Will GPL Java eat into Python marketshare?

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Wed, 15 Nov 2006 22:58:55 +0000, John Bokma wrote:

> Harry George <harry.g.george at boeing.com> wrote:
>  
>> Short answer: People use Python instead of Java because people (at
>> least intelligent people) tend to avoid pain.
> 
> Intelligent people don't suffer from fanboy sentiments. They just pick a 
> language that works best for them.

Hang on, are we talking about intelligent people, or the sort of people
who like coding in Java? *wink*

Sorry, couldn't resist :)

Seriously though, there is no contradiction between the idea of "people
use Python instead of Java because they prefer to avoid pain" and "people
choose the language that works best for them". They could both be true (or
neither, but that's another story). We're all individuals, with our own
little quirks, but we are all also human beings with a lot in common and
the idea of an objectively "less painful" language is not silly. It may
very well be that Python is objectively easier to use and less painful
than Java for the majority of people. (I have no opinion on whether that
it true, but merely note that it is a logical possibility.)

Ease of use is not the sole reason for choosing a computer language. It is
a virtue, but not the only virtue. I wouldn't like to see video drivers
written in pure Python.

The reality is, most programmers don't so much choose a language as
have one thrust at them. I estimate (and by estimate I mean guess) that
90% of coders have never learnt a second language, and 99% have never
learnt a third. We're spoiled here, because the sort of people who
regularly contribute to comp.lang.* are often those with experience
with three, four, a dozen languages -- hardly representative of the coders
who churn out VB code all day, or those who learn nothing but Java at Uni
and then go straight into a Java job. We often see on comp.lang.*
people who programfor the love of programming. They'd program even if they
weren't paid for it. But being a programmer is also done by those who
program for the pay, not for the love of the job. They don't go home and
night and spend three hours on Usenet answering newbies' questions.

In many universities and schools, the choice is often between Java (in
previous times C++) or nothing. People might choose Java in some sense,
but they can hardly be said to choose Java because it works best for them
if they know no other languages to compare it to! 

(The same naturally goes for those who only know Python, or any other
language.)



-- 
Steven D'Aprano