Difficulty Finding Python Developers

[Roy Smith]

In article <7xpta8hqe7.fsf at ruckus.brouhaha.com>,
 Paul Rubin <http://phr.cx@NOSPAM.invalid> wrote:

> Roy Smith <roy at panix.com> writes:
> > I would put it slightly differently.
> > 
> > With Python, you can learn a useful subset of the language in a weekend.  
> > Control flow, statement syntax, and how to define and use functions.  
> > Assuming you're already familiar with the concepts of classes and 
> > exceptions (and just need to learn how python implements them), those 
> > are probably another weekend.
> 
> I think anyone using Python in a serious production project has to be
> ready to extend or debug the library modules and/or write new C
> extensions.

I guess it depends on what you mean by "serious production project".  
I've played with several of the extension APIs just to get a feel for 
what they're like, but I've never actually used any of them in anger.

Of course, I've used plenty of add-on modules (DB, LDAP, SNMP, etc), but 
I just downloaded them and started using them.  Certainly, *somebody* 
had to muck about in the C API (or SWIG, or Boost, or whatever) to get 
that done, but I've never felt the need.

Of course, I learned C in the days when it was assumed that anybody 
doing any "serious production project" in C would have to be able to 
dive into assembler once in a while :-)

> There are just too many surprising little gaps in the
> standard library and you run into them when you least expect it.

I'm sure there are, but can you give some examples of ones you've run up 
against?

> And the C API is quite cumbersome and not something a typical 
> programmer can really come up to speed on in a weekend.

No debate about that, but the C API is (IMHO) a very advanced topic and 
something that only a small fraction of Python programmers would ever 
need even know exists.  You certainly don't need to know about it to get 
useful work done with a basic subset of the language.