[EVALUATION] - E02 - Support for MinGW Open Source Compiler

[Pat]

Stephen,

I appreciate your responses.  Maybe "school bullies" was an
exaggeration on my part.  At the same time, I'm not sure it is good for
the Python community to expect everyone to roll up their sleeves and
hack at something to make it work.  (And I don't mean to imply that you
hold that opinion.  But far too many others *have* expressed that.)
It's a marketing issue as much as anything.  Why is Apple doing so
well?  They make everything simple.  Now the techies will argue that
they make some things too simple (like the iPod), but it's hard to deny
that simple things that work consistently without any fuss have a
broader appeal with the public at large.

I think the same applies to developers.  Not every programmer is
willing to go through a lot of pain and effort just to get something
simple to work.  I, for one, am willing to go through that pain to save
users of my product (who happen to be developers) from having to do the
same.  But I don't think any less of my users.  I'm as lazy as they
are.  I like simple things that work consistently without any fuss too.
 :-)

Patrick K. O'Brien
Orbtech    http://www.orbtech.com
Schevo     http://www.schevo.org
Pypersyst  http://www.pypersyst.org