By now the recent TSS article on Cocoon is old news, but I just came across Rik's invitation to explain, so here goes...

(1) Rik observes that the world is still divided into adepts and adverts
Sigh, the division is all too often indeed between the enthousiastic people that use it and the sceptical people that never do. My question can only be: why is it that the second group has an equal weight in the discussion?

(2) The main reaction over in Cocoon land was that the article is outdated at the time of going public: Cocoon is now at 2.1.4 (in stead of the covered 2.0.4) which results in missing out on the most important new additions in the field of web app development (see an old posting of mine on those)

(3) Pro's and Con's ?
I think the discussion on TSS following the article should give a fair view. The biggest sweat-spot that keeps returning is 'Cocoon's sharp learning curve...' And it's hard to deny it as a pure and tangible fact of live (I remember struggling too). Yes, the documentation can always improve, but often the people asking for that don't know about the existance of the wiki which is actively helping out to a large extend... The fastest way over the curve (shameless plug for our teaching services) is often just having an expert over that takes you through a sample so you actually get to use it and feel for yourself.

Coming back on the believer/disbeliever, while trying to show this is NOT a religion (but quite the opposite): Using Cocoon is about allowing yourself to think different about your web apps. Consider it like the copernican revolution: letting go of the old view of the world; you'll see that the sun still goes up. So yeah, you'll probably never think about web applications in the same way again, that's the danger. In return you might discover a pleasant new programming model for your apps that scales up from simple and stupid to quite elaborate and otherwise hard to manage.