A Mountain of Perl Books + Python Advocacy

[Michael Hudson]

Wayne Izatt <wayne.izatt at myself.com> writes:

> Books are one thing, but a regular printed journal would be especially
> useful. A journal is visible, creates a strong sense of community, and is
> an easy way to combine advanced and general Python topics in one tight
> package. I wonder what the minimum number of Pythoners it would take to
> keep something like that afloat?

Hmm.  There's 
 
    http://www.pythonjournal.com

but it's dormant; however the Python community seems to be growing
exponentially (at least to judge by the volume on the newsgroup), so
it's might be worth having another go.  Of course this means getting
people to write stuff, organising things, and general effort.  I could
spare a few hours to such a cause, but perhaps not in any useful way
(do you *really* want an article about bytecodehacks <wink>?).

> lewst wrote:
> 
> > Now something I can't quite figure out is: why are there so many more
> > books on Perl out there than on Python?

It's been more popular for longer.  As I understand it, perl was
created to do be the gaffer tape of a unix system, so people knew it
when the web took off; however it seems that people are realising that
it might be a good idea to use a real programming language.

> > Searching through Fatbrain.COM (which is where I order my books from),
> > I found 68 books, 4 training manuals, and 2 eMatter documents on Perl.
> > Compare this to Python's 13 books and 2 eMatter documents.

This is changing *very* fast - Learning Python is only, what, a year
old - and that was the third real Python book (I think; there's PP and
IPwP - I'm not counting the little reference book).

[schnipp]
> > At this point I wondered if my brain was just different than all those
> > Perl junkies out there.  But now I really don't think so; I think it's
> > a question of awareness.  Perl is very publicized and well-known while
> > the better language is sitting here a dark corner unnoticed.  Sure
> > there will always be some religious fanatics that won't even give
> > Python a try, but I think Python's popularity could be vastly improved
> > with some serious advocacy work.  CNRI and/or PSA should seriously
> > look into funding a Python "marketing" campaign of sorts.  I think the
> > result would be allot of converts and more understanding and respect
> > for Python.

A year ago, I might have agreed with you; now I'm more concerned how
the Python community is going to evolve as it grows.

> >   "The verdict: Python is *waaaay* cool!  I'm sold.  It's clean, it's
> >   elegant, it's easy, and it's astonishingly powerful.  I'm not going
> >   to program anything longer than one screenful of script in Perl
> >   anymore.  I love Larry Wall dearly, but Guido van Rossum is the
> >   better designer -- I haven't had this much fun with a language since
> >   the glory days of LISP.  Eric sez check it out."

Python rocks.  I think it took me about a day to learn - it just fit
so well with my way of thinking.  I've now since learnt scheme,
eiffel, haskell, common lisp and bits of sundry other languages, but I
keep coming back to Python.

Cheers,
M.

-- 
well, take it from an old hand: the only reason it would be easier
to program in C is that you can't easily express complex  problems
in C, so you don't.                 -- Erik Naggum, comp.lang.lisp