Python Popularity: Questions and Comments
Ron Stephens
dare waste a little bandwidth with that most useless (but fun)
commodity: gossip.
How is Python doing popularity wise? After such a meteoric growth
thought the nineties, and a spectacular climax in 2000 and early 2001,
is Python leveling out, going dot.bust, or still not yet at the knee of
the software world's most spectacular growth curve?
I'd be interested in some comments and observations and opinions from
others. Meanwhile, here are a few of my own:
Python, while fabulously successful, is at an interesting point in its
growth curve. It will be difficult to maintain the extremely high rate
of growth exhibited so far; new contenders are possible problems; and
the recessionary economy could also negatively impact Python's growth.
1. Ruby is an especially interesting competitor to Python. I have been
monitoring the Ruby newsgroup, and it shows incredible growth and
vitality. Furthermore, Ruby is aimed right at the heart of Python's
niche.
If we view Microsoft's Visual Studio, especially Visual Studio.net's C#
and VB, as the official 800 lb. gorilla of software development; and if
we view Java as the 400 lb. gorilla pretender to the throne; and if we
view Borland's Delphi and Kylix as no more than a smart leader of a
chimp; then everything else is the pack of open source chimps.
The open source world is still led by PERL, but PERL is truly more of a
text processing, web CGI, scripting specialist; not so much of a direct
threat to Python. PHP is a server side scripting specialist. Even
JavaScript is strong in its narrow niche of client side web scripting.
Lisp and Scheme dominate thier academic world. But Python aims to be
much more than these; Python aims to be a powerful general purpose
programming language, in addition to being a very easy to learn and easy
to use scripting language. And who can say that Python does not succeed
very well in all of the above?
But Ruby is also a more general purpose, object oriented, relatively
easy to read, language. Ruby folks include those who like its more
Perl-like syntax, but Ruby's core converts believe that its pure,
absolute object oriented nature exceeds those of Python and make it more
worthy to long term success. They seem to see Ruby as a more modern,
up-to-date version of Python. They see Python as a compromise between
object oriented and procedural programming.
Be that as it may, I suspect that much of Ruby's momentum is simply due
to its newness; all things new are seen as sexy in this world of ours.
But nonetheless, Ruby has the following going for it.
a. Usage on the Ruby newsgroup is growing much faster than on
comp.lang.python in the last year that I have been observing it. A year
ago, Python got typically three times as many posts per day as Ruby.
Now, its more like a 4:3 ratio, with Python getting say, 4000 per month,
and Ruby 3000. At this rate, Ruby could pass Python is afew months, by
this measure! (Rest assured, Ptyhonis fdoing much better if mesured by
Sourceforge projects, about 1300 to 80). By the way, Just van Rossum's
http://starship.python.net/~just/comp.lang.python/ graph of Python
newsgroup coverage seems to show a slight decline from over 6000 per
month in late-middle 2001 to the current 3500 or so I see on here. Mr.
van Rossum said he may not be able to update these any more due to some
Yahoo change; anyway, am I interpreting these numbers and trends
accurately? Will the Python newsgroup usage turn upwards again? Does it
matter?
b. Ruby is getting alot of favorable press, and new books are coming out
now. First, Pickaxe , now, Matz' own Ruby in a Nutshell and several
others soon to be or already here.
c. Ruby actually seems to be a nice language to me. Its object oriented
features seem well thought out and yet its still easy to comprehend. I
will never leave Python behind, but will others? I see quite a few
former Pythonistas posting glowing reviews on comp.lang.ruby, but not as
many as I see former Perl aficionados.
d. Ruby has some smart and aggressive coders doing libraries,
extensions, Java version etc. etc. etc., tehy are agressive and
motivated; tehy think they will see world domination ;-)))
Ruby also has some problems I see:
a. Its windows version seems to have lots of problems. Specifically,
threading doesn't work well at all on Windows, but that's not the only
problem. Ruby on Windows is slow and somewhat buggy; seems to need a
re-write and Matz is engaged in an extensive re-write. Who knows how
successful?
b. Ruby has no where near the libraries Python has, since Ruby is so
much newer. But itime never stands still....
What so you all think of Ruby, and its impact on Python?
2. The economy is hurting Python's open source development model. It was
bad enough when the core Python coders were jerked around by Be Open;
now I am very sad to hear of Mark Hammond's not being with ActiveState
anymore? Without Mark Hommond's win32 work, Python would be a mere shell
of its current self. A person who has given so much to the Python
community as Mr. Hammond, deserves much better. How can an open source
community like Python help reward its hard working heroes like Mr.
Hammond? Will Guido and his team be next to suffer yet again? If
ActiveState can't support Python development, much less a true
Python.Net, who can? Will Zope survive financially? We should care. Why
doesn't someone form a company to market a first class Zope based ISP
service? The Zope folks saids they need such a thing to help promote
Zope. If it could not be profitable, is Python and all open source
development a mere flash in the pan? Without Mark Hammond, Python
windows based development would fall into the sloughs of despond just
like Ruby?
I hope not.
3. Third, Python faces the laws of large numbers. It is exceedingly hard
to continue a growth spurt past a certain point. Maybe were at that
point, maybe not. But ask yourself this; Two years from now, will you
see more Python success stories, more growth, or a leveling out? Five
years from Now?
Ten years from now, will Python still be Relevant? Oh, I know that
Python will still be being used, and the community will still exist, but
will it really be a thing that seems to Matter, like it does now.
I like to Look on the brighter side of life, but I also like to win a
few Spanish Civil Wars.
What do you guys think????
Ron Stephens
http://www.awaretek.com/plf.html Python City
stephen cox
With Active State's Python for Visual Studio coming up I think Python will
be even bigger. Whenever I mention Python or that I plan to attend the
Python conference in Feb my friends and follow programmers eyes roll and
they wish they had the time. Or a project that they could use to learn and
use Python.
--
Stephen Cox
web.net geek for non-profits, political campaigns, and a few socially
conscious businesses.
ste...@stephencox.org
A. Keyton Weissinger
Interesting. I thought I was the only one considering these very same
issues.
A wee bit of background. I am a manager/developer for a group of J2EE coders
working with WebLogic/Oracle. I have espoused Python for some time and have
been recently introducing several scripts here and there to help us get more
done faster. These Python scripts have all been of the "infrastructure"
variety and have not been production-keep-the-lights-on-code.
OK. Here is the question I keep asking myself: If Python is as
cool/easy/powerful/etc as I think it is (and scream from the rooftops at any
opportunity), why do we not see it taking hold in a commercial sense?
Yes, I know. Many of you will tell me all about either (1) that so-and-so
installer (specifically RedHat) is all about Python; and that (2) XYZ
company uses Python you think, but doesn't want to share their commercial
advantage or some such.
And I will say, "Um yes. But you're missing my point."
If it is as "X" as we all say/know/feel-in-our-hearts that it is, why is
there so very little real commercial appeal? Why are there not industrial
strength application servers being based on Python? Why are there not big
public companies trying to sell products that improve upon Python in all its
Python-ness? Why is company X not moving all their dreck VB/COBOL/PL/1/etc
code onto Python instead of investing the huge amount of
money/time/resources into moving it to Java?
Is it perhaps that Python will never be up to that challenge? Does Python
not stack up against Java? Or have we open source dudes and dudettes simply
dropped the ball and have not yelled loudly enough? Unknown.
OK. At this point, I will get probably 3-10 messages public or private
saying that Python does not attempt to answer the same niche. That's crap.
We all say how powerful it is. Heck. We all know how powerful it is. We all
know that if we want to build a little server tester script we pull out
Python just as quickly as we do when we need to think about doing the Next
Big App (TM). The only difference is that only the server tester script gets
written and kept. The Python-based Next Big App gets thrown away or is never
written at all.
Why should I have to settle on using Python only for prototypes? Or scripts?
Or pseudo-code-to-be-converted-into-Java?
Python needs to be made (and proclaimed) "real."
Otherwise, instead of "batteries included" we all need to start saying "it's
an easier scripting language than Perl" because that's all it will ever be.
Java started with applets. Some dismissed it as cute at best. It is now one
of the very few non-M$ players on the commercial block that presents a
modern approach in business system development.
I've not perused Ruby. Frankly I've mentally set it in the same bin as CURL
(yes, I know they are completely different -- the bin has the label,
"Interesting."). But nothing I've seen wows me. Nothing I've seen has shown
me that it will help me get a real live 1000+ concurrent user business
system off the ground. Nothing.
And let's face it folks. That is what the overwhelming majority of the
industry decision makers are going to need to see to get them off VB or Java
or whatever.
As for ActiveState's move to lay off Mark Hammond, I have three things to
say:
1) Shame on ActiveState. Stupid move. I will take my $0 elsewhere, thank you
very much.
2) Shame on us. Why haven't we as the Python community asked Mark to make
his work part of SourceForge, rolled up our sleeves and worked on it? Has no
one ever heard of the "hit by a bus problem?" Yikes.
3) Folks may loathe M$ or not, but without someone like ActiveState pushing
support for Python, Python will get little play in that very large arena of
M$-specific development.
Have you met the "average professional developer" lately? He/She is a Visual
Basic "guru" of 3-5 (whopping) years experience. He calls open source "share
ware" and states emphatically the following: "Why would I mess with THAT
stuff? None of those open source cowboys code to 'Microsoft' standards."
Does that make your blood boil? Mine too. But guess what? That guy will be
there in a few more years. He will have been promoted because he got (an
admittedly crappy) product out the door. And then he will spread VB across
the world.
Oh wait. That's already happened.
Python will either grow into a real live alternative to industrial strength
languages like Java or it will continue to be an esoteric language that I
hesitate before putting on my resume.
Damn it. I don't know about you guys, but that pisses me off. Python is
cool -- WAY cooler/more-useful/powerful/etc than VB.
Let's take it out for a real drive in the open ocean. If it's not ready for
that, let's make it ready for that.
Do I have the know-how to dive into the Python source code and begin to
address the real serious threading-in-real-world-situations, optimizations,
and memory consumption issues? No. But I am willing to learn...
I will always use Python where it makes sense to use. I just wish it made
sense to use it in so many other places... And I think it can....someday.
</RANT>
Keyton
P.S. Please limit your flames to either tell me (1) this will never happen
and here's why or (2) how I can help make it happen....
> --
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>
>
Courageous
>How is Python doing popularity wise? After such a meteoric growth
>thought the nineties, and a spectacular climax in 2000 and early 2001,
Compare the newsgroup traffic to other contemporary languages.
While an imperfect metric, I believe you will find that Python
is quite healthily alive.
C//
Andrew Dalke
>How is Python doing popularity wise?
I can tell you that it's doing well in computational chemistry.
I know several places that have switched to doing development
in Python over Perl or other VHLLs. I think it's because of
Python's readability and its easy ability to add new data types
which act like native objects.
In structural biology it also seems to be popular. I know
of several Python projects (PyMol, VMD, MMTK, MSMS, Chimera), a
couple old ones in Tcl, none in Perl, none in Ruby. Although
I'm biased by prefering Python, so I'm sensitized to Python
projects.
In bioinformatics, Perl is still the most popular, although
we (the Biopython project) are trying. :)
>Python, while fabulously successful, is at an interesting point in its
>growth curve. It will be difficult to maintain the extremely high rate
>of growth exhibited so far; new contenders are possible problems; and
>the recessionary economy could also negatively impact Python's growth.
It's impossible to undergo a meteoric growth forever. Exponential
growths must turn into S-curves. So why should there be a need for
an extremely high growth rate?
>1. Ruby is an especially interesting competitor to Python. I have been
>monitoring the Ruby newsgroup, and it shows incredible growth and
>vitality. Furthermore, Ruby is aimed right at the heart of Python's
>niche.
I looked at Ruby last summer. I read the documentation and
followed the newsgroup for a couple months. I was able to follow
what was going on, but didn't want to see myself explaining it to
non-software developers; that is, the chemists, biologists, and
physicists who use the tools I develop.
I don't see how it's aimed at "the heart of Python's niche" -- what
do you see as Python's niche? I see it as a language which is
usable by beginning programmers and enjoyable by experienced
developers. I don't see Ruby really fitting the first of those.
(I don't see how '@var' obviously means "instance variable" nor
'$var' for "global variable", while Python's is much easier to
explain, since the 'self.' makes it more apparant. I like that
Python doesn't have an implicit return of the last evaluated
expression, making it easier to find them. I like that I can
say "methods inside of __s are special" as compared to Ruby where
you have to memorize that things like "to_s", "initialize", have
special meaning. I like that empty function calls still need
a () in the declaration. I don't like that Ruby promotes adding
methods to existing classes, since I think that can lead to
conflict. I think 'abs(x)' is better than 'x.abs' or 'x.abs()'.
I'm forgetful, so I don't like special syntax shortcuts, like
a = %w{ ant bee cat dog elk }
for
a = ["ant", "bee", "cat", "dog", "elk"]
(especially since it can be written
a = "ant bee cat dog elk".split() )
I don't like that regular expressions are treated with special
syntax. I don't like having aliases, as Hash.indexes/indicies,
Array.len/size. Ohh, and Hash has three equivalents in
has_key?(key) / key?(key) / include?(key) .
At the implementation level, I like that the C Python implementation
uses native threads rather than it's own threading package. That
lets me work with other threaded libraries more easily. I like that
the C garbage collector is built on reference counting, since I
need the guaranteed semantics more than I need lesser implementation
complexity. )
>If we view Microsoft's Visual Studio, especially Visual Studio.net's C#
>and VB, as the official 800 lb. gorilla of software development; and if
>we view Java as the 400 lb. gorilla pretender to the throne; and if we
>view Borland's Delphi and Kylix as no more than a smart leader of a
>chimp; then everything else is the pack of open source chimps.
Luckily, I work in a field where most people use unix for real
development, so solutions based on C# and VB just don't exist, and
there's a huge installed based of C and FORTRAN code. I do know one
company doing some work with Kylix under Linux.
So I can't really comment on this paragraph.
>The open source world is still led by PERL, but PERL is truly more of a
>text processing, web CGI, scripting specialist; not so much of a direct
>threat to Python.
Why can't we all just get along?
Seriously, in my usual environment there are half a dozen "real"
programming languages in use (C, C++, FORTRAN, Python, Perl, Tcl),
a couple times more homebrew scripting languages (related to the
different scientific packages in use), and a slew of programs
which are only accessable through the command-line.
> Python aims to be a powerful general purpose
>programming language, in addition to being a very easy to learn and easy
>to use scripting language. And who can say that Python does not succeed
>very well in all of the above?
Is this what you see as Python's niche? Someone in the Perl group
would say exactly the same thing, as would someone from Smalltalk,
and from Ruby, and from Tcl, and from ....
>But Ruby is also a more general purpose, object oriented, relatively
>easy to read, language.
What do you mean by "more general purpose"? I didn't see all that
much in Ruby which was more general purpose than Python, especially
now with the closing of the type/class dichotomy. I guess the
biggest ability is being able to send a block to be evaluated.
I know Smalltalk-ers love it, but to me things like
3.times do
print "Ho! "
end
aren't as easy to explain or understand as
for i in range(3):
print "Ho! "
(I know, I've been contaminated by years of BASIC, PASCAL, C,
and C++, but so have my clients.)
> Ruby folks include those who like its more
>Perl-like syntax, but Ruby's core converts believe that its pure,
>absolute object oriented nature exceeds those of Python and make it more
>worthy to long term success.
I know there's the argument that Ruby is "pure", but I think the
whole "functions are really private members of the Object base
class" idea is a sign of impurity, done because people are used to
writing functions and not having to define a static class method
like one might have to do for Java. But I think impurity is a
good thing. So I think the call for purity to be a wrong argument.
> They seem to see Ruby as a more modern, up-to-date version
> of Python.
I thought most people see Ruby as a more modern version of
Perl than Python. I definitely see it as a cross between
Perl and Smalltalk, with some ideas derived from Python.
> They see Python as a compromise between object oriented and
> procedural programming.
And that's bad because ... why? Compromise is often seen as
bad, yet the world works on it. Others replace the term
"compromise" with "synthesis" or "fusion" or "hybrid" or many
other words. The phrase "multiparadigm" is another fun one.
>Be that as it may, I suspect that much of Ruby's momentum is simply due
>to its newness; all things new are seen as sexy in this world of ours.
>But nonetheless, Ruby has the following going for it.
I agree with you. I also think people are willing to give Ruby
a try, because they don't want to be seen as a fuddy-duddy.
>Now, its more like a 4:3 ratio, with Python getting say, 4000 per month,
>and Ruby 3000. At this rate, Ruby could pass Python is afew months, by
>this measure!
How do they get any work done? I can barely follow the outlines
of most of c.l.py these days. Oh, and much of the development email
is on a pretty high-traffic mailing list, so c.l.py doesn't reflect
all the Python traffic. Then there's the various lists like for
Jython and Zope, which get some Python questions.
