[Twisted-Python] Evangelism notes...

[Andy Gayton]

Hey Mike, this thread has been given a thrashing and should probably be 
let go off, but it hits a pretty emotional issue for me - so here goes 
my 2c's worth :)

I've been in similiar situations before, always with selling 
(evangelising) python though - I dream of the day I can be selling 
twisted over vanilla python :)

Mike C. Fletcher wrote:
>                 + Even the Finger sample is mystifyingly complex if you
>                   jump into it at the end of the process

certainly - that's why there is the Finger sample - your lead programmer 
never took 2 hours to work through the Finger sample?  I often find this 
with python -

me: 'these problems we're having - they go away if you use python'

reluctant workplace: 'but we don't have the skills in house to support 
python'

me: 'python's has be designed to be useful as an educational language - 
i've found programmers can be at least as productive as they are 
currently using python within 3 days.  here are some great tutorial links.'

reluctant workplace: 'we'll see'

me: 'these problems we're having - they go away if you use python'

reluctant workplace: 'but we don't have the skills in house to support 
python'

me: 'did you even open one of those tutorial links i sent you?'

reluctant workplace: 'no'

>                 + Probably would have been better to start him on the
>                   much larger project, where Twisted represents far less
>                   of the overall complexity of the application.

i've found it a losing battle trying to spoon feed even bright people 
who aren't eager to try out new and interesting ways of solving problems.

>           o What do we call to shutdown the threadpool?  I don't
>             remember, let's check the reference docs... 20 minutes of
>             searching for the 2.0 reference docs (with the entire
>             company watching this)... finally ask on IRC... told to
>             build them myself and contribute them.  Cute, but didn't
>             really drive home the whole "robust, professional,
>             well-documented platform on which to develop business
>             systems" meme as much as I'd hoped.

Not having a go at all you at all - but I don't believe there is a 
solution on earth, paid for, or volunteer, you would have come out ok 
in this situation.

It sounds like your company had an axe to grind.

I can't think of many paid support contracts I've had access to that 
could even get a problem being worked on within 20mins - let alone solved.

> I could have done better at evangelising. In the end, though, I had to
> concede that stripping out Twisted and writing the code himself would
> probably be faster and easier in the long run than trying to work around
> problems in an under-documented "foreign" system (again, from his
> viewpoint).

possibly, twisted can't always be the right hammer.  vanilla python is 
still brilliant.  just hoping your company hasn't shut the door for when 
twisted could be needed.

good luck in the future, for both of us:)

Andy.