Why was Dexterity created?

Dexterity was created to serve two audiences: Administrators/integrators, and developers.

For administrators and integrators, Dexterity offers:

• the ability to create new content types through-the-web
• the ability to switch on/off various aspects (called "behaviors") on a per-type basis
• improved collaboration between integrators (who may define a type's schema, say) and programmers (who may provide re-usable behaviors that the administrator can plug in).

For developers, Dexterity promises:

• the ability to create content types more quickly and easily, and with less boilerplate and repetition, than what is possible with Archetypes or plain CMF types
• content objects with a smaller runtime footprint, to improve performance
• types that use the now-standard zope.interface/zope.schema style of schema, and more broadly support modern idioms that sit a little awkardly with Archetypes and its ilk