Python -- (just) a successful experiment?

[Kay Schluehr]

Martin P. Hellwig wrote:
> Kay Schluehr wrote:
> > Eric Pederson wrote:
> >
> >>Raise your hand if you think the best technology wins!
> >
> >
> > Who is interested in such a matter? Is this a forum dedicated to some
> > programming language or a popularity contest?
> >
> > If Python dies in a few years / looses attention but the Python Zen
> > survives in another language I have nothing to complain.
> >
> <cut>
> Ave!
> Although I think that the day that python is considerd dead is the same
> day that unix is truly dead.
> Ooh yes and I have heard for over two decades that unix-like systems are
> obsolete, so why is the install base only growing and has never been bigger?
>
> --
> mph

Of course "dead" has no absolute meaning for things that were never
alive.

May "infertile" be a better characterisation? If no new projects were
started using a certain language the language ( more precisely it's
runtime/libraries ) might become legacy and will be replaced
continously.

When the PyPy runtime becomes more mature and it's API somehow stable
we might see what is possible in the dynamic language area beyond the
current state of Python and also beyond Guidos projected Python3000. I
guess it will sprawl into several dialects pronouncing different
aspects: functional programming, concurrency, declarative programming a
mainline Python3000 and a legacy Python 2.X which remains to be
maintained.

Thinking about this prospects I don't actually believe that
Ruby-on-Rails will become a Python killer, just because it has a nice
installer.

Kay