Python_Sightings_?

[Cousin Stanley]

Kevin ...

You're absolutely right that a user  SHOULDN'T  have to care
about what language an application is written in,
but I've found through experience that many, myself included,
usually  DO  care and for varied reasons ...

Laura Creighton has cited personal experience problems
with a particular language and I agree that this
is likely to be a primary reason one would choose
App_A/lang_X  over  App_A/lang_Y ...

A user's personal experience, either positive or negative,
with other applications written in a paticular language
will definitely send them either toward or away from
MORE of the same, and often, as in other facets of life,
FIRST impressions can be difficult to circumvent
when making future decisions ...

Robin Becker mentioned other considerations
such as maintainainablity and portability
which could impact language-based application choice ...

Cousin  rzed  provided an explicit example
in considering additional download/install requriements
that could possibly plague a potential user ...

A readily available, functional, diverse, large, and stable
user application repository in any language, even if scattered,
SHOULD help to drive both new users and new developers
toward that language, and that  IS  a  GOOD  thing ...

If additional application base  environment/shell/run-time
requirements are minimized, it is even  GOOD-ER ...

My current interest in such a Python Applicaton Repository
was somewhat retrospective since I've just spent the past
6 or 7 months learning to program a bit of Python,
and then realized that other than program development tools
I hadn't actually used any Python based applications myself
to see how they might fly on my particular machine ...

As a potential Python developer I'm also interested
in seeing some real-world examples of how Python applications
are distributed and installed from a user viewpoint ...

Poor functionality will kill application usage and popularity
right out of the box ...

Distribution and installation issues are likely
to rank very high in application selection
and these issues are usually language predicated ...

Cousin Stanley