[python-advocacy] How programming language webpages should be designed

[Jason Baker]

On Tue, Nov 10, 2009 at 1:59 PM, Carl Karsten <carl at personnelware.com> wrote:
> 1. potential python developers - need to write something, get to pick
> the tools, wondering what python has to offer, maybe considering a
> career choice.
> 2. python developers (old and new, but the choice has been made)
> 3. python users (I have an python app, I need help making it run)
> 4. technical management that gets to pick tools for a team
>
> I have no problem catering to all 4 groups, but each groups needs are
> fairly different and much like pycon talk selection, there are more
> options than there is room for, so we have to figure out what to cut.

Personally, I think that it's easy to make the decision to cut #3 out.
 Not because they aren't important, but more because there's not
really a lot we can do to help them aside from giving instructions on
how to install python.

Personally, I think that we need to focus primarily on #1 for the
front page.  I think that will be best for groups 1 and 4 (and likely
2 as well).

The kind of marketing that we're doing right now sounds like the kind
of thing that would attract PHBs who are likely to say "oh, that's
cute" and then choose Java or C# anyway because they're "standard".  I
think that we should really go after technical decision makers who are
actually technical.  And I think they're more likely to be swayed by
two things:

 1. The amount of available people who know the language
 2. The technical merits of it

And I think the best way to address both of those concerns is to make
it easy to learn the language, not to say things like "Industrial
Light and Magic is using this, why aren't you?"