python a bust?

[Anand Pillai]

I think my O.P has been taken out of context here. 

Python is a great language, it is flexible, agile, 
great for newbies, good for experts at the samt time,
allows for prototyping blah blah... I am sure everyone
in this group will tend to agree with most of these
oft repeated statements.

My question was that, "If it is such a great language, why
it is not getting the recognition it deserves"? 

Probably there is a need to change the attitude of Pythonistas
about their language. It needs to probably come out from that
"high pedestal" where books get written only if there is a definite
need percieved. One way to do that is may be, just may be to
actually create market for new python books. 

The "right" way to do this is by synergy. First we need to popularize
the language, get the website in right shape, evangelize it,
get it accepted by the Suits, then it will get accepted by the Suits
as their language of choice in s/w projects and in due course
every Java or C++ guy will be buying new Python books from the
bookstall. Ah, but this topic often gets discussed again and again
and I was wondering if there is a tendency to come full circle
starting from the book topic, without really achieving anything.

In fact, I have been commisioned to write a series of articles on 
Python in a popular computer magazine in India. I am trying to do what
I can to evangelize the language in and around where I live, as I
percieve potential in it, and perhaps potential for me to grow with
the language.

There is no way AFAIK any index to measure the popularity of a
language
by the plethora of books written on it. But it is common sense that
if there are many authors writing books on a language it has got to be
popular. Doesn't popularity mean the number of people interested in
a certain thing? So if 'n' guys are writing books on Python and 
'n*100' guys on C++, I would say, not as a techie, but as an average
person, that C++ is more popular than Python. 

There was a company called Wrox writing P2P (Programmer 2 Programmer)
books
on many technical topics. I think it got absorbed by Wiley recently.
Their choice of topics was "Popular" languages and technologies used
by
practicing software developers. I never saw a Python book in their
stable.
Of course, again dont start a thread about the technical perfection of
Wrox
books, since I know that their style & content cannot be compared with
an O'reilly nutshell book. But as again, I am not talking about
anything regarding
the "greatness" of the language, but just simple arithmetic.

-Anand

"Brandon J. Van Every" <try_vanevery_at_mycompanyname at yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<bp40pd$1kg9av$1 at ID-207230.news.uni-berlin.de>...
> John J. Lee wrote:
> > pythonguy at Hotpop.com (Anand Pillai) writes:
> > [...]
> >> There might have been thousands of books published in C/C++
> >> language and they have all helped to popularize it in one
> >> or the other way. Contrast, in the python world we have one
> >> Alex Martelli, one Wesley Chun, one David Mertz, really
> >> countable by hand.
> > 
> > And thank heavens for that.  Most books on C++ (and the same goes for
> > all kinds of other technical subjects) actually do nothing other to
> > make it harder to find the decent books.  Ironically, the good books
> > often seem to get published first, followed afterwards by a glut of
> > awful ones jumping on the bandwagon.  So much for competition...
> 
> But the questions are:
> 1) do the "crappy" books sell briskly to someone?
> 2) is a plethora of books a healthy sign for a language?