why isn't python more popular?

[Glenn R. Williams]

And now we have a different impediment: this flap about the Python
license, the delay in releasing 1.6 (and 2.0) makes Python look
unstable, a work in progress, and generally not ready for prime time!

This is probably not a factor in the slow adoption to-date, since it
happened quite recently. However, in general the Python site changed
very little (on the surface) over the last few years. 

In that vein, the future may be problematic, at least for developing a
wider user base. The plans announced so far indicate code breakages,
rapid release cycles, and a big "change of direction". That really does
affect stability. It's ironic that all those goodies we Python
programmers welcome with open arms cause many corporate IT departments
to shudder! What if it breaks? What if my applications no longer run?
Such is I.T.

The final observation I have is on Grail. This was promoted as an
example of how Python could be used in "serious" development. Then it
stops at version 0.6. From the inside, we know how these things happen.
But to the unconverted, it looks like just another half-finished
project.

I hope I haven't offended anyone - Python is my favorite language by
far! I just don't want to see it lose credibility because of internal
"issues".


Glenn




Andrew Kuchling wrote:
> 
> sp00fd <sp00fdNOspSPAM at yahoo.com.invalid> writes:
> > Is it that white space counts?  That's really the only gripe
> > that I see.
> 
> Which stems from the overweening conservatism of most programmers, I
> think, coupled with a tendency to fixate on trivial syntactic
> features.  This is the primary reason why Lisp isn't more commonly
> used, why Dylan will never catch on, why Modula-3 never caught on, why
> functional programming will never become widespread, and why Python
> takes endless grief over the indentation-based blocks.
> 
> Python isn't perfect by any means, and the Python Warts page documents
> some *real* reasons to drop-kick Guido's butt, but few critics ever
> make observations of that profundity; they don't look at the object
> model or module system or implementation, but instead get hung up on a
> minor detail of the tokenizer.
> 
> Well, you *did* ask. :)
> 
> --amk

-- 
Glenn R. Williams
VP Engineering
XPeranto.com