Rewrote becoming big and foreword

docs/becomingbig.rst

@@ -3,54 +3,74 @@
 Becoming Big
 ============
 
-Your application is becoming more and more complex?  Flask is really not
-designed for large scale applications and does not attempt to do so, but
-that does not mean you picked the wrong tool in the first place.
+Your application is becoming more and more complex?  If you suddenly
+realize that Flask does things in a way that does not work out for your
+application there are ways to deal with that.
 
 Flask is powered by Werkzeug and Jinja2, two libraries that are in use at
 a number of large websites out there and all Flask does is bring those
-two together.  Being a microframework, Flask is literally a single file.
-What that means for large applications is that it's probably a good idea
-to take the code from Flask and put it into a new module within the
-applications and expand on that.
+two together.  Being a microframework Flask does not do much more than
+combinding existing libraries - there is not a lot of code involved.
+What that means for large applications is that it's very easy to take the
+code from Flask and put it into a new module within the applications and
+expand on that.
 
-What Could Be Improved?
------------------------
+Flask is designed to be extended and modified in a couple of different
+ways:
 
-For instance it makes a lot of sense to change the way endpoints (the
-names of the functions / URL rules) are handled to also take the module
-name into account.  Right now the function name is the URL name, but
-imagine you have a large application consisting of multiple components.
-In that case, it makes a lot of sense to use dotted names for the URL
-endpoints.
+-   Subclassing.  The majority of functionality can be changed by creating
+    a new subclass of the :class:`~flask.Flask` class and overriding
+    some methods.
 
-Here are some suggestions for how Flask can be modified to better 
-accommodate large-scale applications:
+-   Flask extensions.  For a lot of reusable functionality you can create
+    extensions.
 
--   get rid of the decorator function registering which causes a lot
-    of troubles for applications that have circular dependencies.  It
-    also requires that the whole application is imported when the system
-    initializes or certain URLs will not be available right away.   A
-    better solution would be to have one module with all URLs in there and
-    specifying the target functions explicitly or by name and importing
-    them when needed.
--   switch to explicit request object passing.  This requires more typing
-    (because you now have something to pass around) but it makes it a
-    whole lot easier to debug hairy situations and to test the code.
--   integrate the `Babel`_ i18n package or `SQLAlchemy`_ directly into the
-    core framework.
+-   Forking.  If nothing else works out you can just take the Flask
+    codebase at a given point and copy/paste it into your application
+    and change it.  Flask is designed with that in mind and makes this
+    incredible easy.  You just have to take the package and copy it
+    into your application's code and rename it (for example to
+    `framework`).  Then you can start modifying the code in there.
 
-.. _Babel: http://babel.edgewall.org/
-.. _SQLAlchemy: http://www.sqlalchemy.org/
+Why consider Forking?
+---------------------
 
-Why does Flask not do all that by Default?
-------------------------------------------
+The majority of code of Flask is within Werkzeug and Jinja2.  These
+libraries do the majority of the work.  Flask is just the paste that glues
+those together.  For every project there is the point where the underlying
+framework gets in the way (due to assumptions the original developers
+had).  This is natural because if this would not be the case, the
+framework would be a very complex system to begin with which causes a
+steep learning curve and a lot of user frustration.
 
-There is a huge difference between a small application that only has to
-handle a couple of requests per second and with an overall code complexity
-of less than 4000 lines of code and something of larger scale.  At some
-point it becomes important to integrate external systems, different
-storage backends and more.
+This is not unique to Flask.  Many people use patched and modified
+versions of their framework to counter shortcomings.  This idea is also
+reflected in the license of Flask.  You don't have to contribute any
+changes back if you decide to modify the framework.
 
-If Flask was designed with all these contingencies in mind, it would be a
-much more complex framework and harder to get started with.
+The downside of forking is of course that Flask extensions will most
+likely break because the new framework has a different import name and
+because of that forking should be the last resort.
+
+Scaling like a Pro
+------------------
+
+For many web applications the complexity of the code is less an issue than
+the scaling for the number of users or data entries expected.  Flask by
+itself is only limited in terms of scaling by your application code, the
+data store you want to use and the Python implementation and webserver you
+are running on.
+
+Scaling well means for example that if you double the amount of servers
+you get about twice the performance.  Scaling bad means that if you add a
+new server the application won't perform any better or would not even
+support a second server.
+
+There is only one limiting factor regarding scaling in Flask which are
+the context local proxies.  They depend on context which in Flask is
+defined as being either a thread or a greenlet.  Separate processes are
+fine as well.  If your server uses some kind of concurrency that is not
+based on threads or greenlets, Flask will no longer be able to support
+these global proxies.  However the majority of servers are using either
+threads, greenlets or separate processes to achieve concurrency which are
+all methods well supported by the underlying Werkzeug library.

docs/foreword.rst

@@ -17,24 +17,20 @@ may be necessary in larger or more complex applications.
 For example, Flask uses thread-local objects internally so that you don't
 have to pass objects around from function to function within a request in
 order to stay threadsafe.  While this is a really easy approach and saves
-you a lot of time, it also does not scale well to large applications.
-It's especially painful for more complex unittests, and when you suddenly
-have to deal with code being executed outside of the context of a request,
-such as in cron jobs.
+you a lot of time, it might also cause some troubles for very large
+applications because changes on these thread-local objects can happen
+anywhere in the same thread.
 
-Flask provides some tools to deal with the downsides of this approach, but
-the core problem remains.  Flask is also based on convention over
-configuration, which means that many things are preconfigured and will
-work well for smaller applications but not so well for larger ones.  For
-example, by convention, templates and static files are in subdirectories
-within the Python source tree of the application.
+Flask provides some tools to deal with the downsides of this approach but
+it might be an issue for larger applications.  Flask is also based on
+convention over configuration, which means that many things are
+preconfigured and will work well for smaller applications but not so well
+for larger ones.  For example, by convention, templates and static files
+are in subdirectories within the Python source tree of the application.
 
-But don't worry if your application suddenly grows larger
-and you're afraid Flask might not grow with it.  Even with
-larger frameworks, you'll eventually discover that you need
-something the framework just cannot do for you without modification.
-If you are ever in that situation, check out the :ref:`becomingbig`
-chapter.
+However Flask is not much code and built in a very solid foundation and
+with that very easy to adapt for large applications.  If you are
+interested in that, check out the :ref:`becomingbig` chapter.
 
 A Framework and an Example
 --------------------------