Plone as a Development Platform

By[ a highly opinionated talk about the future of Plone from a Framework Team member, developer, project

manager, consultant, loud mouth, and general advocate of change aka ]

Elizabeth Leddy

WARNINGAlthough this presentation seems to be filled with factoids, it is actally filled with lazily validated stats, graphs that are extrapolated far beyond mathematical reason, and pirated imagery. It is highly likely that I have misinterpreted historical results or became so blinded with anger about certain things that I did not Google sufficiently or give good thoughts to decent alternatives. Except any statements about Grok. I’m confident there.

More importantly, this is a very opinionated piece. Officially, much of this is addressed by the Roadmap, which provides you with the important fluff you need to sell Plone to your customers, clients, and neighborhood dentist. In the theoretical future, the roadmap will direct “official” processes and people will cheer and eat cake. For now: anarchy.

In the meanwhile, I can only assume that I will firmly disagree with whatever comes out of this because I am an asshole by nature and go full steam ahead with the contents of this presentation. There is no intention to ruffle feathers or miscommunicate. I encourage all of YOU to get up and talk/blog/vlog your vision for Plone, controvesy and all. Be loud, be proud, be Plone.

Plone 4.X

..... .....

4.[1,2,3] Feature Trend‣ Modernizing the User Experience

‣ Commenting

‣ Theming (Diazo)

‣ Search

‣ Collections

‣ Content type creation

(Dexterity )

‣ Events

‣ Modernizing The Architecture‣ Performance++

‣ Repackaging Party

‣ Keep up with Zope releases

‣ Standardizing APIs

‣ HTML 5

‣ Python 2.7

4.1

4.2

4.3

New Processes

0

15

30

45

4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4*

Proposed AcceptedMerged Incomplete

4.0

4.1

4.2

4.3*

0 100 200 300 400

Days from Last Release to AlphaDays from Alpha to Release

PLIPS Releases

* PLIP monster wants PLIPS

Only YOU can make this smaller!

s

Ticket Cleanup Process

Attainable Goal: 4 Tickets per Contributor

1132 Open Tickets8 per core contributor

3.4 new tickets/day

Ticket Status

Distribution of Tickets (color coded by how much

attention they get)

Feature Requests376

PLIPs25

Bugs729

Breakdown of Bugs (color coded by how irritated I

am that they are open)

Ongoing24

Future230

4.x603

Add Ons

2010

2011

2012*

0 125 250 375 500

New Updated

In January 2012, 29 new add-ons were registered on Plone.org. That is almost

one new add-on per day.

Plone on the Outskirts

Collective DM Commits/Month

Core Commits/Month

Plone on the Outskirts

Collective DM Commits/Month

Core Commits/Month

Plone on the Outskirts

Collective DM Commits/Month

Core Commits/Month

Plone on the Outskirts

Collective DM Commits/Month

Core Commits/Month

Plone on the Outskirts

Collective DM Commits/Month

Core Commits/Month

What is Plone 5?Seriously this time!

2007

‣Deco/Tiles

‣Usability

‣Performance

‣1 content type to

RULE THEM ALL! GLITTER+PONIES = UNICORNS=== Plone 5

blah blah blah.

meh dog says...

2012: Facing Reality

???Deco Light?

CMSUI?The #1

framework of post apocalyptic

times?

2010?2011?

2012?

Grok?

Whatever the release manager says it is?

Roadmap

‣ plone.org/roadmap

‣ Short Term‣ Improved calendaring and

collections

‣ Improved content development

experience

‣ Medium Term‣ CMS-UI & Deco Lite

‣ WSGI & Ajax

‣ CMF forms -> Browser Views

In order to reach

where we are going

we must forgive

where we have been

Direction (Roadmap)

Community

Beer

Plone 4

Vectors of Influence for Plone 5

Dedication

Excitement

BitternessResistance to change

Realized Path

Text

Plone 3 Introduced Regression

Does the steep learning curve pay off? Is

this complexity still justified today?I need a platform. Customers need a CMS.

You can't just start and say "If you want

to see the complexity of Plone,

you have to ask for it" when you don't

know the system good enough to plan.

..... .....

Framework Core Values

‣ XML Configuration

‣ Easy debugging

‣ Extensibility/Pluggability

‣ 100% test coverage

‣ Best in class code

‣ More documentation

‣ Hard things easy

‣ Code next to config

‣ Syntactic Sugar

‣ The custom folder

‣ Happy end users

‣ Clear and simple APIs

‣ Better documentation

‣Easy things easy

Programming, Motherfucker

Teaching Python Web‣ Task: Make a TODO list

‣ Audience: New to Python

‣ 3 frameworks, 3 hours

per framework

‣ web2py, flask, DjangoInterfaces? I’ll just use PHP then.

meh dog says...

Simple Syntax

@route(‘/contact’)

@render(‘contact.pt’)

class Contact(View):

def getContactInfo(self):

return {phone=”999-999-9999”}

@route(‘/support-request’)

def ProcessSupport(View):

# submit to 3rd party here

return redirect(url_for(ThankYou))

Hypoglycemia

‣ Getting the site root

‣ 6 files and ~20 lines of code to add a

new stylesheet

‣ Touching so many files and modules:

impossible to move quickly without

referencing documentation

constantly

Using Recommended Practices:

The patient suffers from a severe deficiency of

Syntactic Sugar

Scapegoat: Documentation

Developer Driven Development

‣ Think about the API first

‣ Obsess about developer

efficiency

‣ Use documented examples/

recipes to prove ease of use

‣ Contribute shortcuts from your

everyday process and share

them with coworkers and

communityMake documentation less important with intuitive code!

