[python-advocacy] that guy that decides py or not to py?

[Mark Ramm]

On 3/13/07, Carl Karsten <carl at personnelware.com> wrote:
> I took on python as the result of a personal choice.   I am sure there is a huge
> population of people in that boat.

And the recent success of Ruby on Rail's anti-enterprise marketing
campaign proves that it is often the influence of these people who
bring a language into the enterprise.

So paradocically Ruby is being used in  large companies more now than
a year ago because David Hanson made fun of the Java Enterprise
Architect bloggers a lot.

Ruby is gaining ground in companies because of individual converts
marketing it to their bosses, not the other way round.

Providing tools for people to sell to their Corporate Managers is a
usefull enterprise, but getting people that are willing to invest time
and effort to make that sale one-on-one is, in my opinion more
productive.

We need to focus on the people who choose for themselves, and who know
enough about different languages to have their choices be respected by
those around them.

> I think there is a bigger boat: the groups that are lead by a 'manager' (pointy
> hair or otherwise) that is a single person directing a group: "We are going to
> use language X."
>
> That person's choice of X will cascade - his group will learn about X, and each
> member be able to speak about X, and recommend X to other leaders, and the told
> two friends...

The cascade only happens if people fall in love with python, and very
few people fall in love with a technology forced upon them by the
Pointy Hared Boss.

In my opinion "Marketing Python" is most effective when we convince
respected, visible, interesting people to pick python to do cool
things. Oh, and it doesn't hurt if they publicize those cool things
too.

-- 
Mark Ramm-Christensen
email: mark at compoundthinking dot com
blog: www.compoundthinking.com/blog