When will Python go mainstream like Java?

[mk]

AON LAZIO wrote:
> That will be superb

Well I for one wouldn't want Python to go exactly Java way, see this:

http://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/charts/permanent-demand-trend.aspx?s=java&l=uk

This is the percentage of job offers in UK where the keyword "Java" appears.


Same for C#, it looks like C# is eating Java's lunch now:

http://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/charts/permanent-demand-trend.aspx?s=csharp&l=uk



What worries me somewhat (although not much) is that after long period 
of solid growth the market can't decide about Python:

http://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/charts/permanent-demand-trend.aspx?s=python&l=uk


I learned painfully that in corporate setting merits of a programming 
language do not matter much, it's more like "whatever catches the 
groupthink" at the moment. "Java is good because big ones select Java", 
"static typing is good because compiler catches programmer's errors" 
(this one is particularly appealing to managers I found), etc.

Although all my "internal use" tools are written in Python, there's no 
way I could convince managers to use Python as the main application 
devel language.

This, however, is not of itself a problem: as long as language is lively 
and has at least a few percent of programmers using it -- which is 
important for existence of libraries, not much more -- there's no 
problem for people who want to get ahead of competition / waste less 
time by using advanced programming langauges. Frankly, I have yet to 
encounter a problem for which either a sizable Python extension or 
bindings to a popular library wouldn't exist. This in itself is a 
hallmark of a language being "enough of mainstream to actually matter in 
practice".

This I find quite insightful: http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html



Regards,
mk