[Grants-discuss] re: popularizing Python

[Greg Wilson]

Hi Neal; thanks for your mail.  I'm cc'ing Michelle Levesque, my
occasional partner in crime, as well as the grants-discuss list;
would enjoy hearing from others as well.

> > GVW:
> > If anyone's interested, the current proposal is at:
> > http://www.third-bit.com/~gvwilson/psf-proposal-course.pdf

> NN:
> ...I liked your proposal and I thought it included all the
> necessary info:  what your propose to do, the cost, schedule, and your
> credentials.  It was reasonably short and readable.  I like the
> proposed license arrangement.

GVW:
Thanks very much.

> NN:
> I suspect the training material you propose would be quite useful.  My
> largest concern would be how to get others to use it.  This isn't
> necessarily a criticism of the proposal, but rather just a general
> concern about how to go about things.  I have the same concerns about
> how to promote Python in general.

GVW:
I agree, getting a large number of people to try it --- esp. people who
don't have a passionate Pythonista poking them in the ribs saying, "Go on,
you'll like it!" --- is the hard part.  If the proposal is accepted, I
would try to place a short series of popularizing articles in a magazine
like "Physics World" [1], "Computers in Physics" [2], "IEEE Engineering in
Medicine and Biology" [3], or "American Scientist" [4].  I didn't include
this in the proposal because there's no guarantee I could actuall do this;
do you think I should mention it?

On a larger scale, I think that it would be a lot easier to convince
non-Pythonistas to give Python a try if Python had clearer answers to some
common questions.  For example, there are at least four (maybe five) web
app frameworks out there; as Michelle Levesque observed a month ago [5]:

  The real problem with this kind of rampant fragmentation is that you
  have no guarantee that the piece you choose will still be an active
  project in one, two, or five years from now. Furthermore, every piece
  will be far less mature than if there were very few options to choose
  from, since the developer effort will be spread thin across so many
  projects.

I understand why "let a hundred flowers bloom" appeals to open source
developers, but it's a real pain in the body part to someone trying to
persuade the other 99.99999% of humanity to give Python a try.  I'm hoping
that Michelle's "web off" [6] will encourage the Python community to come
up with a clearer story; it would be very cool to see PSF grants support
such rationalization.

Just my $0.02,
Greg

[1] http://physicsweb.org
[2] http://www.aip.org/cip
[3] http://www.ieee.org/organizations/pubs/magazines/emb.htm
[4] http://www.amsci.org/amsci/amsci.html
[5] http://pyre.third-bit.com/hippoblog/archives/000058.html
[6] http://pyre.third-bit.com/pywebblog