Slogan: Getting Rich Overnight

[dan]

Great post!  Yes, I felt the same way when I first saw the language. 
It's funny because I had a company and we bought a company, and they
said they were using Python as their scripting language, but we had to
close that division and I never really saw it.

Then much later, I had a project that needed something with a clear
syntax, more like english than C++.  I fiddled with Python and fell in
love.  I haven't felt this way since I learned Basic in 7th grade (I
know Basic sucks now, but then there was nothing else), or when I did
my first assembly programming, or fiddled with Lisp and Forth.  I
never felt that way with C/C++, I have always felt like I was climbing
uphill.

When I first saw the indentation-critical, bracket-less syntax, it was
like "Oh my god, how many years have I wasted trying to see where the
braces correspond?"

Many years ago I had an idea for a similar syntax, but I never pursued
it.  Now I don't have to, it is right there for me!  This may sound
silly, but since using Python, I have felt this wierd sense of
liberation -- like my decision to become a programmer finally has
meaning.  I work for 2 or 3 hours, and I have coded so much I have to
stop and think...  With the typical strictly-typed langs popular in
the last 15 years, I never feel productive.  I am at war with the
compiler, the linker, the libraries... it's a fight from beginning to
end.

I have many friends whose brains must be wired differently.  They love
the feeling of control a tough compiler gives them... they believe the
compiler should do all the work for them.  I am just different... I
have always loved dynamic languages.  I just want a thing to be
whatever I want, and if I change my mind, I don't want to
*necessarily* have to make new prototypes, new header files..  I just
want to stick something else in that container, even though I never
thought I would, and I never warned anyone.

It's just -- well, it's freedom to code your own way.  It's the
antidote to code rage.

Just my thoughts, late at night...

Keep up the good work!!

Christian Tismer <tismer at tismer.com> wrote in message news:<mailman.1060398016.22259.python-list at python.org>...
> Dear friends.
> 
> During a conversation with good friends and newly acquired
> Pythonista, we were discussing Python, what it is in essence,
> and what it is giving to us.
> 
> The people were Dinu Gherman, Giorgio Giacomazzi,
> a promizing newcomer in the Python noosphere, and myself.
> 
> We were discussing how to advertize for Python, and Dinu
> spread some of the recent library enhancements, like
> 
> - email package
> - XML parsers
> - distutils
> - add lots of other great stuff, here.
> 
> Then, after a while of silence, Giorgio said something like
> """
> Well, right.
> But despite of the libraries, I was hit by pure Python,
> by the following, simply by using it interactively:
> 
> There are these lists, these tuples, and these dicts.
> They are immediately there, at my fingertips. And this is
> a feeling that I never had, before. Especially these dicts
> are incredible.
> 
> This was a feeling like 'getting rich overnight'.
> """
> 
> I loved this statement very much, and I have to say, this
> is essentially my feeling for myself, since many years now.
> I could imagine that this might be a candidate for next year's
> Python congress' slogan. "Python makes you rich, overnight".
> Not by money, in the first place, but by multiplying your
> own capabilities, immediately.
> 
> It needed the fresh experience of a newcomer to become aware
> of this, again.
> 
> The ambiguity is obvious. On first reading, it will attract
> many. On second reading, those who are thinking "ahh, ohh, yes,
> not I understand" will remain. But that's ok for a good slogan!
> 
> got rich overnight by Python!
> 
> being rich since 1800 nights now - sincerely -- chris