The Industry choice

[Christopher Koppler]

On Fri, 31 Dec 2004 02:13:27 +0100, Bulba! wrote:

> On 30 Dec 2004 08:58:36 -0800, "Sridhar  R"
> <sridharinfinity at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
[snip]
> 
>>What makes such companies to choose Java over dynamic, productive
>>languages like Python?  Are there any viable, technical reasons for
>>that?
> 
> It's the $$$ of the big organization behind it and all the 
> inertia^H^H^H^H^H^H stability of it.
> 
> Note all the fuss that was made when IBM has "spent $1 
> billion on Linux", for instance (or so it was said). Managers
> paid attention to that (at least that was my impression).
> 
> AFAIK, Linux didn't really change in technical sense
> just because IBM has embraced Linux, or at least not much.
> But to companies and manager the major point is:
> 
> Big Blue has embraced it. 

[add a few grains of salt to the following...]
Manager culture is still very much mired in rituals that may in one form
or another go back to hunter-gatherer days (or maybe even further); that
'the industry choice' is more often than not something backed by a *major*
company is part of a ritual complex based on relations to the alpha male.
Small companies ingratiate themselves with their perceived betters by
using their products, even when technically far superior products would be
available. When the 'market leader' produces a new toy, everyone who wants
to be in his favor must use it _and_ also damn the toys available from any
of those competing for leadership, viz. the ongoing state of cold war
between Sun and MS and their respective worshipers. Toys that have not
been sanctioned by the leader, or that are, even worse, de facto unknown
to him, are met with ignorance, scorn, or even repression.

[snip]
> For Python a Big Thing would happen if some Major Vendor
> embraced it as its Official Language(tm). Python language
> itself could turn into a smoking crock the very next day, but
> everybody who doesn't live under the rock would still be 
> writing in it.

The moral is, of course, that either the Python community's alpha geeks
need to get access to controlling interest in a *major* company (or to
become successful enough with their own companies to register on the
current *major* companies radar as potential competition) or as you
say, Python needs to be embraced like Linux was. That's the way to win the
hearts of software companies' managers.

-- 
Christopher