I’ve been a Python programmer for more than 6 years now and during most of this time it’s been the language I used professionally. It’s safe to say, I know it fairly well and I’m quite attached to it. I also have to admit that I can’t stand Twisted and Zope.

It’s a continuous wonder for me, why Python community chooses to promote projects that feel most unpythonic to me. I became addicted to Python, because it was a very simple, yet expressive language which lived up to its mantra of making easy things easy and hard things possible.

So what is actually easy with Twisted and Zope? Practically nothing. At least not as long as you don’t dedicate yourself to their use.

You see, Twisted and Zope are not products. They are religions.

They were not built in a way that would make it easy to integrate them with wonderful things others built. It’s not easy to just pick the parts you like and use them elsewhere.

No, like a good disciple you were supposed to study the way they work, use their new vocabulary and dedicate yourself to live within confines of chosen religion. If you do this, then you’ll get some payoff and you might after a while even think you enjoy it.

But you’ll be missing on a hell of a lot of stuff others made and you’ll have to live with limitations of not your choosing. Well, at least not completely.

I guess I wouldn’t find it so distressing, if I didn’t feel Python developers are getting too eager to add new features to please Zope and Twisted developers. Or features that were inspired by these two.

So this language I loved is with each new release becoming ever less clean and beautiful and it’s getting easier and easier to imagine a day, when I’ll switch to some other language as my main development tool.

Disclaimer: When I talked about Zope, I actually meant version 2.x, because it was the one I actually used on a project and left me scared badly enough that I can’t make myself to even check X3. I heard it’s better in many regards, but I really don’t care anymore.

I also think developers who created Zope and Twisted are amazing. I just think that their product is, well, unpleasant.