Plone 5 has the potential to make

Happy Developers!

... makes hiring easier

‣ Plone will never be hip: move on

‣Dangerously high levels of

frustration in the blood

‣ Foster interest in long term

career achievement

‣ “At least it’s not Java”

“plone means getting hands dirty and

drinking away your sorrows once you finish the day”

supton, #plone, January 2012

A thriving community of happy developers...

‣ Plone developers cost much more

than the competition because they

are highly skilled + scarce

‣ Ramp up is too time consuming ($$$)

‣ Clients have the right to a saturated

developer market should they move

on to a different company

‣Developers have the right to feel

prepared to move on within PLONE

‣Diversity in quality of developers

... makes firing easier

A large community of happy developers...

Spanky Certified

✓ Internationalized

✓ Unit tests

✓ End-user documentation

✓ Internal documentation

✓ Existed and maintained for at least 6 months

✓ Installs and uninstalls cleanly

✓ Code structure follows best practice

✓Usable by Spanky

Who does Plone work for?

"If you want a platform to be successful, you need

massive adoption, and that means you need

developers to develop for it. The best way to kill a

platform is to make it hard for developers to build on

it. Most of the time, this happens because platform

companies ... don't know that they have a platform

(they think it's an application)." ~ Joel Spolsky

We Hear You(and we are serious about fixing it)

Plone Pain Top 10 Update

plone.api

Planned in plone.api

Planned for Plone 5

(ping esteele to help)

Plone PainDev docs in core,

trac removed. Guidelines started then stalled - help

requested!

Part of CMF templates

rewrite, new code validated

PLIP Requested: ping esteele

2 new tutorials made, return of tutorial focus

PLIP Requested: ping esteele

Debug tools in plone.api planned

KSS, inline editing pulled out. Lots more too do

Plone 5 TODOs

‣ Make Archetypes Optional

‣ Widget parity*

‣ Default Plone types in Dexterity*

‣ Continue to factor out unnecessary

packages

‣ KSS

‣ Archetypes

‣ Javascript date formatting*

‣ plone.api*

‣ Move all config settings to the registry*

*: Needs PLIP-lementors

Initiating release sequence...Plone 5 released.

..... .....

Summary

‣Plone 4

Modernizing the Plone

user experience

‣Plone 5

Modernizing the Plone

developer experience

Plone Culture NGPlone 5 will happen... now what?

‣ Decide to commit to Plone the community. Too

many people sitting on the fence results just leaves

us with a busted fence.

‣ Commit your project or company, no matter how

small, to just 1 internal Plone culture improvement

proposal this week. Can’t code? Even better.

Committing Not Just for Developers

‣ Policy: All employees sign up for Plone on day 1‣ Paperwork: Contributor agreement, plone.org account

‣ Persist Plone culture (e.g. pre-install IRC)

‣ Training: teach new developers how and when

to file bugs and properly contribute fixes

‣Mentorship: it’s not just for finding the bathroom

Resolve to Initiate

‣ Host a sprint. Ploners LOVE to travel. It’s science.

‣ Send 1 [non-technical] person to a conference ‣ Level Up: Let them stay to sprint‣ Bonus Round: Present a case study of your work

‣ Form an alliance (or two). Explain projects,

frustrations, share contacts. Meet their team in

person.

Resolve to Travel

‣ Test new versions of Plone. Stage, don’t deploy.

Upgrade and run your tests. Report back.

‣Make a policy to stop forking! It’s a short term fix

with long term problems. Enforce it.

‣ Set aside time for a company sponsored PLIP

Resolve to Encourage

..... .....

Resolve to Sprint this Weekend!

‣Beginner Finish Plone Contributor

Agreement process

‣Advanced

“Goodbye cpy!”

Plone has the potential to makehappy developers, but only you have the power to make

Plone

!MAGIC

EXCUSES

Plone 5 code name: No Excuses

Questions?

‣ Plone Roadmap

‣ Plone API Roadmap

‣ HOWTO: Getting Started Developing with Plone

‣ Tutorial: Hello World

‣ Tutorial: Basic TODO List

‣ HOWTO: Contributing to Plone Core

Get Educated

Imagery

๏ seniordogsacrossamerica.com

๏ http://nagonthelake.blogspot.com/2011/06/nancy-levines-portraits-of-senior-

dogs.html

๏ http://davisfreeman.com/blog/tag/portraits

๏ flickr.com/photos/mrtopf/372006971/

๏ wordl.net

๏ manyniches.com/windows-phone/happy-developers/

๏ sodahead.com/fun/have-you-ever-been-dog-tired/question-2352589/?

link=ibaf&q=&imgurl=http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OLnmi8bqkHE/TZvcjjU2liI/

AAAAAAAABPs/lbG2f0wwuAE/s1600/Dog%252520Tired%252520Dog.jpg