Again, talking about the fields I'm in, I've been presenting
Python at computational chemisty and biology conferences for
the past three years. I keep waiting for someone to ask me
"what aout Ruby?", but as of yet no one has.
There is one site for Ruby in bioinformatics -- bioruby.org.
That site seems to be down right now, but as I recall, the
packages they had were pretty minimal. They had a presentation
at the last Bioinformatics Open Source Conference, but it
didn't show any real advantages over the equivalent Perl.
We were pushing to get a BioRuby developer at the upcoming
Bioinformatics hackathon (promo: co-sponsored by O'Reilly and
Electric Genetics, with support from the Open Bioinformatics
Foundataion, AstraZeneca, and your's truely, Dalke Scientific
Software :) We couldn't get anyone.
>b. Ruby is getting alot of favorable press, and new books are coming out
>now. First, Pickaxe , now, Matz' own Ruby in a Nutshell and several
>others soon to be or already here.
If books are a good metric, then there's also plenty of new Python
books coming out (as you know from your dozen plus reviews :).
And Perl ones. And Java ones. It's just easier to notice when
there are only a few books.
>c. Ruby actually seems to be a nice language to me. Its object oriented
>features seem well thought out and yet its still easy to comprehend.
I had problems with it. I could comprehend Python's features
from the documentation. I still can't from the Ruby on-line docs.
One thing is that Ruby objects seem so heavy-weight to me. For
example, Hash has support for a built-in default object, and
for "freezing" hash. So if I wanted to make a Hash-like object,
I need to do quite a bit, I think.
(Again, I got into Python about 6 years ago, when the dictionary
object which much lighter weight than it is now, and I learned
about the changes when the occured instead of all at once. Still,
Python's dictionary seems conceptually easier to understand and
use than Ruby's.)
>d. Ruby has some smart and aggressive coders doing libraries,
>extensions, Java version etc. etc. etc., tehy are agressive and
>motivated; tehy think they will see world domination ;-)))
They will leanr how to sepll 'tehy'? :)
Python, Perl, and Java also have "smart and agressive coders" etc.
For example, I've seen nothing in Perl or Ruby to match
Marc-Andre Lemburg's mxTextTools, which I use for my Martel
parser.
>2. The economy is hurting Python's open source development model.
It is? I guess I started when Guido worked at Stichting
Mathematisch Centrum, before CNRI, and I don't think then he could
ever work full time on Python. The recent spate of development
progress has actually worried me, since I'm not able to follow
all this new work, like __getattribute__ and __slots__ and
new-style classes.
>Without Mark Hommond's win32 work, Python would be a mere shell
>of its current self.
A lot of that work was when he was a contractor, before working
with ActiveState. I know PythonWin 1.5.2 has no ActiveState
copyright notice in it.
I can't make any real statement about the people you mentioned.
I can say Python developed without a lot of dedicated resources
for it, so I'm not going to worry about it. Besides, why should
it affect Python any less than other projects?
>3. Third, Python faces the laws of large numbers. It is exceedingly hard
>to continue a growth spurt past a certain point. Maybe were at that
>point, maybe not. But ask yourself this; Two years from now, will you
>see more Python success stories, more growth, or a leveling out? Five
>years from Now?
So? What's the growth curve in C? Do you see more C success stories?
More growth, or a leveling out?
I expect to have success stories of my own in the 2-5 year range.
Frankly, for a while I was learning about better and better ways
to develop software: BASIC -> Pascal -> C -> C++, then C/C++ augmented
with Tcl, then Perl, then Python augmented by C/C++, which is
where I'm at now. I also tried out a dozen other languages,
including Prolog, APL, Lisp, and other classics, and read about
more languages, including Smalltalk and Eiffel.
As far as I can tell, I think the basics of the Ruby/Smalltalk/
Perl/Python/C/C++/Java/... class of languages are pretty well
understood. I don't think Ruby or any similar language can
offer anything sufficiently new enough to get many people to
change. The only new topic my limited prognositications can
make for the future is aspect oriented programming, and I don't
know enough of that to make any firm statement.
BTW, I think what's going to happen in Python's future is
1) refactoring browsers, like what Smalltalk has, 2) better
performance through some sort of typing, and 3) the development
of more specialized libraries for different domains. (Please
bear in mind that I'm biased by being a library and application
programmer.)
>Ten years from now, will Python still be Relevant? Oh, I know that
>Python will still be being used, and the community will still exist, but
>will it really be a thing that seems to Matter, like it does now.
I hope not. I want to have new tools and new ways of thinking
on programming. It's still a lot of hassle to develop new code,
and I'm a slacker in the Gen-X mold, with a short attention span.
(Okay, the length of this response belies that statement :) Still,
I want something better then Python, and I hope that in ten years
we'll at least start using it. I also hope I'll recognize it
early enough, like I did with Python.
Mind you, Python's data model is still simple enough that it can
be ported to other systems without much effort.
Andrew
da...@dalkescientific.com
Dudley Carr
especially in terms of industry acceptance, is always difficult to
tell since rarely is a survey done to find out how many people are
using a particular language across all industries.
Personally, I use the following metric to see how a language is
progressing:
1. Look at the number of Oreilly books (possibly books by other
publishers) that have been or are going to be released in relation to
the language.
2. Number of articles on programming websites using / explaining the
language.
2. Look the support for new technologies in the language and its
libraries.
3. Activity in the newsgroup is also very indicative esp. with the
number of newbie questions flowing-in (mention in an earlier post).
With that said, super-spectacular growth is not always the greatest
thing. If we learned anything from the dot-com bust is that growing
too fast has its consequences. Python, I believe, prides itself on its
evolutionary rather than revolutionary approach to getting things
done; and that's exactly how it ought to be (my Darwinian opinion of
course).
Another issue to address is this business of corporations adopting
Python and/or producing Python products. Aside from ActiveState's
Visual Python, Zope, Blender, and a handful of other products, people
generally have a tough time regurgitating the list of Python products.
This is probably due to the fact that Python manages to do so much out
of the box, and if it doesn't its not that difficult to get Python to
do what you want it to do. Regardless of all of this, it actually
doesn't matter that a new Python product isn't introduced on a daily
basis. Take C-shell or the Bash shell for example, how many companies
are producing products with those languages featuring on the front of
the box? Does that mean that C-shell and Bash are not widely used?
So where does Python stand in relation to Perl, PHP, Ruby or
Javascript in terms of popularity? Who cares?! Python, although not
the fastest beast on the block, scratches the itch that none of the
other scripting languages seem to be able to do. Oh yeah, and Python
is also fun.
bru...@tbye.com
> If it is as "X" as we all say/know/feel-in-our-hearts that it is, why is
> there so very little real commercial appeal? Why are there not industrial
> strength application servers being based on Python? Why are there not big
> public companies trying to sell products that improve upon Python in all its
> Python-ness? Why is company X not moving all their dreck VB/COBOL/PL/1/etc
> code onto Python instead of investing the huge amount of
> money/time/resources into moving it to Java?
To me, the fact that so many people are moving to Java at all means that a
lot of times those decisions have little to do with technology and lots to
do with hype (more favorably termed "momentum"). IMO Python *is* going the
direction you hope, and it is getting there at the right pace.
Python is gaining momentum: in the past year a ton of books have come out
(indicating more people willing to write about it and more publishers
believing that there are enough readers to make a book worthwhile) and
there are almost as many new ones on the way. There are bazillions of
SourceForge Python projects and many more that are just private projects.
Over and over we hear of stuff like "the new game X uses Python as its
scripting engine". I'm at my 3rd job where I "get" to use Python, and this
time not just one of our main products uses Python, but our *primary*
product is in Python. I can pick up any recent Dr. Dobbs' and Python is at
least mentioned, if not used, in every issue. Compare all this to a year
ago.
IMO c.l.py traffice *should* go down over time as the language matures.
Problems in the language get fixed, online and offline resources get
better, other groups form around specific aspects of Python (Zope, pygame,
various SIGs), and you're left with newbies who can't use Google, a block
of people who like to discuss new features, announcements of new stuff,
and porn spam.
As far as pace goes, I personally don't want an overnight Python
revolution. Apart from the fact that I like getting more done than my C++
and Java friends ;-), it would be harmful for everyone to jump on board
all at once. Java is a good example of this: industry heavyweights have
jumped on (helping momentum, to be sure) and have been able to pressure
the language into going really weird directions. Instead of more applets
we see Java venturing into the app server/middleware realm. What the
heck!?
Worse, with too much hype you get people trying to use the language
inappropriately (using a screwdriver as a chisel) and they go away feeling
disappointed. For example, I'm overly biased against Java because I once
worked at a company that insisted on using it for their middleware. It was
a mess and I can't think about Java applications without getting queasy (I
was able to maintain some sanity thanks to Jython though). Python still
has some maturing to do, and with it will come the tools you want (compare
the number of IDEs available vs, say, 2 years ago. In 2 years they'll be
even better). That being true, however, the domain of problems for which
Python is well-suited right now is absolutely *huge*. In the realm of
possible applications, Python has a few niches where it pummels everything
else, an enormous block where it does very, very well, a smaller chunk
where it does just okay, and an even smaller chunk where it shouldn't be
used at all.
> Why should I have to settle on using Python only for prototypes? Or scripts?
> Or pseudo-code-to-be-converted-into-Java?
You don't, you choose to. Start with a small project, get it done, and
show your boss that it was quick to do, the code is clean and easy to
maintain, and isn't buggy. Repeat with a more important project. If you
can provide solid evidence that something is beneficial, management will
see the value in that. If they don't, and you honestly feel you've made a
good argument in favor of Python, choose to work somewhere else. I mean,
if Python is the right tool for the job and you've made a good case for
using it and they refuse with silly reasons, it makes you wonder how other
business decisions are made.
> Have you met the "average professional developer" lately? He/She is a
> Visual Basic "guru" of 3-5 (whopping) years experience. He calls open
> source "share ware" and states emphatically the following: "Why would
> I mess with THAT stuff? None of those open source cowboys code to
> 'Microsoft' standards."
Yay! Job security for us!
> Python will either grow into a real live alternative to industrial strength
> languages like Java or it will continue to be an esoteric language that I
> hesitate before putting on my resume.
I put Python first on my language list ahead of the "standard" languages
because it's a good way to get a feel for their development mentality,
it's an easy choice to defend, and it's usually what I would prefer to
use. Why would you ever work for a company where you had to be ashamed of
Python? A company might have very good reasons for not using Python, but
if they are incapable of at least seeing the value in it (and not
ridiculing you for listing it on your resume), then I suggest you look
elsewhere for a job.
When the roles are reversed, I'm skeptical of any developer's resume that
lists only the standard (C/C++/Java) languages. If they don't even mention
one or more of Python/Ruby/Eiffel/Dillan/etc (the "lesser knowns"), then I
grill them to find out why. Maybe it's just because they haven't used them
enough to feel comfortable listing them, which is okay. Or are they just
not curious? Do they feel that C++ is great? Are they just a sheep? Are
they unable to see the weaknesses in the tools they already use?
In either case, listing Python on there is a Good Thing.
-Dave
phil hunt
>OK, so its between the holidays and the newsgroup is quiet, so maybe I
>dare waste a little bandwidth with that most useless (but fun)
>commodity: gossip.
>
>How is Python doing popularity wise? After such a meteoric growth
>thought the nineties, and a spectacular climax in 2000 and early 2001,
>is Python leveling out, going dot.bust, or still not yet at the knee of
>the software world's most spectacular growth curve?
>
>I'd be interested in some comments and observations and opinions from
>others. Meanwhile, here are a few of my own:
>
>Python, while fabulously successful, is at an interesting point in its
>growth curve. It will be difficult to maintain the extremely high rate
>of growth exhibited so far; new contenders are possible problems; and
>the recessionary economy could also negatively impact Python's growth.
>
>1. Ruby is an especially interesting competitor to Python. I have been
>monitoring the Ruby newsgroup, and it shows incredible growth and
>vitality. Furthermore, Ruby is aimed right at the heart of Python's
>niche.
From what I've seen of it, Ruby is quite similar to Python; however,
Python has more developers, more libraries, etc. I see no compelling
reason for me to switch to Ruby.
>If we view Microsoft's Visual Studio, especially Visual Studio.net's C#
>and VB, as the official 800 lb. gorilla of software development; and if
>we view Java as the 400 lb. gorilla pretender to the throne; and if we
>view Borland's Delphi and Kylix as no more than a smart leader of a
>chimp; then everything else is the pack of open source chimps.
Just as Python can compile to the JVM, I'm sure it will compile to
Microsoft's .net platform.
>The open source world is still led by PERL, but PERL is truly more of a
>text processing, web CGI, scripting specialist; not so much of a direct
>threat to Python.
Perl is OK for small programs. I dislike its syntax, however.
> PHP is a server side scripting specialist.
If Python solutions for serving web pages were more mature/available, this
would cause a good deal of growth for Python. PHP as a programming language
isn't anything special, but for making dynamic web pages it's a very good
tool, as it is easy to use.
> Even
>JavaScript is strong in its narrow niche of client side web scripting.
>Lisp and Scheme dominate thier academic world. But Python aims to be
>much more than these; Python aims to be a powerful general purpose
>programming language, in addition to being a very easy to learn and easy
>to use scripting language. And who can say that Python does not succeed
>very well in all of the above?
>
>But Ruby is also a more general purpose, object oriented, relatively
>easy to read, language. Ruby folks include those who like its more
>Perl-like syntax, but Ruby's core converts believe that its pure,
>absolute object oriented nature exceeds those of Python and make it more
>worthy to long term success. They seem to see Ruby as a more modern,
>up-to-date version of Python. They see Python as a compromise between
>object oriented and procedural programming.
I don't want programming to be forcibly OO. In Ruby, can you write
a procedure which isn't part of a class? (Like you can in Python, but
can't in Java).
If not, then Ruby is forcing you to hammer square pegs into round
holes.
>c. Ruby actually seems to be a nice language to me. Its object oriented
>features seem well thought out and yet its still easy to comprehend. I
>will never leave Python behind, but will others?
What can I do in Ruby that I cannot just as easily do in python? Until
that\ question is answered, Ruby will stay behind python in popularity.
>Ten years from now, will Python still be Relevant?
I think so.
I expectb Python to keep growing. As computers get faster, programming in
C++ makes less and less sense. People will move over to more high level
langauges, such as Java, C#, Perl and Python. Java and C# are roughly
on the same level, faster than Perl/Python but slower to code in. Python
offers the fastest coding time, as it is "executable pseudocode", so
I expect more and more stuff to be done in it.
Python runs quickly on my 300 MHz box, which is 3 times slower
than the slowest PC you can buy today. It can only get more popular.
--
*** Philip Hunt *** ph...@comuno.freeserve.co.uk ***
Courageous
>I don't want programming to be forcibly OO. In Ruby, can you write
>a procedure which isn't part of a class? (Like you can in Python, but
>can't in Java). If not, then Ruby is forcing you to hammer square pegs
>into round holes.
I agree with you in spirit, however I should like to point out that
Python's module system puts your functions into a module object, indeed
making these functions completely object oriented, except without the
added syntactic weight. You have all of the benefits with syntactic
brevity at the same time, which would seem to satisfy the Occam's
Razor of programming, or at least to me.
C//
Aahz Maruch
phil hunt <ph...@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>
>Python runs quickly on my 300 MHz box, which is 3 times slower
>than the slowest PC you can buy today. It can only get more popular.
MHz != speed
--
--- Aahz <*> (Copyright 2001 by aa...@pobox.com)
Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista
Tenth Virtual Anniversary: 4 days and counting
Justin Sheehy
> Furthermore, Ruby is aimed right at the heart of Python's niche.
What niche is that?
More importantly, why does this matter? The "aimed right at the heart"
phrasing makes it sounds as though one must defeat and replace another.
There's no reason why Ruby can't do just fine without this meaning
anything negative about Python.
> If we view Microsoft's Visual Studio, especially Visual Studio.net's C#
> and VB, as the official 800 lb. gorilla of software development; and if
> we view Java as the 400 lb. gorilla pretender to the throne; and if we
> view Borland's Delphi and Kylix as no more than a smart leader of a
> chimp; then everything else is the pack of open source chimps.
Oh, you live in a windows-only world.
Those are definitely all big players, but a lot of large and
significant software happens in environments where VB et al are simply
not viable options due to the fact that they tie you so tightly to one
vendor's platform.
Python runs in more places than any of the products/languages that you
mention, and this matters a lot to a large number of people.
> Ruby folks include those who like its more Perl-like syntax
They can keep it. I love not having line noise mixed in with my programs.
> They see Python as a compromise between object oriented and
> procedural programming.
