Why isn't Python king of the hill?

[Frank Mitchell]

Darren New wrote: 
> (I'm particularly amused by how Java 1.0 promised that AWT would be safe
> to code to and always around, while Java 1.1 deprecates it and Java 1.2
> I don't think is even going into new browsers at this point.)

Well, MS is dropping Java entirely, but Netscape 6 uses the Java 2
plugin.  Whether anyone will use Netscape 6 is another matter.

Opera also uses the Java 2 Plugin (which is larger than the whole
browser ...)

One of my pet peeves is that Sun lumped a whole bunch of packages into
the "Java standard" before they were field tested.  AWT was a mess to
begin with, and now the JDK can't get rid of it.  Even Swing depends on
some basic AWT classes.  (It's not truly deprecated in any version, but
it's subtly discouraged ...)

Python takes the opposite approach, of bundling libraries enough people
find useful.  Good for programmers, but bad for big corporations trying
to impose their product on a reluctant world, I guess.

-- 
Frank Mitchell (frankm at bayarea.net)
"The trouble with mornings is that they come when you're not awake."
-- from "A Window for Death" by Rex Stout