Re: Mantissa Wiki Tutorial

On Feb 16, 2008 10:55 PM, Duncan McGreggor <[email protected]> wrote:
> > But, if Mantissa is
> > adding more complexity than I need - and I should be using Nevow and
> > Axiom only, please let me know.
>
> Definitely not :-) In fact, quite the opposite. We're making it easier
> to use :-)

I've taking a running leap at Mantissa a couple of times, but have not
yet managed to clear the rubble-strewn learning curve (mind the
falling rocks) to reach any kind of fluency.  I can identify the
components I want to bolt together, but it seems to take a lot more
pain than I anticipate to actually do it.  It has been more than a
year since my last attempt, but at the time I found it a slippery,
moving target.  For most web utilities I seem to need to throw
together (very little per-user data, if user accounts exist at all)
Nevow is just too much fun *not* to use, and Mantissa was still pretty
painful.

The Mantissa project boilerplate generator (which was pretty new the
last time I looked) kind of illustrates what has kept me away.  With
Nevow and a 30 line .tac file that can be comprehended at a glance,
one can move mountains.  Mantissa wants to generate a tree of plugin
files, templates, python, JS, and a database of databases to do
exactly nothing.  You might be able to move the same mountain by
mixing in 30 more lines, but it isn't easy, and it isn't really fun.

On the other hand, as the number of isolated utilities I deal with
grows, they become difficult to manage without some kind of organizing
structure beyond my present static page of links, but I think my mini
apps are individually not the sort of thing that Mantissa was designed
to manage.

Is that changing?  Is "make as fun as vanilla Nevow" a development
goal for Mantissa?  How should a developer decide which to target for
a new application?

Mike.