Python -- (just) a successful experiment?

[Paul Rubin]

bkhl at stp.lingfil.uu.se (Björn Lindström) writes:
> I don't see why the things you talk about would have to be part of the
> main Python distribution. Ruby on Rails seems to do pretty well without
> being included with the core language.

I haven't used Ruby on Rails but from the description I saw, its distro
includes everything needed, which I assume includes Ruby itself.

> There's already a pretty successful programming framework for Python
> (Zope), and I don't see why people wouldn't be able to put something
> like that together to compete on more equal terms with Ruby on Rails, or
> Delphi, &c.

I have the impression that Zope is ungodly complex, and revolves around
a weird and nonstandard database instead of having an SQL interface.

> If you want the whole of the Python community to start developing stuff
> for one particular GUI toolkit, I think you'll have much more success by
> just making a really good GUI toolkit, than trying to force people to
> use it by standardising it. (Which I think is shown by the proliferation
> of GUI toolkits other than Tkinter.)

Actually that proliferation is one of the culprits in Python being a
pain to deal with.  I'm personally not a GUI fetishist and Tkinter has
been good enough for the client-side GUI's I've needed to write (I'm
more web-oriented most of the time).  But the reason for that
proliferation is other people are dissatisfied with Tkinter.  That
by itself says the stdlib is lacking.

> In short, when you have your one-click-install Pythonic IDE
> extravaganza, I'm sure people will download it, whether or not they can
> do it on python.org.

There's already a Python IDE (Idle) included with the Python distro;
its problem is that its limited in functionality and it's buggy.

Anyway, I'm a Python user, not an evangelist.  As a user I'm happy to
have Python and am thankful to its authors, even though (like anything
else) it's a long way from being perfect.  But I do get annoyed by
evangelists who make unsupportable claims that the product doesn't
live up to.