[Baypiggies] Frequently Argued Objections

[Ben Bangert]

On Jun 21, 2008, at 10:37 AM, Sean Perry wrote:

> In my experience, Perl got the word of mouth thing right very early  
> on. Then O'Reilly pushed it really, really hard. The first big web  
> explosion helped too. MySQL is popular in part because it had Perl  
> bindings really early. IMHO, Ruby would still be fringe language  
> were it not for Rails. Python still lacks the obvious killer  
> application. Django is helping for sure. But notice both Rails and  
> Django are server side tech

I do have to note something as a former O'Reilly employee. They merely  
have editors trying to gauge what's hot, and get books out there that  
sell. They did a good job catching the rise of Perl, and missed out  
the first time on Ruby (thus were late to the Rails book spree). It  
seems a little silly to say "O'Reilly pushes really really hard" as  
the reason for something getting popular, they're merely involved in a  
feedback loop of buyers. More people buy one language of book, so they  
try and fill out that language with more and more books (they do sell  
books after all). If books don't sell, they scale back that language  
(to avoid losing money, its just a business).

O'Reilly has put out quite a few Python books (even obscure ones like  
Bio-informatics with Python), including the insanely thick Programming  
Python book, which is about 90% non-server side related. Maybe having  
a copy of that around might entice your coworkers? :)

If not, you could always use it as a door-stop.

Cheers,
Ben
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