[Python-Dev] Re: Re: 2.4 news reaches interesting places

[Carlos Ribeiro]

Hello all,

Just to complement my previous remarks, I would like to point out how
do a competing language defines itself in its own website. The
perl.org website has a simple faq that is a good piece of marketing.
What follows are direct quotes, just to point out how ot handle the
market perception about their quality & speed.

-- "Perl takes the best features from other languages, such as C, awk,
sed, sh, and BASIC, among others."

(A claim can't possibly be any more generic than this. Strangely
enough, it mentions only older languages -- not Java, C++, or even
Python (!). This is possibly a sign of an old quote, but anyway: it
has a good marketing effect, specially for non-techies.)

-- "Perl can be embedded into web servers to speed up processing by as
much as 2000%."

(BTW, this quote is embarrassing misleading -- it probably means that
Perl is 20x slower when started on a request basis by the web server,
and that embedding it will accelerate response by a huge factor. I'm
sure non-techies will read it as "Perl is able to accelerate my server
20x!")


Of course, the point here is not Perl-bashing. The point here is that
we should be able to "sell" Python better than we do now, even without
the need to resort to such poor measures. I'm sure the Python
community does have good & creative people that can write a good
"selling" FAQ for Python, emphasizing the main points of the language.

For those who believe that a non-profit project should not do any
marketing, a reminder. If the perception about Python is one of a slow
language, it's much more difficult to find places where you can use
Python. In the long run, many of us may be forced to work with other
languages & tools, just because that's where the money is. I
personally take it a matter of personal interest, because I know how
hard it is to "sell" Python to companies here in Brazil.


-- 
Carlos Ribeiro
Consultoria em Projetos
blog: http://rascunhosrotos.blogspot.com
blog: http://pythonnotes.blogspot.com
mail: carribeiro at gmail.com
mail: carribeiro at yahoo.com