So? Idealists are fun to talk to, but compromises get work done just fine.
> What so you all think of Ruby, and its impact on Python?
Ruby - seems decent enough, but I have no reason to use it other than
playing around and because I like seeing how new and different
language implementations work
Ruby's impact on Python - Not much. For a while the biggest impact
was that a few people would yell about Ruby's superiority at
inappropriate times in various non-Ruby-related forums. That
seems to have died off, and now Ruby seems to be doing just
fine for a young language. This doesn't really mean all that
much to Python, as it is extremely unlikely that either of
these two languages will fully supplant the other.
> 2. The economy is hurting Python's open source development model.
It is? From my observations, Python itself has seen far more
aggressive development in the past year or so than in any of the
previous several years. Other than the one comment about Mark
Hammond's situation, what makes you say this?
-Justin
Hans Nowak
> How is Python doing popularity wise? After such a meteoric growth
> thought the nineties, and a spectacular climax in 2000 and early 2001,
> is Python leveling out, going dot.bust, or still not yet at the knee of
> the software world's most spectacular growth curve?
I should hope it's still growing. :) I want more books, more Python jobs,
more programs, more everything! :-)
> Python, while fabulously successful, is at an interesting point in its
> growth curve. It will be difficult to maintain the extremely high rate
> of growth exhibited so far; new contenders are possible problems; and
> the recessionary economy could also negatively impact Python's growth.
Commercial growth, yes. A recession doesn't stop anyone from sitting
down and writing some Python code for fun. (Assuming the recession isn't
so bad that they cannot do even this anymore.)
> But Ruby is also a more general purpose, object oriented, relatively
> easy to read, language. Ruby folks include those who like its more
> Perl-like syntax, but Ruby's core converts believe that its pure,
> absolute object oriented nature exceeds those of Python and make it more
> worthy to long term success. They seem to see Ruby as a more modern,
> up-to-date version of Python. They see Python as a compromise between
> object oriented and procedural programming.
It is... and functional programming, and possibly some other
paradigms. I don't see how Ruby can be more modern, unless it does that
new stuff like aspect-oriented programming. It may be perceived as
cleaner by some, but Python is rapidly removed its warts, like
mending the type/class dichotomy. (And gaining lots of other features
of dubious utility along the way... but that's a different story... ;-)
> a. Usage on the Ruby newsgroup is growing much faster than on
> comp.lang.python in the last year that I have been observing it. A year
> ago, Python got typically three times as many posts per day as Ruby.
> Now, its more like a 4:3 ratio, with Python getting say, 4000 per month,
> and Ruby 3000. At this rate, Ruby could pass Python is afew months, by
> this measure! (Rest assured, Ptyhonis fdoing much better if mesured by
> Sourceforge projects, about 1300 to 80). By the way, Just van Rossum's
> http://starship.python.net/~just/comp.lang.python/ graph of Python
> newsgroup coverage seems to show a slight decline from over 6000 per
> month in late-middle 2001 to the current 3500 or so I see on here. Mr.
> van Rossum said he may not be able to update these any more due to some
> Yahoo change; anyway, am I interpreting these numbers and trends
> accurately? Will the Python newsgroup usage turn upwards again? Does it
> matter?
I don't know, but remember that there are many SIGs, mailing lists etc,
besides this newsgroup. So the more specialized discussions are done
elsewhere. I don't know if Ruby has a lot of mailing lists comparable
to Python's, but it would seem to me that the number of messages in
c.l.py isn't all there is to it.
> 2. The economy is hurting Python's open source development model. It was
> bad enough when the core Python coders were jerked around by Be Open;
> now I am very sad to hear of Mark Hammond's not being with ActiveState
> anymore? [...]
I think PythonLabs, or Zope Corp., should hire him. That would seem like
a smart move.
> Ten years from now, will Python still be Relevant? Oh, I know that
> Python will still be being used, and the community will still exist, but
> will it really be a thing that seems to Matter, like it does now.
Ten years is a long time. Maybe by then, we won't even *want* to program
in Python, because there's something better out, based on insights from
working with other languages, possibly including Python. Or maybe in ten
years Python will look nothing like it is right now. Who knows...
Regards,
--Hans
Justin Sheehy
> OK. Here is the question I keep asking myself: If Python is as
> cool/easy/powerful/etc as I think it is (and scream from the rooftops at any
> opportunity), why do we not see it taking hold in a commercial sense?
>
> Yes, I know. Many of you will tell me all about either (1) that so-and-so
> installer (specifically RedHat) is all about Python; and that (2) XYZ
> company uses Python you think, but doesn't want to share their commercial
> advantage or some such.
I'm going to refer to one specific niche that does not answer this
entire question, but is very significant to it nonetheless.
A very large portion of software is never sold directly, and thus
doesn't ever get promoted in the fashion that I think you are looking for.
The software that I am talking about is developed for use internally
at a given company, either internally-developed or by contractors.
This describes a truly huge amount of software. Companies generally
don't even think about advertising this sort of thing, as it serves
the internal (though possibly customer-facing) needs of that company.
There is no reason for most companies to even mention this type of
software externally unless they are contractors that produce such
software for other companies.
> And I will say, "Um yes. But you're missing my point."
Is your point that Python doesn't have a hype engine to match Java's?
If so, then I'll just agree quietly. I clearly don't think this is as
big a deal as you do.
> Have you met the "average professional developer" lately? He/She is a Visual
> Basic "guru" of 3-5 (whopping) years experience. He calls open source "share
> ware" and states emphatically the following: "Why would I mess with THAT
> stuff? None of those open source cowboys code to 'Microsoft' standards."
>
> Does that make your blood boil? Mine too. But guess what? That guy will be
> there in a few more years. He will have been promoted because he got (an
> admittedly crappy) product out the door. And then he will spread VB across
> the world.
>
> Oh wait. That's already happened.
Sure. There are also plenty of places out there that realize what a
disadvantage those companies deeply tied to VB (or whatever) have, and
use the technology that is best for the tool at hand. Such places
exist, and a number of them thrive.
While the MS-driven world may well continue to be the giant for years
to come, there will continue to be a large market for those who are
able to get the job done as effectively or more so for not being so
tied to whatever the current vendor-driven hype or incentive may be.
> Do I have the know-how to dive into the Python source code and begin to
> address the real serious threading-in-real-world-situations, optimizations,
> and memory consumption issues? No. But I am willing to learn...
Good. I'm glad to hear it.
However, while those items you name might be showstoppers in a few
cases, they are not locking Python out of serious commercial
development in general. Things are not nearly as bleak as you think.
> I will always use Python where it makes sense to use. I just wish it made
> sense to use it in so many other places... And I think it can....someday.
> P.S. Please limit your flames to either tell me (1) this will never happen
> and here's why or (2) how I can help make it happen....
(No flames here.)
As an aside, I happen to currently be working (with a small group of
colleagues) on such a body of software as I described at the beginning
of this message. I'm talking about a large system, involving a lot of
the buzzwords one might feel like throwing around: client/server
networking, encryption, serious performance/speed constraints,
provable (seriously) performance of certain central components,
interacting with a huge heterogenous network, components operating on
multiple very different operating systems, distrbuted database
management, various network protocols, large-volume data transfer,
close to real-time reporting and alerting, etc etc etc.
Well over 90% of the code being worked on for this project is in
Python. When proposing my ideas and design, I was happy to be asked
what tools and languages were being used. When I was asked "why
Python?" I was able to give a decent answer explaining why I had
chosen it for the bulk of the work. That was the last time I heard
that question.
The only reason that I bring this up is to point out that Python is
already in use in very serious comercially-funded development. You
might not hear as many advertisements about it, but it is there.
-Justin
phil hunt
>First and foremost, the rate at which a language is growing,
>especially in terms of industry acceptance, is always difficult to
>tell since rarely is a survey done to find out how many people are
>using a particular language across all industries.
>
>Personally, I use the following metric to see how a language is
>progressing:
>
>1. Look at the number of Oreilly books (possibly books by other
>publishers) that have been or are going to be released in relation to
>the language.
>
>2. Number of articles on programming websites using / explaining the
>language.
>
>2. Look the support for new technologies in the language and its
>libraries.
>
>3. Activity in the newsgroup is also very indicative esp. with the
>number of newbie questions flowing-in (mention in an earlier post).
5. look at the number of projects using that language on Sourceforge.
Ron Stephens
>
> Just as Python can compile to the JVM, I'm sure it will compile to
> Microsoft's .net platform.
Hmm, I'm not so sure about this. Mark Hammond has stated, I believe, that the
work done so far at ActiveState was preliminary and not complete; and now we hear
that ActiveState has ceased work on Python related projects??? It sounds like a
Python.Net is a daunting task; as woudl be a Perl.net or a Ruby.NET don't want
programming to be forcibly OO. In Ruby, can you write
>
> What can I do in Ruby that I cannot just as easily do in python? Until
> that\ question is answered, Ruby will stay behind python in popularity.
I know of absolutely nothing that you can do in Ruby but not in Python. I know
that both Ruby and Python will survive, no question. I also suspect that Python
will always be more popular than Ruby. My only concern was that Ruby, which I
perceive as very similar to Python in many ways, will divert *some* folks form
Python to Ruby; many more than will divert from, say, Python to Perl, or from
Python to Tcl.
>
>
> I expect Python to keep growing. As computers get faster, programming in
> C++ makes less and less sense. People will move over to more high level
> langauges, such as Java, C#, Perl and Python. Java and C# are roughly
> on the same level, faster than Perl/Python but slower to code in. Python
> offers the fastest coding time, as it is "executable pseudocode", so
> I expect more and more stuff to be done in it.
>
>
I totally agree with you on this.
I am feeling better about Python vs. Ruby, partly based on what I am hearing from
folks in this thread, and partly from what I hear on the Ruby newsgroup about
problems running under windows with threading and slowness etc.
I have no gripe against Ruby folks either , none whatsoever. not only is it a fee
world, but people are trying Ruby out just like we tried Python out ;-))) Both
communities are friendly, to. I just am more hoping that Python grows in
popularity vs. Ruby.
Now, my perception is that most Ruby developers run under Linux or some other
Unix. I wonder what percentage of Python developers run Windows, and what
percentage run Linux? I have no idea, does anyone have a guess? If you put my
back to the wall to make a prediction, I'd guess that more than half of us on
this newsgroup use windows. Anyone?
Also, one more thing: Guido was interviewed recently in a magazine and he
conjectured that programming for handholds and PDA's might be a huge niche for
Python in the future. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? What are Python's
strengths and weaknesses vs other languages, including Ruby, in this arena? How
is Pippy doing ????
Ron Stephens
http://www.awaretek.com/plf.html
Ron Stephens
I just think that it is difficult for for-profit corporations to justify hiring
and keeping highly paid developers to work on Python development. Granted
Python was originally and primarily developed by open source volunteers, as are
most such languages. But it is sure nice having the support of Digital
Creations, ActiveState, etc. I am not "knocking" ActiveState, really I can
understand their dilemna. How do they generate enough revenues with a Python
development team to pay for itself and make a profit? Not easy, I fear; and the
economy, which is definitely slowing, sure doesn't help.
I hope Digital Creations can make money on Zope, the more the better. I urge us
all to support Zope in any way we can (and for that matter, to support any
ActiveState Python products we can, and Secret Labs, PythonWare, etc. etc. etc.
Python will do better if it has commercial support, in addition to open source
volunteers. Of course we need the open source community; without Guido and the
rest of the community, there would be no Python. But enthusiastically support
any commercial enterprise that supports Python, I say.
I especially hope that Zope can be a big money maker for Digital Creations. But
I suspect that it is a tough business model they have. I think we should be
grateful to them for supporting Python so vigorously and in such important
ways.
I recently read an interview with a Digital Creations top manager where he said
that he hopes someone starts a successful business based solely on providing
ISP services using Zope, with full technical support. Is anyone looking into
this? Does anyone think this could be a successful business model? I am
interested in opinions on this.
Ron Stephens
http://www.awaretek.com/plf.html
Dave Thomas
> 1. Ruby is an especially interesting competitor to Python. I have been
> monitoring the Ruby newsgroup, and it shows incredible growth and
> vitality. Furthermore, Ruby is aimed right at the heart of Python's
> niche.
Ruby and Python grew up largely in parallel. Matz was aware of Python,
but as far as I know didn't use many of Python's ideas when designing
the Ruby language. It would be wrong to characterize Ruby as "aiming
for Python" in that regard. The Ruby community is not particularly out
to steal folks from the Python world: it's quite happy collecting new
users from all over the place. My guess is we'll see more converts
from Perl than from Python, and that by a large margin.
In the past, I've made statements that Ruby could be bigger than
Python in terms of number of active developers. I still believe that
could happen. However, I don't see that happening at the expense of
the Python community, which I suspect will remain strong and vibrant
for many years. Instead, Ruby will attract folks from outside the
Python world. Ruby and Python differ in philosophy and _feel_. Some
folks like one, some the other. I don't see it as competition. I see
it as choice.
Dave
Ron Stephens
(my responses are interspersed without leading blue lines ;-))
> Ron Stephens:
> >How is Python doing popularity wise?
>
> I can tell you that it's doing well in computational chemistry.
> I know several places that have switched to doing development
> in Python over Perl or other VHLLs. I think it's because of
> Python's readability and its easy ability to add new data types
> which act like native objects.
>
> In structural biology it also seems to be popular. I know
> of several Python projects (PyMol, VMD, MMTK, MSMS, Chimera), a
> couple old ones in Tcl, none in Perl, none in Ruby. Although
> I'm biased by prefering Python, so I'm sensitized to Python
> projects.
>
> In bioinformatics, Perl is still the most popular, although
> we (the Biopython project) are trying. :)
>
I am considerably heartened to hear of such prominent success for Python in
the biological sciences. Thanks for sharing this info!
> >Python, while fabulously successful, is at an interesting point in its
> >growth curve. It will be difficult to maintain the extremely high rate
> >of growth exhibited so far; new contenders are possible problems; and
> >the recessionary economy could also negatively impact Python's growth.
>
> It's impossible to undergo a meteoric growth forever. Exponential
> growths must turn into S-curves. So why should there be a need for
> an extremely high growth rate?
>
> >1. Ruby is an especially interesting competitor to Python. I have been
> >monitoring the Ruby newsgroup, and it shows incredible growth and
> >vitality. Furthermore, Ruby is aimed right at the heart of Python's
> >niche.
>
> I looked at Ruby last summer. I read the documentation and
> followed the newsgroup for a couple months. I was able to follow
> what was going on, but didn't want to see myself explaining it to
> non-software developers; that is, the chemists, biologists, and
> physicists who use the tools I develop.
>
> I don't see how it's aimed at "the heart of Python's niche" -- what
> do you see as Python's niche? I see it as a language which is
> usable by beginning programmers and enjoyable by experienced
> developers. I don't see Ruby really fitting the first of those.
I mean simply that Ruby is so much more similar to Python than any other
language, that this causes the two languages to have to share the available
"market" of interested developers. In other words, both Ruby and Python are
very high level, object oriented, interpreted, modern, scripting languages
that are also powerful enough to be used as general purpose programming
languages. Neither Python nor Ruby is relegated to any single narrow niche;
and both are, in my opinion, well thought-out and implemented languages and
both are attractive to intelligent developers looking for ease of use, power,
expressiveness, and most importantly, speed of development. I do not think
you can say all of the same things about any other two languages. Thus, while
I admire Ruby, I suspect that it divides the pool of developers who might
otherwise be all in the Python *camp*.
Your points above are all well taken.. I think Python is *even easier* to
learn and to use than Ruby. But Ruby aficionados might disagree with us on
this point ;-)))
>
> >If we view Microsoft's Visual Studio, especially Visual Studio.net's C#
> >and VB, as the official 800 lb. gorilla of software development; and if
> >we view Java as the 400 lb. gorilla pretender to the throne; and if we
> >view Borland's Delphi and Kylix as no more than a smart leader of a
> >chimp; then everything else is the pack of open source chimps.
>
> Luckily, I work in a field where most people use unix for real
> development, so solutions based on C# and VB just don't exist, and
> there's a huge installed based of C and FORTRAN code. I do know one
> company doing some work with Kylix under Linux.
>
> So I can't really comment on this paragraph.
>
> >The open source world is still led by PERL, but PERL is truly more of a
> >text processing, web CGI, scripting specialist; not so much of a direct
> >threat to Python.
>
> Why can't we all just get along?
>
We can get along and we do. I am just a curious Python hacker who follows the
Ruby language out of interest.
>
> Seriously, in my usual environment there are half a dozen "real"
> programming languages in use (C, C++, FORTRAN, Python, Perl, Tcl),
> a couple times more homebrew scripting languages (related to the
> different scientific packages in use), and a slew of programs
> which are only accessable through the command-line.
