Python does not play well with others

[Paul Boddie]

On 2 Feb, 03:46, Paul Rubin <http://phr...@NOSPAM.invalid> wrote:
>
> I'd say the functionality that John wants is the same that pretty much
> everyone wants, and it's much easier to get for other languages than
> for Python.

If the hosting provider doesn't want to install MySQLdb then it may
not be a technical issue - perhaps they just can't be bothered to
install it, possibly because there's no demand or benefit to the
bottom line in doing so. That said, I think that a large part of the
community does no-one any favours by "fashionably" requiring the most
cutting edge software, insisting on Python 2.5 in some cases, in order
for their stuff to work. Then again, getting stuff to work across
several versions (and combinations of several versions of several
packages) is an issue of release engineering, and it's no coincidence
that companies have made good business out of this kind of thing.

Perhaps Python needs a "backports" project where newer software is
backported to older Python releases. Alternatively, given the
increasing prominence of virtual server hosting, people might be
advised to consider one of those hosting plans: the benefits of being
able to install almost anything, often with modern operating system
distributions whose packages are updated, surely outweigh the
administrative demands and price differences in at least some
situations.

Paul