Pythonwin and .NET

[Maan Hamze]

Mark
Thanks for the comments.  The eye opener came to me at a recent Delphi 6
conference (we use Delphi for most of our compiled applications) when the
offical speaker of Borland/Ingres said that Delphi is moving toward being a
.NET provider.  I, personally, am quite wary of these overarching paradigms.
I can not make a good judgement so far since I do not know much about it.
Let me quote something from:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dndive/html
/data02222001.asp
"If you plan, like me, to dive into the sea of data access issues and
strategies, then make sure you pay due attention to the submerged, sharp
rocks of existing ADO code.
Software geologists state that this kind of rock originated during the
Post-Internet Era, after the first ODBC glaciation. Several finds of this
mineral code have been discovered in all the DNA systems built over the past
couple of years-a period of time that is no doubt the software counterpart
of a geological era."
This is an attitude that personally bothers me.  And quite the truth
Microsoft lacks the power of introspection and imagination to take advantage
of different languages.  It is a field that is strewn by unfinished
technologies and bombastic pedagogy from Microsoft.
Meanwhile, as it appears from the .NET Microsoft site, different companies
are scrambling to take advantage of .NET.  Incidentally ActiveState appears
in the different lists of 'Vendors and Tools."
What I anticipate is that other languages will make inroads into .NET which
will keep the alternatives open.
I think, anyway, that I am going to send that coupon for a free subscription
in the Fawcette .NET magazine.  Meanwhile, I just received from Amazon.com
the book you co-authored on Python and win32 to see what the very near
future may bring :)
Thanks,
Maan

"Mark Hammond" <mhammond at bigpond.net.au> wrote in message
news:3B997A5E.6010801 at bigpond.net.au...
> Maan Hamze wrote:
>
> > This is a question for Mark Hammond.
> > The Buzzword these days is .NET, and quite frankly I have not had the
time
> > to get familiar with this 'new' technology.
> > However, on all our NT servers we use PythonWin for ASP work; and in
> > addition, more recently, we got into the regular CGI Python scripts.  In
> > other words, we do depend on Pythonwin for ASP Python scripting.  Also,
> > recently, we are delving into using Python with COM objects beyond the
mere
> > use for web pages.
> > In other words, PythonWin is emerging by itself to be a centerpiece
package.
> > So the question is:
> > How will Microsoft .NET affect PythonWin and the way we do things
through
> > ASP and Python at least.  If there is a website where you comment on
these
> > things I can look at it.  Or you are welcome to offer some of your
comments
> > here.
>
> This is a hard and politically loaded question :)
>
> The new world (.NET) and the old world (Python, Perl, etc) are really
> quite distinct.  To see all the benefits of .NET, you assume a world
> based on .NET.  So while .NET has some obvious and significant benefits,
> it does require a leap of faith to fully exploit them.
>
> I believe it will be a few years before .NET really starts taking off.
> It will be lead mainly by corporates - people commited to being a
> "Microsoft Shop" for their own strategic reasons.  In my opinion, large
> IT shops filled with mediocre programmers have very good reasons for
> making such decisions, so I imply nothing negative about such places or
> decisions.
>
> I honestly do not know where Python and Perl really will fit in this new
> world.  .NET imposes certain requirements on programs, so that the
> benefits of .NET can be realized.  However, these requirements can often
> work against languages such as Python.  The dynamic and introspective
> nature of Python is unlikely to be able to be exploited, unless .NET
> itself grows these same capabilities - and when .NET grows them, we can
> expect C# to also grow them.
>
> For example, in the ideal world, you could implement a Python class with
> __getattr__() functionality, and use that class from Visual Basic or
> from C#.  This is only likely to be possible if .NET itself grows
> support for expressing this level of dynamic attribute access, and if
> .NET itself has it, we could expect the popular MS languages to also
> grow such features - ie, the equivilent of __getattr__ implementation in
> C# or VB.  Once everything gets to the point where Python can express
> these things in .NET, why would you still use Python?  As much as the
> *syntax* of Python is very nice, it is not only the syntax that makes us
> love the language - it is the language as a whole.
>
> So if .NET has all the features necessary to allow Python to be fully
> utilized by other .NET languages, many shops will simply choose to use
> these other languages instead of Python - braces aren't *that* bad :)
>
> If .NET never has this capability, it will mean that Python itself can
> only take advantage of Python's features - so why use the .NET
> implementation of Python at all?
>
> But heck - I thought OS/2 was a sure fire winner :)
>
> Mark (who is certainly not speaking for his employer:)
>