>
> > Python aims to be a powerful general purpose
> >programming language, in addition to being a very easy to learn and easy
> >to use scripting language. And who can say that Python does not succeed
> >very well in all of the above?
>
> Is this what you see as Python's niche? Someone in the Perl group
> would say exactly the same thing, as would someone from Smalltalk,
> and from Ruby, and from Tcl, and from ....
>
> >But Ruby is also a more general purpose, object oriented, relatively
> >easy to read, language.
> What do you mean by "more general purpose"? I didn't see all that
> much in Ruby which was more general purpose than Python, especially
> now with the closing of the type/class dichotomy. I guess the
> biggest ability is being able to send a block to be evaluated.
> I know Smalltalk-ers love it, but to me things like
I do not mean to say that "Ruby is more general purpose than Python". I meant
to indicate that Ruby is more general purpose than , say, Perl, or Tcl, or
PHP, or JavaScript etc., and thus more of a direct competitor to Python ,
precisely *because both languages are so admirably suited to general purpose
programming. ;-)))
>
>
> 3.times do
> print "Ho! "
> end
>
> aren't as easy to explain or understand as
>
> for i in range(3):
> print "Ho! "
>
> (I know, I've been contaminated by years of BASIC, PASCAL, C,
> and C++, but so have my clients.)
>
> > Ruby folks include those who like its more
> >Perl-like syntax, but Ruby's core converts believe that its pure,
> >absolute object oriented nature exceeds those of Python and make it more
> >worthy to long term success.
>
> I know there's the argument that Ruby is "pure", but I think the
> whole "functions are really private members of the Object base
> class" idea is a sign of impurity, done because people are used to
> writing functions and not having to define a static class method
> like one might have to do for Java. But I think impurity is a
> good thing. So I think the call for purity to be a wrong argument.
>
> > They seem to see Ruby as a more modern, up-to-date version
> > of Python.
>
> I thought most people see Ruby as a more modern version of
> Perl than Python. I definitely see it as a cross between
> Perl and Smalltalk, with some ideas derived from Python.
>
Good point. Ruby is much more like Perl in syntax than it is like Python, and
Matz himself has so commented that he borrowed a lot more from Perl than
Python. However, in my opinion, Ruby still *appeals* very much to folks who
like Python because of its object orientated nature, as well as its clean
design. A lot of folks come to Ruby from Perl for the same reasons that lots
of folks come to Python from Perl, I suspect. Thus, Ruby and Python are
competitors, like it or not.
Heck, Bruce Eckels seemed to say "ah heck, why did someone have to go and do
such a close knock-off of Python for, anyway" (Paraphrase only!!!!)
Of course, Guido said that Ruby's design philosophy didn't appeal to him at
all. And maybe I am beginning to understand a little of "why", Guido might
feel that way, as I read through the comments on this thread. By the way,
Matz exhibits nothing but respect for Guido and Python. I also like the way
Matz says only complimentary things about all languages; you'll never catch
him saying anything bad about Python or Perl. He even steps in on
comp.lang.ruby often to chastise over-zealous followers who have the temerity
to bad mouth Python. You have to admire Ruby's Japanese creator for that
attitude. Also, keep in mind, Ruby is very popular in Japan, which I think is
great !
Sounds very exciting. It is just such success stories about Python that I
love to hear !!! ;-))
> >b. Ruby is getting alot of favorable press, and new books are coming out
> >now. First, Pickaxe , now, Matz' own Ruby in a Nutshell and several
> >others soon to be or already here.
>
> If books are a good metric, then there's also plenty of new Python
> books coming out (as you know from your dozen plus reviews :).
> And Perl ones. And Java ones. It's just easier to notice when
> there are only a few books.
>
True. Three are now over 20 Python books out there ;-)) And, by one very
important measurement, Python blows Ruby away with 1,302 SourceForge projects
compared to only 81 for Ruby. We also blow away Lisp and Scheme on this
measurement, but predictably perhaps lose to PHP and Perl, Java and of
course, C and C++ (C is the number one in this category).
Ron Stephens
position, briefly;
I feel that Ruby is so similar in design, purpose, and objectives to
Python, that it competes directly with Python for developers' mind share.
However, Ruby does not, in my opinion, offer compelling enough improvements
upon Python, as to justify switching from Python to Ruby. In fact, I much
*prefer* Python to Ruby. But I can see where some significant number of
Python developers *might* prefer Ruby a little bit, because of some minor
differences, enhancements etc. I just don't think that such perceived
"enhancements" create any significant enough improvement to *justify* the
enormous work in the creation of Ruby, as a Python-like clone.
Bruce Eckles said that, if a language can't give dramatic productivity
improvements over a predecessor language, that it does not justify one's
switching. 10% improvements are not nearly enough, he said. Now, we can
argue until the cows come home whether or not Ruby gives *any* improvements
at all over Python; I suspect it is a matter of taste. But now that Ruby is
out there, it absorbs enormous mind share, and development time to recreate
libraries etc., which are already available in Python, thus hurting Python.
Of course Perl hackers might have said similar things about Python 10 year
ago ;-))).
And I like and respect Matz and the whole Ruby community. I wish them well.
But I recognize that their success may, on the margins at least, slow down
Python. Ah well, ....
Ron Stephens
http://www.awaretek.com/plf.html
Courageous
>And I like and respect Matz and the whole Ruby community. I wish them well.
>But I recognize that their success may, on the margins at least, slow down
>Python.
I would think it more likely that Matz will simply pick up many
folks who know Japanese but not English fluently. The world is a
very large place, where even niche variants of programming languages
can attract followings sizeable enough to give languages for those
niches momentum. This would characterize Python's early history, as
a matter of fact.
C//
HarryO
> ... But
> now that Ruby is out there, it absorbs enormous mind share, and
> development time to recreate libraries etc., which are already available
> in Python, thus hurting Python.
I have only tried it in a very minimal way, just to see that it did
basically what was advertised, but you might be interested in this.
There's a Ruby library that allows you to do things like:
require 'python'
require 'python/httplib'
h = Py::Httplib::HTTP.new(host)
h.putrequest('GET', path)
h.putheader('Accept', 'text/html')
h.putheader('Accept', 'text/plain')
h.endheaders()
Ie, the "require 'python'" makes pulling in Python libraries
as simple as ...
require 'python/SOME_PYTHON_LIB'
which is almost as easy as doing it in Python.
Similarly, referencing elements of such a library simply
requires prefixing them with "Py::". Once you have a
handle to a Python object, you call it the same way you
would in Python. I don't think one could make it much simpler.
So, to some extent, it's possible to avoid reinventing the
wheel. How well this works, I can't say, just that the
examples I played with worked as advertised.
Obviously, there's some overhead, in that it's running a copy
of the Python interpreter to execute the Python code, but so
long as the work the library is doing for one is larger than
the actual overhead of the call to it, that shouldn't be a
problem.
Dave Thomas
> Thus, while I admire Ruby, I suspect that it divides the pool of
> developers who might otherwise be all in the Python *camp*.
From personal experience, I have to disagree. I tried many times to
like Python. I used it on projects and for personal work, but it
never clicked. I couldn't tell you why, and I know it isn't a failing
of the language. It's just that Python and my brain have some kind of
impedance mismatch.
When I tried Ruby, I fell in love within an hour, so much so that I
was driven to write a book about it.
This isn't a "Ruby is better than Python" response. It's just an
observation. Ruby and Python are different, and I suspect there is a
substantial body of developers out there who, like me, have a
preference for one over the other. I don't believe that Ruby is
raiding the Python camp. I believe that Ruby is attracting people to
OO scripting who would not otherwise be doing it.
Regards
Dave
Ron Stephens
Ron Stephens
for a "scripting" language to learn, about 10 months ago, (after
becoming frustrated with Java as a "hobby" language) I really narrowed
down the field to just Python and Ruby. I was quite torn because I liked
what I saw of Ruby from the Pickaxe book, its a great book! But I
ultimately chose Python because I perceived it might be a little easier
for me to learn. After all, I have no "C" background at all and no Perl
experience either; and rightly or wrongly, what I could find on the web
and in the two newsgroups helped me make a close decision to try Python.
Neil Hodgson
> Bruce Eckles said that, if a language can't give dramatic productivity
> improvements over a predecessor language, that it does not justify one's
> switching. 10% improvements are not nearly enough, he said.
Most people are not switching to Ruby from Python but from languages like
Perl and C++, and Ruby is more than 10% better than those languages. I'll be
quite happy if Ruby does achieve 'world-domination' and am forced to use as
it is a much better language than most.
Neil
phil hunt
>Also, one more thing: Guido was interviewed recently in a magazine and he
>conjectured that programming for handholds and PDA's might be a huge niche for
>Python in the future. Does anyone have any thoughts on this?
I think Python has a lot of potential here.
Stephane SOPPERA
Ron Stephens wrote:
>
> What do you guys think????
>
> Ron Stephens
> http://www.awaretek.com/plf.html Python City
I'm just raising a question to the ones who know both ruby and python.
I'm new to python since this morning (learned it in only 8hours, that's a
good point for python; I've been looking to the ruby book, which seems to
be a tutorial, that will take me more time to read...).
I don't know ruby.
I've learned python because it can be used as a script language for other
application. Actually it is used as a script language for
Blender3D (http://www.blender3d.com), and I need to script this soft.
My question is: can ruby be also used as a scripting language for another
app (not written in ruby)?
If the answer is yes: is it used in any application?
Thanks,
--
Stephane SOPPERA
http://stephane.soppera.free.fr
Steve Lamb
wrote:
> Python runs quickly on my 300 MHz box, which is 3 times slower
> than the slowest PC you can buy today. It can only get more popular.
Well, if you take the measure of just pure Mhz.... 4 times slower. ;)
--
Steve C. Lamb | I'm your priest, I'm your shrink, I'm your
ICQ: 5107343 | main connection to the switchboard of souls.
To email: Don't despair! | -- Lenny Nero, Strange Days
-------------------------------+---------------------------------------------
Steve Lamb
> Now, my perception is that most Ruby developers run under Linux or some
> other Unix. I wonder what percentage of Python developers run Windows, and
> what percentage run Linux? I have no idea, does anyone have a guess? If you
> put my back to the wall to make a prediction, I'd guess that more than half
> of us on this newsgroup use windows. Anyone?
Well, sure, worded that way. I /use/ Windows. I need something for my
games and while Linux suits 99.5% of my productivity needs it isn't quite
there in the games market.
Did you mean, perhaps, use Windows exclusively?
RPM1
"Ron Stephens" <rds...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
> I recently read an interview with a Digital Creations top manager where he
said
> that he hopes someone starts a successful business based solely on
providing
> ISP services using Zope, with full technical support. Is anyone looking
into
> this? Does anyone think this could be a successful business model? I am
> interested in opinions on this.
>
"full technical support"
That's what gets thrown in my face whenever I mention Python.
(And I mention it a lot). The company I work for writes point
of sale software in C and VB, because "there's support" and
"customers won't pay for something made with freeware."
I think if Python wants to get "bigger" or more acceptable,
it needs marketing. The guy with the bag of money needs
to say, "Oh yeah, Python, I've heard of that." Customers
ask us if we have a Java 'solution', they don't ask if we
have a Python 'solution'. That's got to change if Python
'wants' to grow more, (I don't know that it does).
It seems to me, (with my limited experience), that the
most dedicated audience Python has is the scientific
community. I would start there. Get some big chemical,
pharmaceutical, or biological corporations to use Python,
(by catering to their needs), and then they will in turn
support the language when they see the wonderful end
product. Then people like me can say to my boss, "look
Dow, Johnson & Johnson, and ADM all use Python
heavily, so there's nothing to be afraid of."
Maybe I'm wrong. But it seems to me that Microsoft
is ahead, not because of the high quality of their
product, but because of there timing and marketing.
Patrick
Cameron Laird
RPM1 <rpm1del...@frontiernet.net> wrote:
.
.
.
>"full technical support"
>
>That's what gets thrown in my face whenever I mention Python.
>(And I mention it a lot). The company I work for writes point
>of sale software in C and VB, because "there's support" and
>"customers won't pay for something made with freeware."
>
>I think if Python wants to get "bigger" or more acceptable,
>it needs marketing. The guy with the bag of money needs
>to say, "Oh yeah, Python, I've heard of that." Customers
>ask us if we have a Java 'solution', they don't ask if we
>have a Python 'solution'. That's got to change if Python
>'wants' to grow more, (I don't know that it does).
>
> It seems to me, (with my limited experience), that the
>most dedicated audience Python has is the scientific
>community. I would start there. Get some big chemical,
>pharmaceutical, or biological corporations to use Python,
>(by catering to their needs), and then they will in turn
>support the language when they see the wonderful end
>product. Then people like me can say to my boss, "look
>Dow, Johnson & Johnson, and ADM all use Python
>heavily, so there's nothing to be afraid of."
.
.
Companies like Dow, J&J, and ADM *do* use Python.
I'm rather grouchy on this subject. My experience
is that organizations that start talk about "full
technical support" are resistant to any factual
content. It doesn't matter how much we demonstrate
Python's technical superiority to them, nor how
many times Python has proven itself capable/reli-
able/efficient/...; it makes them uncomfortable,
and no rational discussion affects their comfort.
I say, "it's an optimized solution. Yes, it has
Java segments." That's usually enough for the
people who just want buzzwords.
--
Cameron Laird <Cam...@Lairds.com>
Business: http://www.Phaseit.net
Personal: http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html
Cameron Laird
Stephane SOPPERA <sopp...@cti.ecp.fr> wrote:
.
.
.
>My question is: can ruby be also used as a scripting language for another
>app (not written in ruby)?
>If the answer is yes: is it used in any application?
.
.
Yes, and yes.
I'm unable to reach any of the Web resources I know that
discuss this point, but, yes, Ruby's fine for embedding
and extending--quite comparable to Python, in fact.
Somebody built a vim with Ruby as an extension language.
There are more serious examples, even, although I can
think of no specific ones just now. The regular c.l.r
denizens surely can do better.
Jonathan Feinberg
> If it is as "X" as we all say/know/feel-in-our-hearts that it is, why is
> there so very little real commercial appeal?
[snip]
> OK. At this point, I will get probably 3-10 messages public or private
> saying that Python does not attempt to answer the same niche.
It has nothing whatsoever to do with the merits. It's entirely about
marketing. It's about pointy-headed Chief Technical Officers who have
heard that Java is a good "enterprise" language, etc.
--
Jonathan Feinberg j...@pobox.com New York, NY
http://pobox.com/~jdf
mlorfeld
very popular (ok so that wasn't too specific). I heard that ILAM
(Industrial Light and Magic) basically standardized on Python for
their projects (most notably Star Wars Ep. 1&2)
From a programmer's perspective (albiet a young soon-to-be CS grad) I
like Python's flexibility. I like how it is OO, yet at the same time
has many procedural characteristics. I also haven't quite been sold
on the data-centric model that C++/Java implement, granted that does
mean you have to do some extra type-checking. I also like the fact
that it is an evolving language, with from what I can see, a great
bazaar style approach: In its 1.5.2 iteration, Python was intriguing,
yet it lacked some essential things (such as a Perlesque chomp), then
I took a look at 2.x and the strip function was implemented - saving
me a great deal of repetition in programming.
Alex Martelli
news:slrna2nhl...@teleute.dmiyu.org...
> On Thu, 27 Dec 2001 21:53:41 GMT, Ron Stephens <rds...@earthlink.net>
wrote:
> > Now, my perception is that most Ruby developers run under Linux or some
> > other Unix. I wonder what percentage of Python developers run Windows,
and
> > what percentage run Linux? I have no idea, does anyone have a guess? If
you
> > put my back to the wall to make a prediction, I'd guess that more than
half
> > of us on this newsgroup use windows. Anyone?
>
> Well, sure, worded that way. I /use/ Windows. I need something for
my
> games and while Linux suits 99.5% of my productivity needs it isn't quite
> there in the games market.
I don't do much gaming, but I still have to use Windows (mostly in win4lin
under Linux) for a few needs (e.g., SOME durned webpages that I need won't
show correcty under any browser except Internet Explorer). Not to mention
that think3 is a mostly-Windows shop, too.
Linux is my preferred platform for most tasks, except that my firewall/etc
machine runs OpenBSD (sometimes security is more important than richness
of features, support for strange hardware, and so on).
Python runs just great on all of these platforms, and more besides.
Alex
Alex Martelli
news:u2nk47n...@corp.supernews.com...
...
> "full technical support"
>
> That's what gets thrown in my face whenever I mention Python.
> (And I mention it a lot). The company I work for writes point
> of sale software in C and VB, because "there's support" and
VB is a commercial product. C, like Python, is just a language,
of which exist implementations, both commercial and otherwise.
