Spreading the word about Python; ?s and ideas

[Mark Hammond]

Isidor wrote in message <199907211307.IAA14980 at cro.ots.ac.cr>...

> To reiterate (more concisely):

> There may be a lot of office scripters out there, and they are
> probably more than ready to hear the word of python. Targeting
> them through marketing and educational materials might be an easy
> way to get a lot of people quickly ramped up to more serious

Absolutely.  This is an excellent idea,  A tutorial aimed at this segment
would be excellent.  You could introduce COM very early (and very vaguely).
The point is they end up doing all the same things they can do with Word etc
very early on.

...

[snip even more good ideas]

> Ok, that's the end of my rant. I hope this is a useful catalyst
> for discussion.

Problem is that quite a few of these ideas have previously been identified.
Python is not short of good ideas, just short of people to implement them.

The best and incredibly useful thing you personally could do for Python is
to step up and start doing these.  Your Office/VBA background would make you
uniquely placed to be able to write the tutorial you mention - and you
should do it before you forget exactly what you struggled with :-)

So take some first steps, then post your results.  These are always better
than posting good ideas, and could then generate some real discussion.  Post
a first-start to something, and people may well give you some excellent
comments and feedback.

The _excellent_ thing about that is that all these smart people give you
excellent feedback, you adopt the feedback and your tool/documentation moves
from quite ordinary to damn good.  The great thing is you still get all the
credit, but really everyone else made it what it is :-)

Mark.