One problem at the time was that the Python web ecosystem was a mess: there was no WSGI, so the first version had 3 different interfaces: one for running it as CGI, another for Twisted, and a third one that I don't remember. Another problem was that there was no Numpy at that time. There was Numeric, the original Python array library, but it was slow with large arrays; and there was Numarray, created some time after, which was slow with small arrays. So I supported both at the time. In a sense I think this was good, because Pydap was very modular from the start.
via oceandrivers.com
Me, talking about the history of Pydap to OceanDrivers. I surely don't miss these times.