nova team mailing list archive

[Michael Gundlach <michael.gundlach@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 5:42 PM, Soren Hansen <soren.hansen@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>wrote:

> On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 03:47:46PM -0500, Michael Gundlach wrote:
> > +1 for Eventlet for the reasons already stated.  Simpler code often
> > translates to fewer bugs and faster development, and I expect that
> > working with Eventlet will also mean more people who are interested in
> > contributing to OpenStack.
>
> Really? You think there's more of a community around eventlet than
> Twisted?
>

No info there.  I have not used Eventlet or Twisted in the past, and am
giving the perspective of an outsider considering working with the project.
 I had two offers earlier this year -- one to work at a company solving a
large scaling problem on a Twisted system, and one to work solving a large
scaling problem working in Eventlet.  They were pretty similar offers so it
came down largely to choosing the technology I'd want to work with.

When I researched Twisted, I read or got the impression that:
- it had a "near-vertical learning curve"
- it was named Twisted for a reason -- that it's hard to think the way
Twisted needs you to think
- its libraries were a morass (the homepage talks about having two web
frameworks and it's not clear which one to choose)

When I researched Eventlet, I read or got the impression that:
- it is clean and intuitive to code in
- it was the thing that came along after Twisted to solve the problem in a
better way
- momentum was gaining around it while Twisted was losing momentum

I took the Eventlet job with Rackspace (having mistakenly understood during
interviews that Rackspace was for-sure migrating to Eventlet :) ) because
what I had been able to find out made Twisted look unappetizing and Eventlet
look great.

I would imagine that my experience is typical -- a shallow review of the two
technologies made Eventlet much more appealing to work with.  Thus my
suggestion that we'll get more contributions if we go with Eventlet.  That
said, if there's some technical reason that one system is better for our
needs than the other, of course that trumps evangelism.

HTH,
Michael