You can get many different implementations of C, and a few of
Python (the latter are typically "distributions" of the standard
implementation with packaging and support tweaks). For several
of those implementations, you can buy technical support, "full"
(whatever THAT means) or otherwise -- this goes both for C and
Python, of course.
Firms like ActiveState (www.activestate.com) will typically be
overjoyed to sell you "full technical support" for Python on
the platforms they support. See, for example:
http://www.activestate.com/Products/Enterprise_Solutions/Python.plex
for quite a few commercial offerings by ActiveState of Python
*Support* products/services, specifically. I'm sure many other
purveyors of such products and services exist, and I hope relevant
URL's will be posted on this thread.
When you can get somebody to put this sort of thing in writing,
or say it in front of enough witnesses that they can't later
easily backtrack -- so that they've basically admitted that
if "there's support" then they HAVE to look at Python in depth --
you may then follow up by contacting the *SALES* organizations
of such suppliers as ActiveState. Forget marketing: you need
hungry, aggressive *SALESPEOPLE* to ram change down the throat
of some organization that's clutching at straws to resist change.
Marketing is about product positioning on the market (features,
release timing, pricing models, etc), information flow from the
prospective-audience to the designers and vice versa, and, to a
VERY modest extent, general "public relations" and persuasion.
Don't confuse it with *SALES*, as we techies so often do -- that's
quite as bad as confusing very different tech roles, such as
software development and system administration.
> "customers won't pay for something made with freeware."
I wear Mephisto shoes, but I'm not going to claim that "customers
won't pay for software developed by somebody wearing Nike shoes".
As a non-sequitur, though, it's roughly on a par with this quote.
How will the customers know, and why should they care, what
brand of shoes (if any) the developers choose to wear?
How will the customers know, and why should they care, if (e.g)
your C++ sources were finally compiled/linked with free products
such as gcc, or for-pay ones such as commercial compilers? The
same, obviously, goes for Python -- how will the customers know,
and why should they care, what kind of support contract YOU have
with ActiveState or other suppliers, if any?
> I think if Python wants to get "bigger" or more acceptable,
> it needs marketing. The guy with the bag of money needs
> to say, "Oh yeah, Python, I've heard of that." Customers
I'm not sure "Python" itself "wants" anything, just as I
doubt, say, "C", or "Java", have desires, feelings, hopes.
> ask us if we have a Java 'solution', they don't ask if we
> have a Python 'solution'. That's got to change if Python
> 'wants' to grow more, (I don't know that it does).
Neither do I. More to the point, this looks like a commercial
issue. Is there money to be made by this sort of promotion,
which in turn does surely cost money? If so, then it's more
of an issue of entrepreneurship -- get capital, start company,
invest, draw profits. For typical Python *users*, well, if
their competition is using less-effective tools, why shouldn't
they just enjoy the resulting competitive advantage? Production
costs aren't everything, of course, but in most endeavours they
do matter a lot to competitive positioning in the market. In
many cases one goes to a LOT of trouble to try to have slightly
lower production costs than one's competition. If in this case
my competition is willingly going to its own slaughter, should I
spend time and energy to reverse that? As Clough put it, "Thou
shalt not kill, but needst not strive, officiously, to keep
alive".
Yeah, yeah, I know, this is not the prevailing ethos in Open
Source and more generally in the computer world -- we're all
missionaries out to save the world with our zeal and diligence,
particularly by ramming the "right" technologies down the
unwilling throats of everybody else. For their own good, of
course. Yeah, well.
> It seems to me, (with my limited experience), that the
> most dedicated audience Python has is the scientific
> community. I would start there. Get some big chemical,
> pharmaceutical, or biological corporations to use Python,
> (by catering to their needs), and then they will in turn
Done, see http://www.python.org/psa/Users.html. AlpgaGene,
Inc, NorthSide Physical Therapy, Thermo BioStar, Biosoft,
Caltech, are among the firms in this general sector who
not only use Python but are willing to be identified as
doing so on that page.
> support the language when they see the wonderful end
> product. Then people like me can say to my boss, "look
> Dow, Johnson & Johnson, and ADM all use Python
> heavily, so there's nothing to be afraid of."
Why should such firms care about letting it be known
whether they use Python heavily, or Java, or C++, or
whatever else? That's not their core business. What's
in it for them? Can you even FIND OUT what programming
languages are in fact used by the various departments
and fiefs of these large organizations?
> Maybe I'm wrong. But it seems to me that Microsoft
> is ahead, not because of the high quality of their
> product, but because of there timing and marketing.
I think Microsoft's marketing has typically been truly
abysmal in most respects -- quite a match for the median
quality of most of their wares. There are no doubt some
exceptions on both scores (e.g., the COM architecture,
and the .NET Framework, have some technically excellent
traits; marketing in both cases has done a horrid hash
of a job, particularly NOT managing to convey public
information about the technologies in question, and to
some extent, at least in COM's case, definitely NOT
steering product positioning according to market needs).
We'll see how their latest game-box offering fares, but
so far every one of their attempts beyond the desktop
has been substantially a failure, cross-subsidized by
profits on desktop operating systems, office apps, and
to a lesser extent other desktop apps (including games,
software development tools, etc).
This tells us nothing about marketing _technologies_
as opposed to products and services. In that field,
Sun's very successful efforts at marketing Java may
be more instructive. But, who has a billion dollars
available to throw at the task? And how to they plan
to recoup the investment? Sun has presumably judged
that opposing Microsoft's dominance has huge strategic
value for them: they don't make money directly out of
Java (not, by far, enough to make the huge marketing
investments profitable), but apparently they think
they're getting value for money through other revenue
channels. What huge firm[s] might possibly make a
similar decision in the case of Python? And why?
Alex
Alex Martelli
> On Thu, 27 Dec 2001 17:48:13 +0000, phil hunt
<ph...@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>
> wrote:
> > Python runs quickly on my 300 MHz box, which is 3 times slower
> > than the slowest PC you can buy today. It can only get more popular.
>
> Well, if you take the measure of just pure Mhz.... 4 times slower. ;)
FIVE or more. 1.5 GHz desktop machines are hardly news these days.
Alex
Patrick
Alex Martelli <al...@aleax.it> wrote in message
news:a0hi10$o40$1...@serv1.iunet.it...
> "RPM1" <rpm1del...@frontiernet.net> wrote in message
> news:u2nk47n...@corp.supernews.com...
> ...
> > "full technical support"
> Firms like ActiveState (www.activestate.com) will typically be
> overjoyed to sell you "full technical support" for Python on
> the platforms they support. See, for example:
> http://www.activestate.com/Products/Enterprise_Solutions/Python.plex
> for quite a few commercial offerings by ActiveState of Python
> *Support* products/services, specifically. I'm sure many other
> purveyors of such products and services exist, and I hope relevant
> URL's will be posted on this thread.
>
> When you can get somebody to put this sort of thing in writing,
> or say it in front of enough witnesses that they can't later
> easily backtrack -- so that they've basically admitted that
> if "there's support" then they HAVE to look at Python in depth --
> you may then follow up by contacting the *SALES* organizations
> of such suppliers as ActiveState. Forget marketing: you need
> hungry, aggressive *SALESPEOPLE* to ram change down the throat
> of some organization that's clutching at straws to resist change.
>
I'll keep this in mind.
>
> > "customers won't pay for something made with freeware."
>
> I wear Mephisto shoes, but I'm not going to claim that "customers
> won't pay for software developed by somebody wearing Nike shoes".
>
> As a non-sequitur, though, it's roughly on a par with this quote.
>
> How will the customers know, and why should they care, what
> brand of shoes (if any) the developers choose to wear?
>
> How will the customers know, and why should they care, if (e.g)
> your C++ sources were finally compiled/linked with free products
> such as gcc, or for-pay ones such as commercial compilers? The
> same, obviously, goes for Python -- how will the customers know,
> and why should they care, what kind of support contract YOU have
> with ActiveState or other suppliers, if any?
>
They DO ask what compilers and linkers we use! They even
make suggestions! We make very customized software.
Some customers write parts of their own code through
'user exits'.
Alex Martelli
news:u2oo84b...@corp.supernews.com...
...
> They DO ask what compilers and linkers we use! They even
> make suggestions! We make very customized software.
> Some customers write parts of their own code through
> 'user exits'.
I stand corrected. In this case, I guess you do have to care
about your customers' software preferences. If you were working
in a JVM environment, Jython and Java might be considered nearly
equivalent (hard to tell from the outside what language a .jar or
.class was coded in); if you were working in a COM environment,
this would hold in an even stronger way (again, a COM server is a
COM server, "from the outside" it little matters if it's written
in C++, VB, Python or what else); this is also a particular
strength of the .NET Framework; but few other environments give
you such high transparency.
Alex
Alex Martelli
news:3C2B7276...@earthlink.net...
> Ron Stephens wrote:
...
> > Sourceforge projects, about 1300 to 80). By the way, Just van Rossum's
> > http://starship.python.net/~just/comp.lang.python/ graph of Python
> > newsgroup coverage seems to show a slight decline from over 6000 per
> > month in late-middle 2001 to the current 3500 or so I see on here. Mr.
> > van Rossum said he may not be able to update these any more due to some
> > Yahoo change; anyway, am I interpreting these numbers and trends
> > accurately? Will the Python newsgroup usage turn upwards again? Does it
> > matter?
Hmmm, I think it's all my fault -- in late-middle 2001 I basically turned
off the Python newsgroup (and other netnews) to concentrate on other
activity
(all Python-related). And, these days, less and less often do I find myself
somewhere with a newsreader and no other applicable tools (but it still
happens from time to time, e.g. today).
Some day or other, I'll be back with my exaggerated posting volume... just
got a few books & projects to complete first...
Alex
Cameron Laird
>make suggestions! We make very customized software.
>Some customers write parts of their own code through
>'user exits'.
>
>
>
>
There are times when this is an advantage for Python,
for it is a FAR superior "extension language" to Java
and C. While many aspects of software engineering are
best seen at this point as matters of taste, Python's
superiority in this regard is, I argue, a matter of
objective record.
That's no guarantee of customer acceptance, of course.
Cameron Laird
.
.
.
>I don't do much gaming, but I still have to use Windows (mostly in win4lin
>under Linux) for a few needs (e.g., SOME durned webpages that I need won't
>show correcty under any browser except Internet Explorer). Not to mention
>that think3 is a mostly-Windows shop, too.
>
>Linux is my preferred platform for most tasks, except that my firewall/etc
>machine runs OpenBSD (sometimes security is more important than richness
>of features, support for strange hardware, and so on).
.
.
I'm a tiny surprised; I sincerely thought you
were most comfortable with Windows for COM and
ADO riches.
Alex, do you have any sense of how well "SOME
durned webpages ..." look when viewed with IE
under Wine on Linux? Are you saying that they
*are* acceptable through win4lin-plus-IE?
Cameron Laird
>languages are in fact used by the various departments
>and fiefs of these large organizations?
though: even when you think you know the
answer--because, for example, the company
president has chosen to assert a technical
proposition like, "Java helped us
blah-blah"--there's no guarantee that the
public information corresponds to the
inside reality. I have ABUNDANT evidence
on this score. Organizations often "dis-
inform", and at least as often, they have
poor collective intelligence about their
own behavior.
.
.
.
>This tells us nothing about marketing _technologies_
>as opposed to products and services. In that field,
>Sun's very successful efforts at marketing Java may
>be more instructive. But, who has a billion dollars
>available to throw at the task? And how to they plan
>to recoup the investment? Sun has presumably judged
>that opposing Microsoft's dominance has huge strategic
>value for them: they don't make money directly out of
>Java (not, by far, enough to make the huge marketing
>investments profitable), but apparently they think
>they're getting value for money through other revenue
>channels. What huge firm[s] might possibly make a
>similar decision in the case of Python? And why?
haps shall return later.
.
.
.
Fredrik Juhlin
/FJ
Bill Tate
> I recently read an interview with a Digital Creations top manager where he said
> that he hopes someone starts a successful business based solely on providing
> ISP services using Zope, with full technical support. Is anyone looking into
> this? Does anyone think this could be a successful business model? I am
> interested in opinions on this.
This past spring, I spent a full month pouring over Zope in detail. I
pulled every example product I could find that I thought would be
relative to the purpose of setting up a commercial-based application.
I downloaded the tutorial and the draft zope book. I pulled down
every bit of documentation I could find for developers. In so many
cases, I found whatever documentation was available that key aspects
of the implementation took the "assumed facts-already-in-evidence"
approach; omitting key details that would were critical to improving
my understanding of using Zope. I consider myself a masochist in the
sense that I'm willing to go through various contortions to figure
something out, but like many others, I reached a point of saying that
I still don't get it. I won't even touch the issue of ZOPE's CMF or
Zope Templates - the documentation on that couldn't be more confusing
if it tried.
My point is, the product may be perfect for my needs, but please do
away with tutorial examples referring to using zoo animals to
illustrate object navigation or elvis sightings to solidfy
understanding of the product. There were simply too many disjointed
pieces in the documentation to allow me to pull all the pieces
together and believe me when I say I'm a person who will go to great
lengths to try to "get something." If I'm having trouble, than I
suspect more than a few others are as well.
Any commercial enterprise is likely to be supported by either some
data model or object-class model that almost invariably has a RDBMS on
the back-end for persistent storage (I've also worked with ODBMS so
ZODB isn't an issue for me). If you want to gain converts to zope,
build a tutorial that follows some resemblance of a what a normal web
site has to provide by way of example - perhaps something akin to the
Pet Store example in Zope would be useful??? How about building an
example auction site from scratch? I would be more than happy to
devote time and energy contributing to Zope but I can't until I figure
out how Zope works. To some degree, I think my confusion with Zope
increased AFTER I went through the documentation. Truthfully, I don't
even know whether Zope would be even a reasonable candidate for doing
something akin to the Pet Store example or even an auction site for
that matter.
PHP has virtually exploded on the scene by providing a everything
including the kitchen sink - it appears to have taken little
convincing to gain converts to PHP and accordingly to the latest web
surveys, its implementation is huge. I much rather see tools like
Zope achieve that kind of status. But I don't imagine that too many
folks are going to be willing to work that hard to achieve Zope Zen
when other alternatives exists and that's a damn shame because I
suspect Zope is an excellent product.
I truly do commend and appreciate DC's contribution's to Python, but I
hope somebody can point to something (either examples or
documentation) that gives me a reason to try again.
Truthfully, I just don't think its me.
Bill Tate
Roy Smith
> This past spring, I spent a full month pouring over Zope in detail. I
> pulled every example product I could find that I thought would be
> relative to the purpose of setting up a commercial-based application.
> I downloaded the tutorial and the draft zope book. I pulled down
> every bit of documentation I could find for developers. In so many
> cases, I found whatever documentation was available that key aspects
> of the implementation took the "assumed facts-already-in-evidence"
> approach; omitting key details that would were critical to improving
> my understanding of using Zope.
Unfortunately, I have to agree. I've looked at Zope a few times, because
the hype sounded really cool (as all good hype should). But, every time I
ever tried to understand it to the level of, "OK, so how do I actually
write an application using this", I was stumped.
Hans Nowak
> In its 1.5.2 iteration, Python was intriguing,
> yet it lacked some essential things (such as a Perlesque chomp), then
> I took a look at 2.x and the strip function was implemented - saving
> me a great deal of repetition in programming.
<nitpick>
I'm pretty sure 1.5.2 had strip already...
</nitpick>
--Hans
Alex Martelli
news:2001122814...@starbase.neosoft.com...
...
> >I don't do much gaming, but I still have to use Windows (mostly in
win4lin
> >under Linux) for a few needs (e.g., SOME durned webpages that I need
won't
> >show correcty under any browser except Internet Explorer). Not to
mention
> >that think3 is a mostly-Windows shop, too.
> >
> >Linux is my preferred platform for most tasks, except that my
firewall/etc
> >machine runs OpenBSD (sometimes security is more important than richness
> >of features, support for strange hardware, and so on).
> I'm a tiny surprised; I sincerely thought you
> were most comfortable with Windows for COM and
> ADO riches.
I do love COM and COM-based technologies, and for the last few years
I've had to immerse myself almost exclusively in Windows to develop
some of the expertise for which I was (and am) gainfully employed. But,
out of all the operating systems and environments I've tried (including
also Vax/VMS, IBM mainframe OS's such as VM/SP and MVS, Apollo Domain,
and quite a few others) Unix-like ones have always been my personal
preference for most tasks. I used Linux at home in '92-'95, before
the switch to Windows for "total immersion/gain expertise" purposes,
and this year I've been able to switch back to Linux at home (and
OpenBSD for the firewall/etc -- now THAT is stability, solidity, and
security; upon reviewing most all available environments, OpenBSD
struck me as heads and shoulders above the crowd -- but, behind the
firewall, I find Linux preferable, given typical "consumer" needs such
as Windows emulation, viewing Realmedia files, and so on).
