zclass is not possible. sure, there's a hackish way of doing it, but not as clean as changing a python class.

now, i have to carry all those outdated baseclasses.

• zclass is good for rapid prototyping. most of the time, i needed simple functionality; e.g. an image with caption and author properties. i can make one with zclass in a jiffy. it's also easy with python products. but in an environment with ZEO, a zclass is easier to mantain. import into one zeo client, and all other clients got updated. change an attribute, method, etc, and all other will be updated. this includes all instances that were created earlier.

i think all the above is doable in a python product, but i haven't yet reached that level :P

however, sometimes an app with simple functionalities will need to evolve. it can become more complex. this is when starting with zclass is bad. but, if we took into consideration the first bullet, we're probably safe, since we can change our python base class.

• if you know python, take the python product route. it's safer, extensible, and comes with batteries included (since python coes with batteries included).

with time, we can live without zclasses. but zclass has this aura that attracts newbies. we're all are once a newbie.

i was and still am. what's one great thing about zclass? it makes me learn python!