Python Popularity: Questions and Comments

[Resty Cena]

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. 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 <paul at prescod.net> wrote in message news:<mailman.1009581813.21884.python-list at python.org>...
> 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.
> 
>  Paul Prescod