What does Python fix?

[Tim Lavoie]

In article <3dr8onistd.fsf at ute.mems-exchange.org>, Andrew Kuchling wrote:
> Courageous <jkraska at san.rr.com> writes:
>> Another thing which cripples it is the paucity of online code bases
>> to select from. These two together are enough to torpedo anyone
>> with any sense.
> 
> Indeed.  In an interview with Kent Pitman on Slashdot, I was shocked
> when he wrote:
> 
> 	In my recent professional life, I have personally written
> 	several XML parsers, all in Lisp, for various employers and
> 	most recently for myself and my fledgling company.
> 
> (At http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/11/03/1726251)
> 
> I'm unable to understand why you wouldn't just write the code once and
> make it available, rather than implementing the same thing over and
> over.  Java seems to have a similar problem; people will write a new
> Layout class, for example, and then want to charge $30 for it instead
> of just tossing it on a Web page.  Presumably this is a cultural thing
> that differs between the languages.  (And this is why Python not
> compiling to a single executable by default is a good thing; it
> doesn't strongly encourage the distribution of code without source.)


I think the issue here is not so much that the language culture
differs, so much as a difference of personal opinion when it comes to
what is considered a problem. I've exchanged some e-mail with Kent on
this topic, and his basic feeling is that free tools enable him and
his competition equally, reducing the opportunities when it comes to
paid work. When I thought that it would be more useful to have
building blocks to use when writing more interesting programs, he
correctly pointed out that that makes assumptions about what someone
else would like to do. Fair enough. We left it as agreeing to
disagree.  :-)  Anyway, that doesn't mean that others aren't up to
writing and releasing their own XML parsers if they so choose, just be
aware that someone else might view it as pissing in an otherwise
lucrative pond.

By the same token, having source code available is just one inducement
to using an application. My employer uses plenty of software for which
there is no available source code, and if it works, they don't care.
The fact that they can pay for something which someone else cannot
afford is probably seen as a competitive advantage within that problem
domain. By the same token however, there are those who feel that it is
better to stick with an expensive, unwieldy and half-broken
application because to visibly change one's mind means that they were
wrong the first time. *THAT* would have much bigger implications than
merely tormenting internal developers by requiring them to do endless
duct-tape coding to hold the cruft together. Anyway, enough ranting...