Why isn't Python king of the hill?

[Mark Brady]

J2EE did it. I've been a Java developer for 4 years (beginning to hate
it now, python has me!). Just before J2EE was released/hyped around
Dec '99 Java was in big trouble. The hype was beginning to actually
turn against Java when applets couldn't deliver the goods. Servlets
were the turning point and even though alone they couldn't displace MS
ASP they were the only remaining usage of Java that was really
growing. Sun realised where the real market for Java was and developed
J2EE. This was done partly by integration of existing APIs and the
creation of others such as EJB. They moved Java from the browser and
client side to the backend. There is nothing on the server at the
moment to compare to J2EE. It is complete and very scalable.

Sure there is nothing you can't do in Python that you can do in J2EE
but you will end up creating a lot of the functionality that J2EE
developers take for granted yourself. Zope doesn't even compare to a
decent J2EE app server (with JMS, ORB, Servlet/JSP engine, EJB server,
etc.) for this type of stuff. Zope is excellent for what it does but
it can't be all things to all people. A Python J2EE style app server
(*not* content management server) would go a long way to making Python
a viable Java replacement.

Luckily we have Jython and hopefully MS will fix the .NET CLR to
support dynamic scripting languages better so that we can use python
inside both J2EE and .NET.

These views come from my own attempts to introduce Python in the
companies I've worked in and why for them at least, J2EE is king of
the Hill.

Regards,
Mark Brady.