> Alex, do you have any sense of how well "SOME
> durned webpages ..." look when viewed with IE
> under Wine on Linux? Are you saying that they
> *are* acceptable through win4lin-plus-IE?
I was unable to make Microsoft Word run perfectly under Wine, and
that's my primary need -- Word with O'Reilly customized macros &c,
as that's what I'm required to use for one of the books. So, I
did not try Wine extensively on other tasks. I did try VMWare (a
beta) and found it somewhat clunky, ponderous, and slow, although
maybe that was its beta nature; anyway, I wasn't motivated to plunk
down several hundred dollars for the final version to find out.
Then I discovered, carefully hidden on a CD of my favorite Linux
Distribution (Mandrake 8.1 powerpack), a demo/trial version of
NeTraverse's Win4Lin. Half an hour after starting to try it out
I had purchased the full unlimited license online (after trying
to do so, without success, directly at Mandrake Store, I just got
to NeTraverse's site, and, there, it was a snap) -- 1/4 the price
of VMWare and more usable for my purposes. Lots of limitations
that may be important to some: you only get to run Windows98 on
top of Linux, and your Windows "machine" doesn't get to see any
strange hardware you may have (in my case, a durned Winmodem by
Conexant, really win-only; fortunately I was later able to have
it exchanged with a Lucent-chipset one, which does run fine under
Linux, it appears). But those limitations were not important for
my own specific purposes. All webpages show up just fine under
IE 5.5 (haven't bothered downloading 6, I'm told it plays havoc
with CSS handling), Word runs, and so does Visual Studio when I
need to compile/try out something in Windows version. I have
occasionally used Excel, Powerpoint, the OKbridge Windows clent,
and a few minor things -- for each of those I'd have good Linux
side alternatives too, but, since I had win4lin already, why
bother. I believe the only failure was when trying to examine
some files with the Windows Media Player. I do get occasional
"crashes" (of the simulated Win98 environments), but roughly as
often as a real Win98 crashes under similar usage, so I don't
think that's win4lin's fault.
Alex
Hans Nowak
Hey, you guys, stop dissing my box like that! >=)
(900 MHz, bought last month...)
--Hans
Alex Martelli
> In article <u2oo84b...@corp.supernews.com>,
> Patrick <rpm1del...@frontiernet.net> wrote:
...
> >They DO ask what compilers and linkers we use! They even
> >make suggestions! We make very customized software.
> >Some customers write parts of their own code through
> >'user exits'.
> There are times when this is an advantage for Python,
> for it is a FAR superior "extension language" to Java
> and C. While many aspects of software engineering are
> best seen at this point as matters of taste, Python's
> superiority in this regard is, I argue, a matter of
> objective record.
Maybe, but Python could be usable as an extension language
even if the application was implemented otherwise, in the
right environments (JVM: Jython always usable where Java
is; Microsoft COM/Automation).
> That's no guarantee of customer acceptance, of course.
Yep. If you release only under Windows, and user
customization is important, it would be folly not to
have an excellent COM Object Model exposed: this way,
customers can customize in Python, Visual Basic, Delphi,
C++, or whatever else is close to their heart. If you
release under the JVM, then at least both Java and
Jython are usable. Other environments have other such
possibilities (alas, maybe not as mature), such as Corba
bindings. If you're not in the business of selling
programming languages, but applications, and yet those
applications are often used as platforms for customer
development, then putting some effort into language
independence may widen your customer appeal at not too
high a price.
Alex
Alex Martelli
news:mailman.1009544733...@python.org...
Ooops yes -- so did Steve, I think. You CAN still buy PCs whose CPU's
are claimed to run at 900 MHz *AND LESS* (so even the "3 times" in the
OP was incorrect:-).
Alex
Cameron Laird
>"Cameron Laird" <cla...@starbase.neosoft.com> wrote in message
>news:889C110F5BBBFAFD.A03B35C2...@lp.airnews.net...
.
.
>Maybe, but Python could be usable as an extension language
>even if the application was implemented otherwise, in the
>right environments (JVM: Jython always usable where Java
>is; Microsoft COM/Automation).
.
.
Yikes! Let me make this perfectly clear: YES,
Python deserves consideration as an extension
language even in applications largely implemented
in other languages such as C and Java. I apolo-
gize for making that obscure, for it definitely
was one of the points I intended to make.
As usual, Alex and I agree.
Benoit Cerrina
activated through the appropriate configure option though.
I also wrote a patch to make ruby easier to use as an extension language
for vim. The important point though is that scripting vim in ruby is
a regular part of vim.
Benoit
Alex Martelli
> In article <a0i1ae$3mu$1...@serv1.iunet.it>, Alex Martelli <al...@aleax.it>
wrote:
> >"Cameron Laird" <cla...@starbase.neosoft.com> wrote in message
> >news:889C110F5BBBFAFD.A03B35C2...@lp.airnews.net...
> .
> .
> .
> >Maybe, but Python could be usable as an extension language
> >even if the application was implemented otherwise, in the
> >right environments (JVM: Jython always usable where Java
> >is; Microsoft COM/Automation).
> .
> .
> .
> Yikes! Let me make this perfectly clear: YES,
> Python deserves consideration as an extension
> language even in applications largely implemented
> in other languages such as C and Java. I apolo-
> gize for making that obscure, for it definitely
> was one of the points I intended to make.
>
> As usual, Alex and I agree.
Hmmm, yes, but my point was slightly "skewed" -- I was playing
devil's advocate here. Even if the customer agrees that, yes,
Python is what they surely want to use for extending and tweaking
the application, this doesn't force you to code the application
in Python -- you may still (although you shouldn't:-) code it
in other languages (partly depending on platform issues).
Alex
maxm
news:cb4ba455.01122...@posting.google.com...
> I truly do commend and appreciate DC's contribution's to Python, but I
> hope somebody can point to something (either examples or
> documentation) that gives me a reason to try again.
The funny thing is that it really isn't to complicated, but a few places it
stops short of supplying the tools that is needed to make it simple and
intuitive to learn.
The problem is that it does it tricks by mixin-classes, or multiple
inheritance if you will. And to get persistence you just mix in Persistance.
To get folder like behaviour you just mix in Objectmanager. To get
PropertyManager behaviour you mix in PropertyManager.
The most common mixin class though is SimpleItem, and it gives you a lot of
basic behaviour.
So a class using all of the above would be defined like:
class kicthenSink(ObjectManager, PropertyManager, SimpleItem):
code ...
Each of the mix-in classes has a rather well defined/documented Api and the
source is available for browsing, so at some time when you get the "Zope
Zen" it all clicks into place and becomes rather simple.
The problem though is that it can be rather difficult until you got that
zen. And the only way to get there is to actually go ahead and try build
something in it.
As far as I am concerned it's all just a documentation problem.
regards Max M
Alex Martelli
...
> >that's my primary need -- Word with O'Reilly customized macros &c,
> >as that's what I'm required to use for one of the books. So, I
> I've got to talk with those boys. That
> strikes me as an atrocity.
"makes" is probably an overbid. The Cookbook I'm doing in XML with
a custom DTD, and that's just fine - I get to use VIM:-). But for
the Nutshell, that wasn't an option.
> >did not try Wine extensively on other tasks. I did try VMWare (a
> >beta) and found it somewhat clunky, ponderous, and slow, although
> >maybe that was its beta nature; anyway, I wasn't motivated to plunk
> >down several hundred dollars for the final version to find out.
> I have acquaintances who swear by VMWare.
So do I, and it was on their hearty recommendation that I gave
that beta a good try. If the problems are indeed all related to
it BEING a beta, then VMWare's producers had better make some
sort of time-limited try-it-out or something like that, without
the speed and resource-consumption problems -- I think my machine
is adequate (Athlon 1.2 GHz, 256 M DDRAM PC2100), yet I was not
happy with interactive performance (Word '97 subjectively running
worse than on my ultralight laptop, which has a Pentium III-600
and just 64 MB of slower RAM -- I tried the two MS OS's for which
I have licenses, Win98 and NT/4; maybe Win/2K and/or Office/2K
work better with VMWare, but I'm not going to splurge for those
in addition to VMWare itself -- that's running to well over 1K
euros for something a few tens of euros for win4lin, plus my
already-paid-for Win98 and Office97 licenses, already give me
quite satisfactorily).
> >some files with the Windows Media Player. I do get occasional
> >"crashes" (of the simulated Win98 environments), but roughly as
> >often as a real Win98 crashes under similar usage, so I don't
> >think that's win4lin's fault.
> Interesting testimony. Thanks.
You're welcome!
Alex
Aahz Maruch
Alex Martelli <al...@aleax.it> wrote:
>"Cameron Laird" <cla...@starbase.neosoft.com> wrote in message
>news:2001122816...@starbase.neosoft.com...
>>>that's my primary need -- Word with O'Reilly customized macros &c,
>>>as that's what I'm required to use for one of the books. So, I
>>
>> O'REILLY MAKES YOU USE WORD MACROS?!??!!?
>> I've got to talk with those boys. That strikes me as an atrocity.
>
>"makes" is probably an overbid. The Cookbook I'm doing in XML with a
>custom DTD, and that's just fine - I get to use VIM:-). But for the
>Nutshell, that wasn't an option.
Really? May you explain why? (I'm still hoping to do a book with
O'Reilly and I *really* don't want to use Word.)
--
--- Aahz <*> (Copyright 2001 by aa...@pobox.com)
Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6 http://www.rahul.net/aahz/
Androgynous poly kinky vanilla queer het Pythonista
Tenth Virtual Anniversary: 3 days and counting
Martin von Loewis
> I feel that Ruby is so similar in design, purpose, and objectives to
> Python, that it competes directly with Python for developers' mind
> share.
I think it competes with Perl much more than with Python, if for no
other reason that there are probably more Perl developers out there
than Python developers.
> And I like and respect Matz and the whole Ruby community. I wish them well.
> But I recognize that their success may, on the margins at least, slow down
> Python.
Python is a programming language, so it does not have, in itself,
"speed", meaning it cannot be slowed down.
Perhaps you meant that it will decrease the growth rate of the number
of Python developers world-wide. That is hard to find out, as there
are two many other factors involved, and because it is difficult to
find out how things would have developed without Ruby.
Perhaps ypu meant that the rate in which Python releases appear will
be affected, or the rate in which changes are made to Python. I do not
think this is true. People contributing to Python development are
unlikely to switch to Ruby, since they have already invested quite
some time into that project, which they might consider lost if they
switch to another language.
Regards,
Martin
Jeff Shannon
Alex Martelli wrote:
Yes, I still see quite a few 800MHz machines advertised. Of course, my place of
employment still maintains a half dozen or so machines in the 150-233 MHz
range... (and Python runs quite satisfactorily on them, too!)
Jeff Shannon
Technician/Programmer
Credit International
Steve Lamb
> Hey, you guys, stop dissing my box like that! >=)
> (900 MHz, bought last month...)
Hey, I'm allowed.
Winbox for games: 667mhz, 512Mb RAM.
Linux server/workstation: 450Mhz, 384Mb RAM (although I can drop another 450
in)
Linux Laptop: 667Mhz, 128Mb RAM.
You trump me on all three.
--
Steve C. Lamb | I'm your priest, I'm your shrink, I'm your
ICQ: 5107343 | main connection to the switchboard of souls.
To email: Don't despair! | -- Lenny Nero, Strange Days
-------------------------------+---------------------------------------------
Chris Barker
> What huge firm[s] might possibly make a
> similar decision in the case of Python? And why?
I don't know what firms would do it, but the "why" is the same as for
JAVA:
The more popular a platform independent/nuetral development
language/tool is, the weeker Microsoft's grip on the market is. Right
now, if an organisation uses VB for development, they can only deploy on
Windows. In order to deploy on another platform , they would have to
learn a whoilw new language/development enviroment, and port their
products to it. If they, instead were using Python with, for example,
wxPython for the GUI, the decision to support another platform would
involve only minor learning and porting. This is good for everyone that
stands to benifit from people using a non-windows platform (Apple, Sun,
the Linux and *BSD vendors, etc.)
That is exactly why there is no VB (or MFC) for any non-MS platform.
-Chris
--
Christopher Barker,
Ph.D.
ChrisH...@attbi.net --- --- ---
---@@ -----@@ -----@@
------@@@ ------@@@ ------@@@
Oil Spill Modeling ------ @ ------ @ ------ @
Water Resources Engineering ------- --------- --------
Coastal and Fluvial Hydrodynamics --------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. David J. Ritchie, Sr.
Jonathan Feinberg wrote:
> "A. Keyton Weissinger" <key...@weissinger.org> writes:
>
> > If it is as "X" as we all say/know/feel-in-our-hearts that it is, why is
> > there so very little real commercial appeal?
>
> [snip]
>
> > OK. At this point, I will get probably 3-10 messages public or private
> > saying that Python does not attempt to answer the same niche.
>
> It has nothing whatsoever to do with the merits. It's entirely about
> marketing. It's about pointy-headed Chief Technical Officers who have
> heard that Java is a good "enterprise" language, etc.
>
In support of Python, I would say "Absolutely!"
Compare the advertising dollars spent on Java vs. that spent
on Python. Along with CD ROM's, we should be distributing a page of peel-off
stick on, "Python Inside" labels as an insert with every Python book. I also think
it is related to the less and less actual technical experience of senior decision makers
in corporations. It means that decision methodology is based more on what "large number of
people believe to be true" and this makes it particularly susceptible to the marketing of myths.
On the other hand, just to stir the pot a little and because I believe you should be able
to argue both sides of an issue, I would say when it comes to semi-critical
and critical applications, there are features of Java (like strong typing)
that at least mandate a certain level of consistency between all execution paths.
I can argue to myself to dismiss that one by saying that of course interpretative languages should
not be expected to hold to that level of validation. So, maybe it's reasonable to choose Java
for the toaster I am manufacturing. But then the dynamics are that you have the foot in the
door with a group of developers inside the firewall who already know
java well, it is a simple (-minded?) leap to employing it in enterprise-wide constructs.
--D.
--
Dr. David J. Ritchie, Sr.
djras...@mindspring.com
http://home.mindspring.com/~djrassoc01/
Hans Nowak
>
> On Fri, 28 Dec 2001 15:12:20 GMT, Hans Nowak <wu...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> > Hey, you guys, stop dissing my box like that! >=)
> > (900 MHz, bought last month...)
>
> Hey, I'm allowed.
>
> Winbox for games: 667mhz, 512Mb RAM.
> Linux server/workstation: 450Mhz, 384Mb RAM (although I can drop another 450
> in)
> Linux Laptop: 667Mhz, 128Mb RAM.
>
> You trump me on all three.
Fair enough, but did you buy those recently? The original remark
was about the slowest computers one could get today...
Ah well, that's what I get for buying mine at K-mart... ;-)
--Hans
Bill Tate
I dunno maybe, I'm missing something here? Here's the latest usage
figures for PHP - which has been around for how long now????
PHP: 7,095,691 Domains, 1,046,426 IP Addresses
Source: Netcraft
What's wrong with this picture????
Laura Lewin
Just a quick note to say that O'Reilly doesn't make anyone use Word.
You can use Word, Frame, or XML. Alex started the Nutshell in Word so
we're sticking with it. If it's too much of a problem, though, Alex,
we can change. Let's talk off the list.
Laura
LLe...@oreilly.com
"Alex Martelli" <al...@aleax.it> wrote in message news:<a0hvv...@enews2.newsguy.com>...
A. Keyton Weissinger
Word template works very well for me. Now FrameMaker, their production
application sucks, but fortunately you rarely have to deal with that.
Keyton
> --
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>
>
Aahz Maruch
(Five Fresh) Fish <ro...@127.0.0.1> wrote:
>
>Silly, really. O'Reilly should use the best software for the task, not the
>most popular.
Note carefully that O'Reilly *does* normally support XML (and actually
prefers it, IIRC). I was just asking Alex what made Word necessary for
Nutshell, to make sure that wouldn't be an issue for me.
Steve Lamb
><nitpick>
> I'm pretty sure 1.5.2 had strip already...
></nitpick>
According to the Beazley book it did.
Steve Lamb
> Fair enough, but did you buy those recently? The original remark
> was about the slowest computers one could get today...
> Ah well, that's what I get for buying mine at K-mart... ;-)
All were aquired one manner or another in the past year. :)
Hans Nowak
>
> On Fri, 28 Dec 2001 15:04:12 GMT, Hans Nowak <wu...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> ><nitpick>
> > I'm pretty sure 1.5.2 had strip already...
> ></nitpick>
>
> According to the Beazley book it did.
Yes, I've been checking out some old binaries, and strip was available
as early as 1.4. (Don't know about any older versions.)
