Python and VS.Net

[Anton Vredegoor]

srijit at yahoo.com topposted:

>1) Both Java and .NET are going to stay and keep competing with each
>other for developers' mindshare.

Yes, it's a problem, I would be better to have a general framework but
initiatives by closed source developers can not provide such a thing.

>2) At present Python 2.3 for Windows is based on VC6. This cannot
>continue for ever. I consider absence of compatability of Python with
>VC7/VS.NET as a major threat for Python's future.

Windows is but a platform among many. IMO now would be the time to
drop VC in favor of mingw or another free compiler with public
sourcecode.

<snip point three and four, no discussion here!>

>5) Even now, it is not easy to convince management about Python's
>adavantages in corporate world. It will be come more difficult, in
>future, if Python.NET is not available.

In Europe there is some initiative to use public source code in
governmental settings. Since the world at large is drifting towards a
knowledge based economy, selling computer programs based on
proprietary sourcecode will not be a feasible alternative anymore some
time in the future.

As a result software industries will have to migrate into service
based billing systems, but the bills will be paid by bills as I will
try to explain below. A service industry can be more efficient the
more it knows about its clients and the industry is already deploying
initiatives towards this goal, see for example the microsoft passport
initiative. 

However people seem to get more and more reluctant to provide
information without receiving equal information "value" back because
it's slowly being realized that information is the new money and
industries that do not follow the new information exchange "laws of
nature" will be left behind.

In stark contrast to the old value system that was money based, in the
knowledge based value exchange system one will receive more that will
spend more. The reason for this is that by freely providing
information one enables other information sources to return more
specialized highly valuable information in return, however this value
is also highly personalized. What you want to know is not necessarily
what I want to know. For the moment it is still impossible to make a
computer that thinks better than a human so until that happens humans
will be the producers of the new kind of currency.

Taking these two peculiarities -increasing value return by giving away
value, and highly personalized value production and consuming- it is
clear that only systems that do not cache information or impede
information flow will be the survivors of the new market.

So if one must worry, worry about google compliance instead of about
microsoft compliance ;-) Of course google itself will survive only if
it's not going to make the mistake of trying to sell its service for
money or passwords\email adresses\logins\cookies. Google will get
"rich" just by getting to know what you want to know and by freely
providing this knowledge to those who want to know *that* and thereby
getting to know what *those* want to know, enabling them to freely
provide even more information ... etc. A key concept here is not
forcing the user to provide information, but providing information
based on information request.

>6) Ruby users are also taking initiative to make Ruby work with .NET
>framework. Refer http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&frame=right&th=9fa784e70c5dc0cf&seekm=20030716140638.M85561%40deltadata.dk#link1
>
>I am interested to learn what core python team is thinking about
>compatability of Python 2.x, 3.x with Windows/VC7/VS.NET.

Me too, but this question should probably be asked in the Python
developers mailing list, which according to my analysis above should
be turned into a newsgroup as soon as possible. Also they'd better
answer that they're going to migrate to mingw-compiling soon :-)

Personally I'm still using windows products (w2000 and w98) but I'm
leaning more and more to using Cygwin for Python related tasks, and
unless microsoft is about to make a 180 degree turn in its philosophy
about releasing sourcecode (it has happened before with some company,
see for example netscape) my next OS will probably be Linux or some
other open source thingy.

Anton.