future of python vs java?

[Alex Martelli]

Mylene Reiners wrote:
        ...
> But why would you use Java in .NET? We have J2EE. Let them be competitors.

One can reasonably be of the opinion that Java is a more suitable
language for his/her application than C# or other "native .NET
offerings", and at the same time just as reasonably convinced that
the frameworks / libraries / tools of .NET are preferable to those
of J2EE, again for his/her application.  Whether such a person would
be right or wrong is irrelevant (you don't know his/her application,
so you can't really say).  The point is, it should be obvious that
one may prefer language A1 and libraries / environment B2, rather
than _having_ to use libraries / environment A2 as the price to pay
for the privilege of using language A1, or language B1 as the price
to pay for the privilege of using libraries / environment B2.

This crucial point -- that language preferences and preferences
about libraries and environments ARE quite normally decoupled -- is
often lost on Java fans, who seem to think of a language and a
huge set of libraries and environments as somehow welded.  Most
fortunately, they aren't.  People who prefer the Python language,
in particular, can freely and independently choose to use the set
of libraries and environments designed for Java (thanks to jython),
or those that Classic Python supports (i.e., with some wrapping
work, just about anything available for/in C or C++, plus Python
specials such as Numeric and the like).  It's a pity that people
who prefer Python can't just as easily choose to use the set of
libraries and environments that rely on .NET, but presumably if
and when effective demand (in an economic sense -- directly or via
the "programmers scratching their own itches" mechanism that is
often seen in open-source) emerges, so will "netython" or whatever.


Alex