j2ee vs. python (and what our evil competitors are saying about python)

[Alex Martelli]

Terry Reedy wrote:
        ...
> PS.  The notion that competitor would try to attack product by
> attacking invisible-to-user implementation language strikes me as
> bizarre.  Reeks of desperation.

It does in fact happen quite often -- a technology used in the
making of a product is targeted for 'for' or 'against' marketing,
rather than user-visible aspects of the product.  It's in
particular quite prevalent in software.  I recall a competitor,
back when I was with think3, who made a great splash about how
they had converted their PDM product from C++ to Java -- then,
a couple years later, another great splash about how good it was
that they had converted from Java to C++.  Our salespeople did
not have a particularly hard time with that -- just showing
prospects the competitor's press cuttings from the _two_ conversions
side by side made for a guaranteed barrel of laughs and spontaneous
customer quips about looking forward to yet another round in a
couple more years about another conversion back to java.  But
that was a _particularly_ clueless case, of course.

The overall idea is not deeply different from detergent
commercials of the '50s "now with new miracle ingredient XK7!".
In theory the customer couldn't care less about XK7 -- but it's
hoped he or she will take it as a proxy for this now being a
better detergent.  I don't think detergents &c are marketed
that way any more -- if anything you're likely to see something
about "all-organic, natural" etc -- but many other products still
are...


Alex