Python -- (just) a successful experiment?

[Paul Rubin]

bkhl at stp.lingfil.uu.se (Björn Lindström) writes:
> > That would imply that it included the Ruby language. Nothing stops the
> > Ruby on Rails packagers from making the Ruby on Rails distro a
> > superset of the Ruby distro, after all.
> 
> So you agree with me then? That _was_ exactly my point, after all. Not
> that you read it. After all, you might have been replying to some
> completely different posting - who could know?

I don't understand what you're getting at.  Either the RoR
distribution includes the Ruby language or else it doesn't.  From that
other post, I have the impression that it does, but I don't care
enough about Ruby to want to go check into it.

Or is your point that some third party could make a moby Python distro
that includes more runtime stuff than the python.org distro includes?
Yes, they could; that it's happened with Ruby and not with Python
suggests that Ruby is doing a better job attracting people to do stuff
like that.  I don't think the Ruby language is as nice as Python, so
the difference must be in the culture surrounding the language, rather
than the language itself.  Python culture often strikes me as
seriously dysfunctional.  See the "reinventing the wheel" thread of
the previous week or so, which was full of gnashers arguing that a
convenient unified distro isn't necessary since users should have
enough tenacity to download and configure umpteen separate components
themselves.