Python Newbie

[Chris Angelico]

On Sat, Feb 23, 2013 at 1:02 PM, Steven D'Aprano
<steve+comp.lang.python at pearwood.info> wrote:
> On Fri, 22 Feb 2013 20:47:20 -0500, Mitya Sirenef wrote:
>
>> It's been used for many important projects by a huge number of big
>> companies:
>>
>> http://www.python.org/about/success/
>>
>> Unlike Java and C#, it's not backed by a marketing effort of a large
>> company, so its success is entirely due to its value.
>
> +1 QOTW
>
>
> Well said. While Sun (now Oracle) have spent millions marketing Java, and
> Microsoft done the same for C#, Python has got where it is almost
> entirely on merit and word-of-mouth.

It's worth noting, though, that there are self-perpetuating aspects to
it. I can happily distribute a .py file to a Linux audience, because
many Linux distros come with a Python already installed, or at very
least can grab one easily via the package manager. No matter how
awesome Fred's Awesome Internet Language is, it's not going to be as
good a choice as something that people can simply 'apt-get install',
'yum install', or whatever they're most familiar with. I don't have
enough history with Python to know when that status began to be
achieved, nor how it happened, but I'd guess that exciting/interesting
a distro manager is different from being the best choice for writing
an application.

That said, though, Python is very good at both halves. But there might
very well be a language far superior for writing (say) a GUI app, that
just doesn't have the traction that Python does thanks to its
usefulness in the plumbing.

ChrisA