Python component model

[Peter Maas]

Bruno Desthuilliers schrieb:
 > Marc 'BlackJack' Rintsch wrote:
 > (snip)
 >   Python itself is a RAD tool.
 >
 > +1 QOTW

No, please stop self-assuring, self-pleasing QOTWs! This afternoon
I was in the local book warehouse and went to the computer book
department. They had banned 2-3 Python books together with some
Perl- and C/C++ stuff into the last row. At the regular place I found
a huge pile of Java books and - in comparison to Java - a small but
growing number of books about Ruby in general, Ruby on Rails and -
new to me - JRuby.

Now I don't think that Ruby is a bad language. But I think Python is
better and it started earlier. I don't know whether Ruby on Rails was
a fluke or the result of clever analysis. Since a large part of
programming is web programming it is not bad to have a good and visible
tool in place to attract programmers. It is also a good idea to hook on
Java's success but while Jython 2.2 is in alpha state since 3 years I
see an increasing number of books/articles telling how to migrate from
Java to (J)Ruby. Since I started using Python 4 years ago I hear Ruby
people announce with an amazing audacitiy that Ruby is bound to be number
one and will for sure leave Python behind.

To prevent this to happen parts of the Python community should have a
more critical attitude to the language. Too often I hear the same
mantras being repeated over and over again (GIL, self, IDE etc.). I
don't say these mantras are all wrong but perhaps it would be good to
remove the GIL just to stop people talking about Python's lack of
multi-threading or polish Python's class syntax to stop people talking
about Python's OO being bolted on etc. Programmers often choose their
languages by very silly reasoning (silliest being the indentation issue)
and maybe we should take the silliness into account instead of laughing
about those silly folks.

I for my part would be happy to see a Delphi-like RAD tool for Python,
a reference implementation for web programming as part of the standard
library, Jython 2.5, Python for PHP or whatever attracts new programmers.

Peter Maas, Aachen