Hi Jason,<br><br>I was up for revamping the front page until school hit, but in about a month I'll be back and ready for action and happy to help with this / provide feedback. You might find this IRC snippet about the front page relevant:<br>
<br>21:27 < jesstess> exarkun: so you're saying "Want an IRC bot? BAM follow this link. Want a TCP server? BAM follow this link?" for the top 5 things people try to implement?<br>21:27 < exarkun> jesstess: something like that, yea<br>
21:28 < jesstess> exarkun: I'd be up for working that up.<br>21:31 < exarkun> jesstess: It would be awesome if you could work on that. I think it will help a lot.<br>21:32 < exarkun> jesstess: I think it's also important to have the website direct people quickly and easily to the documentation they need.<br>
21:33 < exarkun> jesstess: There are too many clicks involved now, so they might not even find a new set of topic-oriented guides.<br>21:33 < jesstess> exarkun: I'll do it if you give me a list of the top 5 applications people try to write :)<br>
21:33 < exarkun> jesstess: Doing something about that would be another highly productive task.<br>21:33 < exarkun> ah, there's the rub.<br>21:34 < radix> 1. IRC bot that execs python code, 2. caching web proxy<br>
21:34 < radix> 3. XMPP something<br>21:34 < radix> 4. MMORPG<br>21:35 < radix> I can't think of a fifth<br>21:35 < jesstess> does "simple TCP server" really not make the list? That's why I first used Twisted.<br>
21:35 < thijstriemstra> mimic skype..ish<br>21:36 < thijstriemstra> chat, streaming, authentication, porn<br>21:36 < exarkun> jesstess: not sure if it comes in the top five<br>21:36 < exarkun> probably the top ten though<br>
21:36 < Screwtape> I'd say half the questions in here have something to do with IRC bots.<br><br>-Jessica<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 8:53 PM, Jason J. W. Williams <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:jasonjwwilliams@gmail.com">jasonjwwilliams@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">I guess I am. :)<br>
<br>
Honestly, we've used Twisted in my org for quite some time and until I<br>
was forced to use it my view of it was colored by my infrequent<br>
beatings by it and the derisive comments of the primary maintainer at<br>
that time.<br>
<br>
With the 4 hours I spent actually learning the concepts, Twisted is no<br>
longer a black box...it makes sense. That and I've<br>
optimized/re-factored a bunch of code to work with that theory instead<br>
of against it. Huge benefits.<br>
<br>
I'd say the biggest barrier to entry is the documentation. And let's<br>
face it...there's no reason Twisted shouldn't be used by more folks.<br>
It's great...but learning it feels like a frat hazing. That's largely<br>
because reading the docs feels like learning from that comp sci prof<br>
who was smart...but wasn't smart enough to explain the concepts at<br>
your level.<br>
<br>
Let's take Tornado for a second...right now I'm building a web API for<br>
our services and I'm in platform selection mode. My experience with<br>
Twisted.web's URL dispatching system made me want to cry. Tornado was<br>
a breeze to use. But here's the problem:<br>
<br>
1.) There's no good async libraries for Tornado...so if I want to<br>
integrate with Redis or MySQL or anything, I've got to accept that I'm<br>
going to block when it's not necessary and live with that.<br>
2.) Tornado's performance from the the benchmarks I've read is only<br>
between 15% and 30% better than twisted.web.<br>
<br>
2 is not enough to justify 1, because let's face it (and yeah I'm<br>
coming to a point) 1 is going to kill your butt often enough to make 2<br>
not matter.<br>
<br>
But because I'm pretty comfortable with Twisted now...it makes more<br>
sense for me to write my own dispatcher that emulates Tornado's than<br>
give up all the rock-hard awesome features and reliability of Twisted.<br>
deferToThread may not be the preferred way of handling a blocking<br>
task...but when you need it, you need it.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
...so my point is...Twisted's PR problem is it needs more accessible<br>
docs. They need to be understandable, entertaining...and pretty. It<br>
all starts with that front page...and the web app in 10 lines right<br>
smack dab there.<br>
<br>
I'm going to start with the front page...and then I'm going to write<br>
some articles on my blog that are what I wanted when I was learning<br>
Twisted. Hopefully, they'll be of use to someone.<br>
<font color="#888888"><br>
-J<br>
</font><div><div></div><div class="h5"><br>
On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 6:15 PM, Glyph Lefkowitz<br>
<<a href="mailto:glyph@twistedmatrix.com">glyph@twistedmatrix.com</a>> wrote:<br>
><br>
> On Apr 20, 2010, at 7:06 PM, Jason J. W. Williams wrote:<br>
><br>
> And yes I'm volunteering to reorg.<br>
><br>
> Wow, you really are a glutton for punishment, aren't you? :)<br>
> Go ahead and create an alternate front-page wiki page, and let the list know<br>
> when it's ready so we can pile on and critique.<br>
> I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to do better than what's there, though.<br>
> Looking forward to it,<br>
> -glyph<br>
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