more on marketing (spring 2009)

[kirby...@gmail.com]

I've watched a fair amount of Monty Python and would bell curve it
around TV-14, same rating as Jay Leno, other late night TV, but such
content airs Saturday Mornings too no? Or what's SpongeBob or Family
Guy? In any case, there's this aura around computer languages, I'm
convinced. Or lets say there isn't one. Then is marketing falling
down on the job?

I've been looking into these questions lately, as I'm aware of other
marketing issues, such as this "scripting language" moniker. I've
seen Perl meetings where people felt under attack by this label, and
who took the wise course of owning it, making it their friend. Like
of course we're into "scripting" if that means being highly productive
and dashing out working code to do the same job another programmer
might take six weeks to get done in say FORTRAN or one of those. It's
not like anyone's embarrassed for having serious Perl skills.

Related journal entry:
http://controlroom.blogspot.com/2009/04/whats-scripting-language.html

Then along came "agile" and the business community really liked that
one, stole it from FOSS bosses, repurposed it to mean whatever they
wanted it to mean, like they did with "tensegrity" (I'm not mad at
Carlos Castaneda though as that helped bring the right kind of
anthropological thinker into our circle (he started using that word,
for those who weren't tracking -- long story who CC is if that's also
not on your radar, check Amazon for Don Juan books)).

Anyway, you'll see "agile" all over the place, not in connection with
software per se nor even eXtreme programming really, just something
splashy to introduce in hotel ballrooms as a topic for management.
However, given Python's "familiar" (in the Golden Compass sense) i.e.
a snake called "a python", this word "agile" just sticks to it almost
instinctively.

Like you wouldn't think of "an agile ruby" usually; that just doesn't
translate, even though Ruby is an agile enough language (too agile?
mutable strings?), as is Perl. But an "agile python" is just the
right image, as snakes have that "agile" way of acting, kinda like Kaa
in the fun Disney film (yes, they might be slippery and slimy too,
although real snakes tend to not be that way).

Kevin Altis first introduced me to the term "agile" as I recall, at
least in this context (I met up with him and his partner recently, out
on a stroll).

Where I come down in all of this is with questions like "if Python
were to produce some commercials for itself, what would these look
like?" I come back with something more like a vodka commercial than a
child's toy commercial i.e. Python the language is definitely "for
grownups" and yet runs well and comfortably on such as the XO i.e.
it's very friendly to kids, in the sense of harmless and forgiving (as
computer languages go -- still possible to hang yourself with too much
"spaghetti code" or whatever).

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=child+python

Kids around the world have pet pythons and love them. Demonizing
snakes is a kind of species bigotry we hope the ape people grow out
of. The snake people deserve more respect.

I actually have a storyboard for a vodka commercial, developed with
two actresses in mind, as train robbers in some Wild West setting. I
won't give away the punch line, but it's definitely funny, you may
have already guessed it, or are one of the two women, following my
links (hi Hyzy).

In the meantime, what I'm getting used to seeing are montage or
tableau type arrangements where a national flag or company theme will
predominate, giving a spin to the official logo. I've come across
these examples from the Philippines lately, plus have a few more in my
blog:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/17157315@N00/3544467917/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/17157315@N00/3544467795/in/photostream/
http://controlroom.blogspot.com/2008/02/pythonic-art.html

Whatever people have in their collections would be of interest, but
maybe you're holding back to sell on eBay or something.

Kirby Urner
PSF '09