some comments for Python 3000

[Neil Hodgson]

> The market
> ----------
>
> As with other markets :-), the scripting language market is up for a
> consolidation. Which, like on other markets, will lead to an emergence
> of a fewer but larger players. The winners will be the ones with most
> public following, as this creates the avalanche effect for them - as
> well as starving out smaller players with lack of talent available to
> work on their offerings and extensions

   Ah. Our survival is on the line so we'd better start making
competitiveness top priority.

   I think you are approaching this in the wrong manner. It would be far
easier to inflict damage on the enemy than to improve Python. What we need
to do:

   1) Send large numbers of obviously off-topic cgi posts to any Perl news
groups and mailing lists we can find. This will cause the older perlers to
get cranky and start issuing very curt answers if they can be bothered
answering at all.

   2) Demand more and more features from any large companies (they must be
worth over $100 billion for this to work well) that implement Javascript.
Show them how they have to provide all the features of their competitors
plus a few unique ones of their own to lock in customers.

   3) Explain to the Ruby community that most Americans can understand
Japanese after just a bit more familiarity with the language and translating
documents may be good in the short term but causes long term damage.

   4) Anyone on a Microsoft Beta program should point out that VBScript is
not compatible enough with .NET. This can be fixed by changing the syntax
for VB.NET and dropping difficult to implement features such as eval.

   5) Infiltrate Scriptics and convince them that Tcl isn't sufficiently
buzzword compliant and that appealing to venture capitalists will require a
new more buzzord laden mission statement and change in company name.

   6) Forget about Lua - they don't even have a news group so can't possibly
matter.

   Neil

   Note - this post was not completely serious - I have a problem with
regarding the scripting language area as a winner take all market rather
than an ecosystem that encourages diversity.