[KLUG Members] Re: Zope a PHP replacement? -- Zope is not a language ...

[Bryan J. Smith]

On Tue, 2002-05-21 at 13:25, bkatsma@attbi.com wrote:
> I was just wondering if anyone had the skinny on zope.  
> From the little reading that I have done it appears that 
> ZOPE does allot of what what ASP and PHP does but in 
> more object oriented way.
> Does PHP work with ZOPE or completly replace it?
> Is PHP better than ZOPE or is ZOPE just to new to have 
> the backing that PHP has?

Zope is a web application system.  It is written in Python (with the
exception of a few core internals that are C-based).  You can think of
Zope as an Internet content management/development focused Python
distribution.  But you do not have to know Python to use Zope.  It has
its own HTML offshoot, DTML.  But Zope is more powerful if you know how
to modify and add to its Python base and module plug-ins.

There are a few PHP developments of the same.  And Perl as well,
especially since it's been around a little bit longer.

Python is like Perl in that it is a general scripting language.  But
Python has far more strict syntax requirements, structure and more
object oriented.  Python is an excellent language for prototyping
software, both CLI and GUI.  In fact, most C++ GUI toolkits have Python
bindings as well.  And RedHat, among others, makes heavy use of
Python/GTK+ for GUI tools.  Perl is nice for quick scripts, especially
where the focus is on string manipulation, but Python is far more
manageable for larger projects IMHO.

PHP, of course, is more focused on web development and not so general. 
But it is still a full language.

I'm sure some opinions will differ from mine above.

-- Bryan

-- 
The US government could be 100x more effective, and 1/100th the
Constitutional worry, if it dictated its policy to Microsoft as
THE MAJOR CUSTOMER it is, and not THE REGULATOR it fails to be.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Bryan J. Smith, SmithConcepts, Inc.   mailto:b.j.smith@ieee.org
Engineers and IT Professionals     http://www.SmithConcepts.com