The Ideals of a Python Hacker (was: Poll Results)

[Jeff Hinrichs]

> I may be a statistical anomaly but I'm almost 55. I now have two
> paying Python projects on the go. True, one is funded by a
> university. However, the other one is for a purely commercial play.
> The president of the company, like me, is a some breed of anarchist.
I wouldn't say that your an anomaly.  I'm 36 with 3 kids and I've been
programming in python for 3 months at my day job.

We were an all MS shop but were looking for a way around the beast.  It
started with DNS servers on Linux and then we ripped out exchange and
replaced it with Cyrus/Exim.  More upheaval yet to come as we rip MS out bit
by bit.

Then I came across a cool python app on source forge
(http://edna.sourceforge.net/)  It was the app that made me take a look at
python.  The more I looked the more I liked.  I haven't fired up VB in those
3 months either and management is pleased with the results.

I've built an XML catalog generator that uploads are inventory database to
Ariba.  This saved a big customer from getting away and brought in a couple
new ones to boot.   Add to that a number of boring db reports and customer
mailer programs.

I am quite confident that Python is going to see at least a small boom in
the next 8 - 12 months with others like me.  This is a good thing.  Small
and mid-sized businesses represent a significant portion of the computer
industry and they are definitely not happy with Microsoft.   Change is
coming.

-Jeff