Ah, those were the days... The One True Python had everything you
needed and no bloat. ;-)
--Hans
Justin Sheehy
> there are features of Java (like strong typing) that at least
> mandate a certain level of consistency between all execution paths.
Python has strong typing. It does not, however, have static typing or
explicit type declarations, which are probably what you are thinking about.
> I can argue to myself to dismiss that one by saying that of course
> interpretative languages should not be expected to hold to that
> level of validation.
Could you please explain what an "interpretative language" is and how
Java and Python are different with regard to that definition?
Before you answer, realize that both are generally translated into an
intermediate language and then that language is executed by a virtual
machine at runtime.
-Justin
A. Keyton Weissinger
J2EE applications with a group of folks. I was expecting a Pet Shop or at
least an EJB-like spec of the lay of the land.
If someone asked me -- someone who considers himself a huge Pythonista --
what Zope was all about, I'd have to say I didn't have a real clue.
Now, it just so happens that I also write on the side for O'Reilly and
others. If any of you guys at DC want to email me back, I would be happy to
help spread the gospel according to Zope/Python. But it needs to have
serious facts (comparisons between similar setups for J2EE/M$), more serious
specifications (an EJB-like container approach based in Python, for example,
would be huge -- difficult certainly, but huge), and even more serious
examples. I agree with Bill. I want to see the full thing broken into
pieces.
Keyton
> -----Original Message-----
> From: python-l...@python.org
> [mailto:python-l...@python.org]On Behalf Of Bill Tate
> Sent: Friday, December 28, 2001 9:31 AM
> To: pytho...@python.org
> Subject: Re: Python Popularity: Questions and Comments
>
>
> Ron Stephens <rds...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
> news:<3C2B9E04...@earthlink.net>...
> > I recently read an interview with a Digital Creations top
> manager where he said
> > that he hopes someone starts a successful business based solely
> on providing
> > ISP services using Zope, with full technical support. Is anyone
> looking into
> > this? Does anyone think this could be a successful business model? I am
> > interested in opinions on this.
>
> This past spring, I spent a full month pouring over Zope in detail. I
> pulled every example product I could find that I thought would be
> relative to the purpose of setting up a commercial-based application.
> I downloaded the tutorial and the draft zope book. I pulled down
> every bit of documentation I could find for developers. In so many
> cases, I found whatever documentation was available that key aspects
> of the implementation took the "assumed facts-already-in-evidence"
> approach; omitting key details that would were critical to improving
> my understanding of using Zope. I consider myself a masochist in the
> sense that I'm willing to go through various contortions to figure
> something out, but like many others, I reached a point of saying that
> I still don't get it. I won't even touch the issue of ZOPE's CMF or
> Zope Templates - the documentation on that couldn't be more confusing
> if it tried.
>
> My point is, the product may be perfect for my needs, but please do
> away with tutorial examples referring to using zoo animals to
> illustrate object navigation or elvis sightings to solidfy
> understanding of the product. There were simply too many disjointed
> pieces in the documentation to allow me to pull all the pieces
> together and believe me when I say I'm a person who will go to great
> lengths to try to "get something." If I'm having trouble, than I
> suspect more than a few others are as well.
>
> Any commercial enterprise is likely to be supported by either some
> data model or object-class model that almost invariably has a RDBMS on
> the back-end for persistent storage (I've also worked with ODBMS so
> ZODB isn't an issue for me). If you want to gain converts to zope,
> build a tutorial that follows some resemblance of a what a normal web
> site has to provide by way of example - perhaps something akin to the
> Pet Store example in Zope would be useful??? How about building an
> example auction site from scratch? I would be more than happy to
> devote time and energy contributing to Zope but I can't until I figure
> out how Zope works. To some degree, I think my confusion with Zope
> increased AFTER I went through the documentation. Truthfully, I don't
> even know whether Zope would be even a reasonable candidate for doing
> something akin to the Pet Store example or even an auction site for
> that matter.
>
> PHP has virtually exploded on the scene by providing a everything
> including the kitchen sink - it appears to have taken little
> convincing to gain converts to PHP and accordingly to the latest web
> surveys, its implementation is huge. I much rather see tools like
> Zope achieve that kind of status. But I don't imagine that too many
> folks are going to be willing to work that hard to achieve Zope Zen
> when other alternatives exists and that's a damn shame because I
> suspect Zope is an excellent product.
>
> I truly do commend and appreciate DC's contribution's to Python, but I
> hope somebody can point to something (either examples or
> documentation) that gives me a reason to try again.
>
> Truthfully, I just don't think its me.
>
> Bill Tate
> --
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>
>
Paul Prescod
>
>...
>
> Most people are not switching to Ruby from Python but from languages like
> Perl and C++, and Ruby is more than 10% better than those languages.
When people get tired of Perl, for whatever reason, there was a time
when Python was the next logical language. Now there is a choice and it
could go either way: Python could be a better choice because it is more
established, Ruby could be a better choice because it is syntactically
more like Perl.
> ... I'll be
> quite happy if Ruby does achieve 'world-domination' and am forced to use as
> it is a much better language than most.
I claim that each of the languages hurts the other's bid for "world
domination" or even mainstream acceptance.
When programmers ask to write code in a scripting language, managers
will say: "You want us to write in one of those flavour-of-the-month
languages?" It seems the curse of the scripting language world to
forever fork off new languages just as older ones gain a little bit of
acceptance.
Paul Prescod
Lucio Torre
>
>
>
>The only reason that I bring this up is to point out that Python is
>already in use in very serious comercially-funded development. You
>might not hear as many advertisements about it, but it is there.
>
>-Justin
>
>
>
>
I think companies dont write "Done with Python" on the boxes of their
products because they gain nothing from it. The gain is in using it, not
naming it.
Lucio.
Paul Prescod
>
> ... Instead, Ruby will attract folks from outside the
> Python world. Ruby and Python differ in philosophy and _feel_. Some
> folks like one, some the other. I don't see it as competition. I see
> it as choice.
Is there really a difference? Pepsi and Coke are choices. They are also
in competition. They have a somewhat different taste but are more
similar than different. In the long run, there will come a day when
they've taken as much of the market share of other drinks away as they
will, and the primary competition will be between the two of them.
Paul Prescod
Ron Stephens
hope the managers of Digital Creations are aware of the problem; this is certainly not the first
time I've heard of it, although your description was most telling.
Ron Stephens
of inadequate documentation of Zope?
Laura Lewin
Word is an option, along with Frame, XML, StarOffice, others as well.
Alex happened to start his book in Word, and changing mid-stream often
presents conversion challenges (I'll talk with Alex about this
separately.) Hope I've clarified this matter, please feel free to
email me if anyone has further questions on ORA template options.
Happy Holidays everyone!
Laura
LLe...@oreilly.com
"A. Keyton Weissinger" <key...@weissinger.org> wrote in message news:<mailman.1009568013...@python.org>...
Ron Stephens
SourceForge projects than Python, as many as Perl in fact (about 2700 I believe, compared to
Python's 1300). Also, there are more PHP books in most book stores than Python books.
Does anyone know how old PHP is? I'd really like to know. I have not been aware of PHP for much
more than two years, but then I wasn't paying any attention before that. When was PHP "launched"?
How did it grow so fast? Can the Python community learn anything from this phenomenon? Can we even
incorporate some of the good points from PHP for web programming into Python, or Python add-on
"products"?
Ron Stephens
http://www.awaretek.com/plf.html
Ron Stephens
What huge firm[s] might possibly make a
>similar decision in the case of Python? And why?
An intriguing question, to which we per-
haps shall return later.
.
.
.
Wow, YYikes ;-)) I, for one, am intrigued, and I bet I'm not alone. I'm dying to
know what you might know along these lines, Cameron ;-)))
Ron Stephens
....Hmmm, I think it's all my fault ...(snip-snip)..I basically turned
off the Python newsgroup (and other netnews) to concentrate on other
activity...(snip-snip).....Some day or other, I'll be back with my exaggerated
posting volume... just
got a few books & projects to complete first......
I noticed. It's sure good to read your posts again, Alex ;-)))))
Looking forward to "Python in a Nutshell" and the "Python Cookbook", but
missing intelligent posts and exponentially rising graph-lines for
comp.lang.python usage in the meantime'ly yours,
Ron Stephens
http://www.awaretek.com/plf.html
> "Hans Nowak" <wu...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
> news:3C2B7276...@earthlink.net...
> > Ron Stephens wrote:
> ...
> > > Sourceforge projects, about 1300 to 80). By the way, Just van Rossum's
> > > http://starship.python.net/~just/comp.lang.python/ graph of Python
> > > newsgroup coverage seems to show a slight decline from over 6000 per
> > > month in late-middle 2001 to the current 3500 or so I see on here. Mr.
> > > van Rossum said he may not be able to update these any more due to some
> > > Yahoo change; anyway, am I interpreting these numbers and trends
> > > accurately? Will the Python newsgroup usage turn upwards again? Does it
> > > matter?
>
> Hmmm, I think it's all my fault -- in late-middle 2001 I basically turned
> off the Python newsgroup (and other netnews) to concentrate on other
> activity
> (all Python-related). And, these days, less and less often do I find myself
> somewhere with a newsreader and no other applicable tools (but it still
> happens from time to time, e.g. today).
>
> Some day or other, I'll be back with my exaggerated posting volume... just
> got a few books & projects to complete first...
>
> Alex
Daniel Klein
<djras...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>On the other hand, just to stir the pot a little and because I believe you should be able
>to argue both sides of an issue, I would say when it comes to semi-critical
>and critical applications, there are features of Java (like strong typing)
>that at least mandate a certain level of consistency between all execution paths.
Python is as type-safe as Java, it's just that the type is not checked
until runtime whereas Java checks it at compile time. But Java
certainly cant check _everything_ at compile time so it also has to do
some measure of runtime checking. Sheesh, what a hack! All that extra
coding just to achieve about a 1% gain in checking for errors. Blech!!
Daniel Klein
Peter Hansen
>
> Does anyone know how old PHP is? I'd really like to know. I have not been aware of PHP for much
> more than two years, but then I wasn't paying any attention before that. When was PHP "launched"?
A quick check with google and "history of php" leads to:
http://www.php-center.de/en-html-manual/intro-history.html
... which points out that "PHP was conceived sometime in the
fall of 1994" (about a year after the author graduated from
an engineering program). It didn't get popular until 95-96
and became more than just the author's personal project in 1997.
> How did it grow so fast? Can the Python community learn anything from this phenomenon? Can we even
> incorporate some of the good points from PHP for web programming into Python, or Python add-on
> "products"?
It filled a specialized niche and, for the technology of the
time, filled it well. I don't think anything about this
applies to Python, since it is neither trying to fill the
same niche, nor does it need rapid growth.
As for incorporating parts from PHP... what *are* the good
points? From the little I know, I'd much prefer Python
for web programming, let alone all the other areas where
Python shines and PHP doesn't even exist.
(By the way, Ron, when quoting material in your reply,
could you please find some way to include markers for
the quoted lines, like >> or something? It's very
hard to read some of your replies without these.)
--
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
pe...@engcorp.com
Dr. David J. Ritchie, Sr.
> "Dr. David J. Ritchie, Sr." <djras...@mindspring.com> writes:
>
> > there are features of Java (like strong typing) that at least
> > mandate a certain level of consistency between all execution paths.
>
> Python has strong typing. It does not, however, have static typing or
> explicit type declarations, which are probably what you are thinking about.
Yes, I suppose that is it. To me, the requirement of saying what a variable is and
then using it as you said it to be builds in a certain cross checking which one can
>assert< results in more reliable code. Are there any studies to support such
a view? I am not aware of any so I have to regard myself as engaging in hand-waving
and demonstrating the marketing myth driven decision making process which I
described in my original post.
>
>
> > I can argue to myself to dismiss that one by saying that of course
> > interpretative languages should not be expected to hold to that
> > level of validation.
>
> Could you please explain what an "interpretative language" is and how
> Java and Python are different with regard to that definition?
>
> Before you answer, realize that both are generally translated into an
> intermediate language and then that language is executed by a virtual
> machine at runtime.
And the virtual machine byte code is eventually translated into microcode in
some chip, etc., etc. I think what I was trying to get at was the problem of
validating code when the language allows run time definition of the code and
execution of it through an exec or eval or whatever. I am probably on shaky
ground here due to ignorance but that's what I was refering to anyway.
--
Dr. David J. Ritchie, Sr.
djras...@mindspring.com
http://home.mindspring.com/~djrassoc01/
Resty Cena
developers worldwide. Whichever can provide what it is that VB
developers like about VB on top of what Python and Ruby natively offer
will hit the jackpot. To me these are: (a) Visual drag-and-drop
application builder with data aware controls, and (b) good support for
the big databases (Oracle, Sybase, Informix). I'm going through the
gui chapters of Mark Lutz' PP2E, and while I can see that handcrafting
gui this way gives me a lot of control, I'm thinking I don't want to
do this -- I'm a database application developer. I want to write a
dynamic work order system and I have no ambition to become a system
tool maker. And so do the 3M VB developers.
VB used to be a toy language. Not too long ago no respectable company
would use VB for their corporate systems. It did not start to become
an enterprise solution until VB3. What happened there?
VB 6 will be retired in favor of VB.NET. Personally I think that the
direction VB has taken, towards a verbose C#, is misguided. VB should
have evolved into something like Python or Ruby. With VB.NET, VB
programmers will ask, "What's the point?" Might as well dive into C#.
Or look around for something else.
Hopefully by that time -- 18 months from now? -- Python and/or Ruby
will have what it is VB programmers cannot live without.
Folks, come up with (a) and (b) above, then start posting at c.l.vb.
Paul Prescod <pa...@prescod.net> wrote in message news:<mailman.1009581813...@python.org>...
Paul Prescod
>
>...
>
> Does anyone know how old PHP is? I'd really like to know. I have not been aware of PHP for much
> more than two years, but then I wasn't paying any attention before that. When was PHP "launched"?
>
> How did it grow so fast? Can the Python community learn anything from this phenomenon? Can we even
> incorporate some of the good points from PHP for web programming into Python, or Python add-on
> "products"?
PHP is a language absolutely optimized to solve a particular problem.
PHP's inventor does not try to claim that it is the best programming
language. Rather he claims that it is the programming language that is
completely optimized for solving one and only one problem: dynamic web
pages.
What can Python learn from PHP? A killer app is killer. It's the fastest
route to popularity. On the other hand, it is also the fastest route to
oblivion. TCL had two killer apps: Expect and Tk. In the early days, its
developers were quite open about the fact that it wasn't designed for
"complex algorithms or data structures". PHP developers often say the
same sorts of things about PHP. If PHP's killer app ever goes away, or
another language solves the same problem more easily, then I would
expect PHP to go away with it. That won't happen to Python.
One can easily make the case that every one of today's popular language
had a killer app or problem and came along at just the right time to
solve it. C was the programming language of the freely available Unix
operating system. Perl was the scripting language for it (when enough
cycles became available that the existing ones started to look anemic).
VB was the language behind a revolutionary GUI builder. Java was the
applet language and then migrated to being the servlet language.
When one of Python's killer apps takes over the universe (Zope, Pygame,
Alice, Mojonation whatever), Python will take over the universe.
Paul Prescod
John W. Baxter
Prescod <pa...@prescod.net> wrote:
> When programmers ask to write code in a scripting language, managers
> will say: "You want us to write in one of those flavour-of-the-month
> languages?" It seems the curse of the scripting language world to
> forever fork off new languages just as older ones gain a little bit of
> acceptance.
My manager (the company owner) says "you want to write in something
other than Python??? You better have a darn good reason." ;-)
--John
Ron Stephens
Building a gui now using Python, compared to using VB, really sucks. Yes, it's that bad.
Whichever reasonably easy to use language (right now I'm thinking either Python, Ruby, or a yet-to-be created
language) first gets an open source gui builder built on top of it that is as easy to learn and use as VB will
dominate the world.
It must, in my opinion, be as easy to use as VB for building simple input and output forms. That's the key. It
doesn't have to be any more powerful or anything else. Just easy. This is a crying out loud need that anyone
can see; someone will solve it, I am sure. It's too big an opportunityto be forever ignored. Unfortunately, I
am beginning to hae my doubts that it will be a Python-based solution. I sure hope I'm wrong.
The only hope that I know of right now is PythonCard, only a six month old project led by Kevin Altis. I
really admire Kevin and his team and I admire this project. I think they are ace coders (especially Kevin )
who are capable of doing what needs getting done. But I am afraid they will miss the mark, partly for the same
reason as Zope has its detractors, namely, lack of good, easy to use documentation for learning and using the
language.
Now, I know it's not fair to compare Pythoncard to Zope, as PythonCard is only six months old and pre-alpha,
for heavens sake ;-))) But when you love something, ..
