Python Evangelism

[Steve Holden]

Paul Boddie wrote:
> John Pote wrote:
> 
>>Over this side of the pond the good old British Post Office changed its name
>>to 'Consignia' in 2001.
> 
> 
> I thought it was actually the Royal Mail, but the brand history can be
> found here:
> 
> http://www.royalmailgroup.com/aboutus/aboutus8.asp
> 
> The fact that people confuse "Royal Mail" with "Post Office" might
> suggest something to brand experts, but I'd argue that pulling one of
> the names out of use, especially the one people tend not to use (but
> the one they've now chosen for the parent company), would suggest
> something else to normal people: it would either weaken the dual-named
> "superbrand" or merely be regarded with contempt. Examples can be found
> for this and other re-branding cases quite readily on the Internet, but
> don't search for 'Consignia "Royal Mail"' in Google, though, as it
> seems to result in a bizarre error page:
> 
> """
> We're sorry...
> ... but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer
> virus or spyware application. To protect our users, we can't process
> your request right now.
> """
> 
> Anyway, aside from bizarre technical moments like this, what you've
> described can probably be termed "brand suicide": the scrapping of a
> recognisable brand identity with something fashionable at a particular
> point in time that looks dated within a few years, and which has people
> wondering who they're doing business with (despite extensive
> publicity), only to discover that it's been the same company all along.
> 
> [...]
> 
> 
>>what's in a name? fortran, algol, rexx, hope, haskell, pascal, modula,
>>eiffel, B, C, J, tcl, pearl, ruby, rebol, cobol, basic, vb, .net, assembler,
>>forth, snobol, ada, prolog, simula, smalltalk, oberon, dylan, bob, ML et al
>>ad nauseum.
>> - is Python any less meaningful? Anyway I LIKE the chesse shop sketch!
> 
> 
> The problem with the Cheese Shop name, aside from sounding ridiculous,
> is that it isn't self-explanatory in an area which needs
> self-explanatory labelling. Consider the following conversations:
> 
> A: "I need to find something in Python that does this."
> B: "Have you tried the Python Package Index?"
> A: "Don't know why I didn't think of that!"
> 
> A: "I need to find something in Python that does this."
> B: "Have you tried the Cheese Shop?"
> A: "WTF is that?"
> [Lengthy, embarrassed explanation follows.]
> 
> Bizarre names may be cute (to some people) but they don't lend
> themselves to guessing or searching. Consequently, people who want
> answers yesterday aren't likely to be amused to eventually discover
> that the name of the resource they've been looking for is some opaque,
> three-levels-of-indirection-via-irony, in-crowd joke. And even acronyms
> like CPAN are better than wacky names, anyway.
> 
> Paul
> 
All true to some extent, but rather negated byt he fact that the first 
Google hot for "python package" is:

Python Cheese Shop : Home
Updated, Package, Description. 2006-03-09, PyISAPIe 1.0.0, Python ISAPI 
... 2006-03-07, matplotlib 0.87.1, Matlab(TM) style python plotting 
package ...
cheeseshop.python.org/pypi - 10k - 8 Mar 2006 - Cached - Similar pages

I still wish it had some explanaotry text on there, though. i can't help 
agreeing with you that "Cheese Shop" is just, well, cheesy.

regards
  Steve
-- 
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