merits of Lisp vs Python

[John Nagle]

Paul Rubin wrote:
> "Chris Mellon" <arkanes at gmail.com> writes:
> 
>>Any *real* hosting provider is going to support whatever
>>language and environment I tell them to, because I'm going to pay them
>>a lot of money for excellent support and if they give me any trouble I
>>will go with someone who provides what I want.

    Who are you buying from?

> Hosting providers are generally not in the business of doing anything
> like that, except the low end ones that mostly support PHP.  
> 
> 
>>What was *meant* was low priced, zero maintenance, reasonably reliable
>>consumer level hosting. Thats a totally different market, it's not
>>"industrial strength", and it doesn't merit the emphasis on *real*
>>provider. And it is true that in that realm Python is not well
>>represented.
> 
> 
> Python is not so well represented in "industrial strength" hosting
> either; that kind of hosting generally leaves language support up to
> the customer.

     The industry trend seems to be towards two dedicated server offerings.
One is dedicated hosting in a relatively controlled manner, with web based
server control and a somewhat locked down environment.  You get
root access, but if you mess with the controlled environment, it's
your problem if anything breaks.  The Plesk control panel is widely
used for this.

     The other offering is "power, pipe, and ping" - an empty machine in
a rack.  What you do with it is your problem.

     In neither case is the Python environment typically ready for serious use
out of the box.

     There's denial in the Python community that this is a problem, but it is.
The Ruby on Rails people get it; they work to provide a seamless experience
for web developers.  Which is why their market share is way up over two years
ago.

     Here's an overview of the dedicated server industry from the Gartner
Group:

http://www.savvis.net/NR/rdonlyres/E2C3E79F-8F8D-46D0-9718-E26C76805D0F/13782/SAVVISPositionedasLeaderinGartnerNAHostingMQGARTNE.pdf

     There's an emphasis on standardized offerings from the major players.
Customized environments are usually either user-managed or offered
as part of enterprise IT outsourcing.

				John Nagle