[python-advocacy] Advocacy Materials License and Web Frameworks Whitepaper

[Paul Boddie]

On Wednesday 13 December 2006 20:08, Jeff Rush wrote:
>
> BTW Paul, I found your notes collection on
> http://wiki.python.org/moin/MarketingPython which has some very good
> reading. I've linked to it from the Advocacy page and will be applying some
> of the ideas and perhaps reusing some of the material.

The motivation for making that page was to encourage a more complete view of 
the factors that encourage people to use Python. As you seem to know very 
well, it's not merely a matter of pure advocacy articles fired off to the 
right journals to try and coax people into trying Python out, although I 
remember a quite successful Linux Journal special edition with a Python 
section (which I have a copy of, in fact). In recent times there's been a 
greater appreciation that quality at every level in a product makes for happy 
developers (or customers), which makes for persuasive developers with more 
credibility than some "opinion maker" saying that something is cool or hot or 
whatever.

> And I see at http://wiki.python.org/moin/WebProgramming a good grasp of how
> to organize the huge topic of Python and web programming.  Some may notice
> that I didn't list any whitepapers on web frameworks -- that is because I
> wasn't sure how to possibly organize such a huge topic.  But it is one that
> needs attention - that when newcomers to the Python community ask what is
> the best web framework, we need not one answer but rather something that
> surveys the alternatives, relates them to requirements and provides a set
> of links for follow-up.

It's a big area with some kind of consolidation in progress. The challenge is 
to help people to make an informed choice, although one wouldn't go far wrong 
closing one's eyes and just pointing at one with the frameworks we have 
today.

> I see at http://www.boddie.org.uk/python/web_frameworks.html that you're
> making an attempt to address this need.  Is that work under an open license
> and as it develops could we get it into easily distributable whitepaper as
> well as a webpage?

In fact, that Web site was the origin of the WebProgramming (now 
WebFrameworks) page - I keep it around for reasons of politeness, although I 
should make the note at the top a bit more prominent, I suppose.

Paul