Killer Apps???

[Skip Montanaro]

>>>>> "Francois" == ISO-8859-1  <ISO-8859-1> writes:

    François> Skip Montanaro <skip at mojam.com> writes:
    >> a "killer apps" section of the PSA web site would be interesting.

    François> Just curious, and using English as a second language, here.

    François> I do not understand what these applications are supposed to
    François> kill?  Developers?  Users?  Competitors? :-) Why the reference
    François> to "killing"?

François,

In common American high-tech buzzword English, a "killer app" is an
application that makes the system that supports it something you have to
have.  For the IBM-PC (or was it the Apple ][?) the killer app was the
VisiCalc spreadsheet.  For the World-Wide Web, Mosaic was probably the
killer app.

To put it in Python terms, a Python killer app would be something that makes
Python a "must have" piece of software technology.  I think much of the
recent growth in the Python community probably comes from either Mailman
(the mailing list manager for a GNU generation) or Zope, though I believe
there has been a lot more exposure in the trade press and on
technology-oriented cable TV shows as well.

Skip Montanaro | http://www.mojam.com/
skip at mojam.com | http://www.musi-cal.com/
"Languages that change by catering to the tastes of non-users tend not to do
so well." - Doug Landauer