Python Popularity: Questions and Comments

[Paul Prescod]

Ron Stephens wrote:
> 
>...
> 
> 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