[portland] django coders?

[Rami Kassab]

Dylan, well said.

Jeff, the thing to keep in mind about developers is that even though their
organization may be forcing a specific language on them, developers often
pickup languages and do their own small projects on the side. It's these
developers that eventually influence even the senior devs. So, you can
either selectively target the individual senior devs, which probably isn't
the best marketing strategy because there's significantly less of them so
your chance of success is impeded. Alternatively, you could do something
similar to what Ruby on Rails did (but without the stupid ego and attitude)
and market to smaller developers, who will eventually either become senior
developers or will influence their superiors into trying Python out.

Also, I don't know where I hinted that there's strong demand for Python but
I definitely didn't mean that. We do have to push Python onto most of our
clients. For the most part, in fact, clients don't necessarily even care
what language the application is written in... as long as it functions.
Larger clients do of course. Nonetheless, rarely is their first choice
Python. Using Python is our decision and we've made a commitment to help
excel it. If we supported Django, Pylons, TurboGears, etc and helped other
web firms adopt Python, Python will become significantly more popular. It's
the early adopters that influence the rest.

It's as simple as this, a particular language needs more advocates before it
really takes off. You need advocates on the junior and senior level within
an organization. The more the merrier. I don't think anyone in their right
mind would argue that having more people positively advocating Python would
be detrimental to it's marketing success. Now if there's a particular group
you're trying to avoid such as the less committed developers then the
marketing strategy becomes a bit more complicated. Essentially, you have to
carefully select the avenues you market the language through, which, in
turn, lessens the amount of overall momentum your campaign will be able to
pickup. This naturally will set us behind other more aggressive campaigns
like that of Ruby on Rails.

Just throwing more thoughts out. This is an important discussion for
the future of Python, in my opinion, and we should debate this
maturely
and as much as possible until a solid strategy is developed and executed.

--
*Rami Kassab* - Chief Executive Officer
M 503.888.8605
rami at typethink.com
LinkedIn Profile <http://www.linkedin.com/in/RamiKassab>

*Typethink* - Creative Web Firm
P 503.626.6231
F 503.626.6233
111 SW 5th Ave., Suite 1000
Portland, OR 97204
www.typethink.com


On Tue, Jun 16, 2009 at 6:24 AM, Dylan Reinhardt
<python at dylanreinhardt.com>wrote:

> On Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 9:33 PM, Jeff Rush <jeff at taupro.com> wrote:
>
> > Rami Kassab wrote:
> > > Jeff, was mainly referring to marketing itself better to developers.
> > While
> > > we work to get our clients to agree to having Python development, it's
> > not
> > > something that our clients come asking us to do right off the bat.
> >
> > It is an interesting issue but I think you're in conflict ;-) with
> > Dylan's viewpoint:
>
>
> That's not how I read that comment.
>  Very few clients go looking for Python, but it's easy to get clients
> to *evaluate* Python.  Most people are open to hearing about a key
> tool used by Google, et al.
>
> The tough part of the sell comes when the client wants to know who they can
> turn to for support if you get hit by a bus.  There's not a lot of excess
> capacity out there and if you're a solo practitioner, the lack of available
> support can be a deal-breaker.
>
> So it may be the case that we're individually busy and individually able to
> create Python gigs... but none of that activity seems to create the
> impression that there's much reason for Java or VB coders to make the leap.
>  That's where some decent marketing would come in.
>
> But slow and steady growth will eventually work too.  It looks like PCC
> will
> be offering a class in Python this Fall.  I forget if it got posted here or
> not, but MIT is now teaching Python in their intro class.  Over the long
> run, we'll grow.  It's just that the way we're doing it,
> it's going to take a lot of patience.
>
> $.02,
>
> Dylan
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