[python-advocacy] Obstacles to the adoption of Python

[Jeff Hinrichs - DM&T]

On Fri, Mar 21, 2008 at 9:48 PM, Rex Eastbourne
<rex.eastbourne at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> I am new to this list. I am a longtime Python user and like it quite a bit;
> I am interested in getting involved in advocacy.
>
> I've been thinking recently about the best way to increase the adoption rate
> of Python. I suppose one valuable thing to do would be to do research on the
> reasons -- real or imagined -- that people are *not* adopting it. For
> instance, I saw the following blog post yesterday:
>
> http://coffeeghost.net/2008/03/19/your-ignorance-does-not-make-a-programming-language-suck/
I started reading the comments, and then remembered why I stopped
reading slashdot comments<g>

> Has anyone done an analysis of the main practical issues holding Python
> back? Off the top of my head, here are two commonly cited obstacles:
>
> -Lack of a popular, mature add-on repository (I know there is PyPI, but it
> doesn't seem to be as mature as CPAN)
I'm not sure of your exact point here, but bigger doesn't necessarily
mean better -- especially with regards to the zen of python.

> -Documentation (I have no big problem with it, but many people feel the
> online Python documentation is not up to par with what other languages have,
> like perldoc)

http://perldoc.perl.org/  vs. http://docs.python.org/dev/  (the new
2.6 docs ala Sphinx)

I will give you that perl.doc.org looks nicer than the old python (pre
2.6) docs and of course, docs could |always| be better.  I will say
that I like the community driven aspect of the php docs.  It would be
cools to get community editable comments in the python docs like php
does.

> Specifically, it is "logistical" issues like the above that interest me more
> than the technical issues (execution speed, language syntax) that seem to be
> getting most of the attention. For one, these logistical issues can be more
> straightforward to implement.
>
> Does anyone have stuff to add to this list?
>
> Rex
> _______________________________________________
>  Advocacy mailing list
>  Advocacy at python.org
>  http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/advocacy
>
>



--