Is Python moving too fast? (was Re: Is python commercializationazing? ...)

[Alex Martelli]

"David" <root at 127.0.0.1> wrote in message
news:39ad4c13.133044877 at news.telus.net...
> On Sat, 26 Aug 2000 10:11:12 -0500 (CDT), Skip Montanaro <skip at mojam.com>
> wrote:
> >    1.  For the first time in it's 10+ year history, the language
actually
> >        has a team of programmers led by Guido whose full-time job is to
> >        work on the language.
>
> I'm going to be exceedingly crass here, and suggest that when your
> full-time job is to work on the language, you're rather forced to make
> changes for the sake of changes, because otherwise you won't have a job.

An interesting suggestion, akin to the risk of "stock churning" by a
fiduciary broker that's working on commission.

However, in the case of a programming language such as Python, it
need not apply.  "A full-time job to work on the language" will most
likely in fact include briefs to work on:
-- the compiler, and other tools that work on/with the language;
-- the libraries (built-in and add-on ones);
-- documentation (including books about the language and its
    use, magazine and journal articles, online docs, ...);
-- 'public-relation' work on the language's behalf (speaking at
    conferences, magazine interviews, strategic consulting...);
-- high-visibility applications ("CP4E", maybe?-);
and no doubt other items that don't come to mind as promptly
as these.  While the 'language proper' may come to stabilize
naturally (when it has just about everything it really needs -- or,
as Saint Exupery would have it, when there's nothing any more
to take away:-), I think some of these "ancillary" issues, tools
and libraries in particular, will undergo basically unlimited demand.


Alex