I am really like a cranky old uncle that only dotes from afar on a precocious child. I have nothing to do with
PythonCard, have contributed nothing, etc. But I admire it from afar like a doting uncle.
But I haven't tried to use PythonCard in many weeks, a fact I hope to remedy this weekend. But I stopped
trying because, while I could see the brilliance of design and implementation, and potential for ease of use,
I couldn't get much farther due to lack of documentation.
What's a resource file anyway? What's an application framework? Yes I'm a clueless newbie, but that's what the
winner in this battle must do, create something as easy to learn and use as VB is for a clueless newbie. For
now, unfortunately, I find it easier to use Tkinter because I have tutorials, online documentation, and even
books. PythonCard actuall seems harder to me as it stands.
Maybe some of us could actually *help* create some documentation for PythonCard???? It's home page is at
SourceForge at http://pythoncard.sourceforge.net/
So go check it out. I really believe this is important. I'm going to try to use it this weekend. Lets discuss
it, then, OK?????
Ron Stephens
http://www.awaretek.com/plf.html
Hans Nowak
[an easy-to-use GUI builder]
> The only hope that I know of right now is PythonCard, only a six month old project led by Kevin Altis. I
> really admire Kevin and his team and I admire this project. I think they are ace coders (especially Kevin )
> who are capable of doing what needs getting done. But I am afraid they will miss the mark, partly for the same
> reason as Zope has its detractors, namely, lack of good, easy to use documentation for learning and using the
> language.
There's also Boa Constructor, which looks very promising, but
unfortunately it has the same state as PythonCard... pre-alpha.
If this ever really gets off the ground, it will be like having
a Delphi using Python rather than Pascal.
The current CVS version doesn't like wxPython 2.3.2, though. So
I couldn't test the latest code. :-(
http://boa-constructor.sourceforge.net/
--Hans
Kevin Altis
the sweet spot that PythonCard is aiming at. You'll need wxPython 2.3.2 or
higher and Python 2.x to give it a try, but you can at least look at screen
shots if nothing else.
http://pythoncard.sourceforge.net/
We are moving towards a component model, which will give you many of the
capabilities you are familiar with from using COM. There is a layout editor
(the resourceEditor sample) and automatic event binding and event handlers
that should look a lot like what you have used with VB. You can already
build standalone Windows executables using py2exe.
Input and criticism are welcome.
ka
"Resty Cena" <rc...@epcor.ca> wrote in message
news:458b194a.0112...@posting.google.com...
Tim Churches
>
> Bingo! Boy, oh, boy, do I agree with you on this. I think you hit the nail right on the head.
>
> Building a gui now using Python, compared to using VB, really sucks. Yes, it's that bad.
>
My experience with VB5 on a fairly complex application was that it was
easy to lay out the forms and bind the data-aware controls to a
database, but as soon as you attempted anything fancy you started to get
into trouble, either in terms of maintainability, memory and other
resource consumption and quite often outright crashes. The semi-OO
features in VB6 might have improved matters - I don't know because I
subsequently discovered Python.
My limited experience so far with wxPython is that the screen design is
definitely more fiddly than with VB, and binding controls to a database
is a more manual process (more work), but because everything is done
with Python, there is a strong tendency for things to just work, first
time. Of course, maintainability is vastly better than VB, mainly due to
wxPython's insistance that everything is a subclass of the basic
wxPython classes.
> Whichever reasonably easy to use language (right now I'm thinking either Python, Ruby, or a yet-to-be created
> language) first gets an open source gui builder built on top of it that is as easy to learn and use as VB will
> dominate the world.
I would suggest that world domination will only come when there is an
open-source application which matches the ease of use and, given that
ease-of-use, very broad capabilties of MS Access, which is MS Window's
killer app in my view. To programmers, Access is just "dumbed-down VB" -
indeed it is, but it is that dumbing-down that makes it so wildly
popular - there must be orders of magnitude more MS Access databases in
daily use than there are VB apps - at least that is my experience. Most
of those Access application are, to the eyes of an experienced
programmer, a complete dog's breakfast, but the alternative is having
end users managing their data in Excel spreadsheets, which is even
worse. But Access is also powerful - you can create some very
sophisticated, elegant, easy-to-maintain and powerful application in
Access which are almost completely code-free (and therefore almost
self-documenting). Indeed, I regard Access so highly that it even goes
some way to assuaging the sins and excesses of Microsoft (but not enough
for them to be forgiven!).
>
> It must, in my opinion, be as easy to use as VB for building simple input and output forms. That's the key. It
> doesn't have to be any more powerful or anything else. Just easy. This is a crying out loud need that anyone
> can see; someone will solve it, I am sure. It's too big an opportunityto be forever ignored. Unfortunately, I
> am beginning to hae my doubts that it will be a Python-based solution. I sure hope I'm wrong.
>
The Recall product being developed by The Kompany looks promising - it
is an Access clone (that's good), uses Python as its scripting language
and provides automated binding to the popular open source SQL engines
and to dBase files. However, it has a long way to go before it is as
slick and as capabable as Access, and is currently limited to the KDE
environment (although it is being ported to Windows). However, it is not
free, and for Windows users who already have MS Word and Excel on their
PCs, the choice between paying one or two hundred dollars for Access
versus a bit under $100 for Rekall is a no-brainer, given the widely
available support and huge knowledge-base which Access has built up over
the last 10 years (yes, it has been around in it current form with only
cosmetic and other minor changes for that long). For an Access
alternative to gain a foothold, it needs to be cost-free and very easy
to install, so that people will at least evaluate it as an Access
alternative.
> The only hope that I know of right now is PythonCard, only a six month old project led by Kevin Altis. I
> really admire Kevin and his team and I admire this project. I think they are ace coders (especially Kevin )
> who are capable of doing what needs getting done. But I am afraid they will miss the mark, partly for the same
> reason as Zope has its detractors, namely, lack of good, easy to use documentation for learning and using the
> language.
>
> Now, I know it's not fair to compare Pythoncard to Zope, as PythonCard is only six months old and pre-alpha,
> for heavens sake ;-))) But when you love something, ..
>
> I am really like a cranky old uncle that only dotes from afar on a precocious child. I have nothing to do with
> PythonCard, have contributed nothing, etc. But I admire it from afar like a doting uncle.
>
> But I haven't tried to use PythonCard in many weeks, a fact I hope to remedy this weekend. But I stopped
> trying because, while I could see the brilliance of design and implementation, and potential for ease of use,
> I couldn't get much farther due to lack of documentation.
>
> What's a resource file anyway? What's an application framework? Yes I'm a clueless newbie, but that's what the
> winner in this battle must do, create something as easy to learn and use as VB is for a clueless newbie. For
> now, unfortunately, I find it easier to use Tkinter because I have tutorials, online documentation, and even
> books. PythonCard actuall seems harder to me as it stands.
>
> Maybe some of us could actually *help* create some documentation for PythonCard???? It's home page is at
> SourceForge at http://pythoncard.sourceforge.net/
>
> So go check it out. I really believe this is important. I'm going to try to use it this weekend. Lets discuss
> it, then, OK?????
The main things which PythonCard needs are:
a) A drag-and-drop form editor (I believe this is being worked on)
b) Automated bindings of data-aware controls to underlying databases.
c) A drag-and-drop SQL query editor.
d) A banded report writer like Access or Crystal reports.
e) A really easy installation routine which handles the database
installation/adminstration as well.
f) Excellent documentation.
Not a small ask, but that's what it will take to become a real
competitor to Access.
Most of these things are being worked on in one part of the Python world
or another, but I suspect it will take several years and a conscious
effort at co-operation between various projects for the various parts to
make a whole which can rival and possibly outstrip MS Access.
Tim C
Paul Prescod
>
> The real source of growth for both Python and Ruby are the 3M VB
> developers worldwide. Whichever can provide what it is that VB
> developers like about VB on top of what Python and Ruby natively offer
> will hit the jackpot.
Initially, VB was innovative. Now it is primarily popular because it is
an "industry standard" and has Microsoft's name on it. Unfortunately,
neither Ruby nor Python have either advantage. There is no doubt that
Ruby and Python could pick up SOME of the VB.NET diaspora but I have a
sense that in the long run, Microsoft will reassert control of those
developers using its marketing muscle.
Nevertheless, I agree that that market is huge and largely untapped.
Paul Prescod
Bill Bell
Paul Prescod <pa...@prescod.net> wrote:
> Dave Thomas wrote:
> >
> > ... Instead, Ruby will attract folks from outside the
> > Python world. Ruby and Python differ in philosophy and _feel_. Some
> > folks like one, some the other. I don't see it as competition. I see
> > it as choice.
>
> Is there really a difference? Pepsi and Coke are choices. They are
> also in competition. They have a somewhat different taste but are more
> similar than different. In the long run, there will come a day when
> they've taken as much of the market share of other drinks away as they
> will, and the primary competition will be between the two of them.
I haven't been following this thread; forgive me if my comment is
redundant.
The above exchange reminds me of what marketers have learned
about the effect of increasing the number of alternative brands of
goods and services in a particular market segment. It is simply that,
to a point, the more brands that exist the bigger the market. Or,
IOW, the entry of a new brand may deprive the original brands of
some of their percentage market shares; however, the overall value
of the market increases.
As software people very much interested in certain ways of getting
work done (ie, Python and Ruby)--not to mention enjoying
ourselves!--this is likely to help each of us, provided one does not
cling to products and methods that are on their ways out.
"It is the time that you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important."--St-Exupery
Bill Tate
> PHP is a language absolutely optimized to solve a particular problem.
> PHP's inventor does not try to claim that it is the best programming
> language. Rather he claims that it is the programming language that is
> completely optimized for solving one and only one problem: dynamic web
> pages.
>
I do agree with what you saying re: PHP and dynamic web pages. But
isn't Zope supposed to be able to do that as well? Yet, Zope doesn't
appear (perhaps only to myself) to enjoy the same kind of enthusiasm
even amongst Python devotees. You have Python programmers that have
probably tried - even more than once I suspect - to "get" Zope but
haven't as yet succeeded. My background is mechanical engineering and
civil engineering, so my tendency is to tackle problems by going back
to first principles or by stepping back and looking at the
fundamentals. In the case of zope, the problem isn't that the product
lacks this or that feature, its popularity suffers from the fact that
people can't figure out how to get it to work for them - that's like
starting with 2 strikes against you at bat in today's market.
Zope by no means defines the universe of what Python can do, however,
if it doesn't get the kind of traction ultimately hoped for, I can
imagine that it COULD be PERCEIVED as a "setback" of sorts for Python
amongst those who represent the "skeptical" and/or "non-converted"
Zope represents one of the most visible products using python out
there; if it is ultimately marginalized, I don't think you can simply
dismiss the negative consequences of such a result as being isolated
only to Zope. Regrettably, false perceptions often carry a greater
weight than fact.
Resty Cena
> I couldn't agree more. Thus you won't be surprised that in many ways that is
> the sweet spot that PythonCard is aiming at. You'll need wxPython 2.3.2 or
> higher and Python 2.x to give it a try, but you can at least look at screen
> shots if nothing else.
>
> http://pythoncard.sourceforge.net/
>
> We are moving towards a component model, which will give you many of the
> capabilities you are familiar with from using COM. There is a layout editor
> (the resourceEditor sample) and automatic event binding and event handlers
> that should look a lot like what you have used with VB. You can already
> build standalone Windows executables using py2exe.
>
Constructor) very intently (I did some educational stuff in HyperCard
a long time ago). I must congratulate you and the team for the
tremendous progress made in such a short time.
Tim Churches made this list in another posting. I'd put (a), (b), and
(e) as my top priority.
The main things which PythonCard needs are:
a) A drag-and-drop form editor (I believe this is being worked on)
b) Automated bindings of data-aware controls to underlying databases.
c) A drag-and-drop SQL query editor.
d) A banded report writer like Access or Crystal reports.
e) A really easy installation routine which handles the database
installation/adminstration as well.
f) Excellent documentation.
Best wishes,
rmc
Michael Hudson
> Yes, I've been checking out some old binaries, and strip was available
> as early as 1.4. (Don't know about any older versions.)
It's present in revision 1.1 in CVS from 1990; tags suggest this was
before the release of version 0.9.8; I'd be surpsried to find it
wasn't in the original version posted to alt.sources.
Cheers,
M.
Arthur Siegel
>When one of Python's killer apps takes over the universe (Zope, Pygame,
>Alice, Mojonation whatever), Python will take over the universe.
I am confused by the discussion only to the extent that it is my
perception that Python slower but surely *is* taking over the universe.
Steady as we go.
Precisely because of the reasons you point to. It is wonderfully general
purpose, with an appeal to such a wide audience needing to solve
widely divergent problems, and coming to *their* problem with widely
divergent backgrounds and experience.
The only misstep I can see at this point is to skew Python's development
in a particular direction to solve a particular problem for a particular
segment
of its potential audience - whether it be the novices, biochemists,
mathematicians
or web application builders.
Modules aside, of course.
Art
Gerson Kurz
wrote:
>I feel that Ruby is so similar in design, purpose, and objectives to
>Python, that it competes directly with Python for developers' mind share.
Here are some comments on the "Features of Ruby", as advertised on
http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/whats.html.
<warning, flammable>
> Ruby has simple syntax, partially inspired by Eiffel and Ada.
I would consider neither Eiffel nor Ada having a inspiring and simple
syntax. Eiffel is for business people who have outgrown COBOL. I think
the Python syntax is by far the cleanest syntax I've seen; and that
Ruby has *a lot* of perlisms in it.
> Ruby has exception handling features, like Java or
> Python, to make it easy to handle errors.
Call me oldfashioned, but I don't like exception handling - I like
if-then-else and error checking style. Exception handling is cool for
exceptions - that is: *unlikely* situations -, but it is not cool for
something as commonplace as open() failing because the file doesn't
exist.
> Ruby's operators are syntax sugar for the
> methods. You can redefine them easily.
There was once an aprils-fool joke called "Generalizing Overloading
for C++ 2000" (See http://www.research.att.com/~bs/whitespace98.pdf).
So much for the need to redefine operators.
> Ruby is a complete, full, pure object oriented
> language: OOL. This means all data in Ruby is
> an object, not in the sense of Python or Perl,
> but in the sense of Smalltalk: no exceptions.
> Example: In Ruby, the number 1 is an instance
> of class Fixnum.
I've always found it terrible that languages try to *force* a paradigm
onto your code. As wittness java: isn't it a joke that "everything has
to be a class" and then they introduce static member functions just to
get a main()? I like pythons pragmatic approach *much* better: You can
do OOP where you need it, and use other things when you feel like it.
> Ruby features single inheritance only, *on purpose*.
> But Ruby knows the concept of modules (called
> Categories in Objective-C). Modules are collections
> of methods. Every class can import a module and so
> gets all its methods for free. Some of us think that
> this is a much clearer way than multiple inheritance,
> which is complex, and not used very often compared with
> single inheritance (don't count C++ here, as it has
> often no other choice due to strong type checking!).
That reminds me of how the book "Inside OLE2" advertises COMs
non-support for multiple inheritance with the argument "you don't need
it to do OOP", while really its just forcing you to use more complex
design when simple multiple inheritance would do. I also like the way
python features add-in classes.
</warning, flammable>
Dr. David J. Ritchie, Sr.
"Dr. David J. Ritchie, Sr." wrote:
> ...I am probably on shaky
> ground here due to ignorance...
At least on topic in regard to the above anyway ;-} and somewhat
on the topic of what doex language X have that makes it more attractive (or
less attractive) than Python, I'd like to say that it almost seems like Python
is not that far away from allowing as a language feature:
from module.python.org import *
or
from module.python.org import graphics
where "module.python.org" is some internet node.
It would seem that such a feature would embrace and
include as part of Python the Java capability of
incorporating classes over the net and up the ante on
the .net initiative (remember what I said
about ignorance here).
Wouldn't this go some way towards solving the problem of
encouraging more module sharing a la Perl's CPAN but in a
Python-esque way...?
Oleg Broytmann
> > Ruby has exception handling features, like Java or
> > Python, to make it easy to handle errors.
> Call me oldfashioned, but I don't like exception handling - I like
> if-then-else and error checking style. Exception handling is cool for
> exceptions - that is: *unlikely* situations -, but it is not cool for
> something as commonplace as open() failing because the file doesn't
> exist.
Ok, let me call you oldfashioned. Errno chcecking is good in local
context:
file = open(...)
if not file: report_error()
But is not so easy to pass errno to upper context. To explain what I mean
I am writing a pice of code using exceptions:
def top():
try:
upper()
except IOError:
report_error()
def upper():
data4 = lower()
process(data4)
def lower():
file = open(...)
retunr file.read(4)
Now please rewrite the code without exceptions, using errno checking.
Oleg.
--
Oleg Broytmann http://phd.pp.ru/ p...@phd.pp.ru
Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.