PEP Parade

[Roy Smith]

Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen at xemacs.org> wrote:
>     Roy> Having the core language change from version to version just
>     Roy> makes it worse, as we discover imcompatabilities between
>     Roy> whatever version I'm using to develop on and whateve they're
>     Roy> running on their boxes.
> 
> So you standardize locally.

It's one thing to say "so you standardize locally", but the fact is, even 
requiring just that is an impediment to adoption.  A typical scenario goes 
like this:

Me: "Hey guys, I wrote a great new program, called foo.py.  It's in CVS, 
under tools."

Co-worker: "Neat, but when I go to run it, I get a syntax error"

Me: "Let me see.... Oh, you've got python 1.5.2!  Do you have any idea how 
old that is?  You need to upgrade to 2.1.2"

Co-worker: "Oh, I don't have the time to do that.  Nice looking tool, but I 
guess I'll have to pass, thanks".

If there was management buy-in, there might be a chance of declaring "thou 
shalt install python 2.1.2 on all development machines", but there's no 
management buy-in.  In fact, management sort of humors me by letting me 
waste my time playing with Python as long as I get my "real work" done.

Quite reasonably, my boss wants to know what the "business case" is for the 
group adopting python.  The fact that python is cool and wonderful and perl 
sucks eggs doesn't go very far in the face of the fact that perl tends to 
be a lot more portable (or at least is percieved to be).  The 1000's of 
lines of production perl code I've written run without a hitch on 
everybody's machine using whatever version of perl happened to come with 
their box.

And, I think there lies the real problem.  Python is facing an uphill 
battle for acceptance by the business community.  Anything that increases 
the perception (true or false) that python is difficult to support makes it 
just that much harder to get it accepted.  Technical arguments 
notwithstanding, frequent changes to the core language syntax sure increase 
the perception that it's a risky language on which to risk the success of 
your business.