[python-advocacy] Why another language?

[David Beazley]

This is interesting, but not all that surprising in my own experience.  However, I'd like to suggest that awareness of Python may be growing on the sysadmin front.   For instance, last fall l gave a Python tutorial at the USENIX LISA conference---a sysadmin conference I normally wouldn't associate with heavy Python activity.   On top of that, their tutorial coordinator is the person who initiated the whole thing.  In other words, they wanted some kind of Python tutorial.


As for selling Python to crusty sysadmins, I think you simply have to stay focused on solving real world problems.   Personally, I seem to get the most bang for my buck showing sysadmins Python generators.    You can do some interesting things processing huge data files, infinite data streams, and other things with generators.    This resonates well and is unusual enough to avoid debates where someone is going to argue that Python is just the same as Bash/Perl/Awk, etc.


Cheers,
Dave


----- Original Message ----
From: Noah Gift <noah.gift at gmail.com>
To: advocacy at python.org
Sent: Wednesday, April 9, 2008 9:19:41 PM
Subject: [python-advocacy] Why another language?

Hi,

I think this might be my first post to the advocacy list, but I though  
I would share an interesting story.  Jeremy Jones and I are in the  
last couple weeks of finishing, "Python for Unix and Linux Systems  
Administration", and we both feel like it could make a major ripple in  
that space.  Our hope, honestly, is to displace to some degree, the  
notion that Bash and Perl are the only languages for Systems  
Administration.  In fact, although even a few Python programmers might  
disagree, I would argue that only a few lines of Bash is the most you  
should write, as Python is just a better language period.  My personal  
reason for believing this is that even Bash can get out of control,  
and a 50 line Bash script has a habit of turning into two thousand  
lines of unreadable and untestable code.  I figure if you always  
follow the same philosophy with all of the code you write, then you  
will always have readable and testable code, thus the emphasis on  
avoiding even a language like Bash, unless you absolutely have to for  
portability reasons.

Last night I attended an Open Solaris User Group meeting to do some  
research on the use of Python by Solaris Sysadmins and developers, and  
was quite shocked.  Apparently I have been living in an ivory tower of  
Python Utopia, as I was quite shocked to find out that no one there  
used Python, or even tried to that I was aware of.  In addition, when  
I mentioned I was there for research for a book, one highly  
experienced Sun Engineer mentioned, "I hope you mention why people  
need to learn another language like Python".  This caught me off guard  
a bit, as I thought the benefits of Python were known to all.  He did  
bring up a good point though, and I thought it would be a great  
question to pose to the list.  If someone has been programming in C,  
Bash and Perl for years, how can you really make a persuasive argument  
they also need to learn Python.  I suppose I would argue that once you  
program in Python, you won't ever want to use another language again,  
but that is my personal bias.  What is our, or "the", answer for  
someone that poses a very reasonable question like this?


Noah Gift / http://noahgift.com

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