Wheel-reinvention with Python

[Torsten Bronger]

Hallöchen!

Mike Meyer <mwm at mired.org> writes:

> Torsten Bronger <bronger at physik.rwth-aachen.de> writes:
>
>> [...]
>>
>> I'm interested in a language with a big community.  This is my
>> definition of success.  [...]
>>
>> GUI applications seem to be the most attractive application type.
>> This is not only true for commercial programming.  When I look at
>> the most agile projects on Sourceforge, almost all of them have a
>> GUI.
>
> Why restrict yourself to agile projects?

Because such projects attract the greatest number of developers,
many of them being amongst the most diligent developers, too.  I
expect this to have a positive influence of the language.

> [...]
>
> I won't argue that most of the projects on Sourceforge have GUIs -
> that's certainly true. I will argue that most of the projects are
> done in languages that aren't what you call GUI-aware.

Yes, this is what I meant with "legacy code".  C and C++ are
actually special-purpose.  They are good for controlling a computer
but not for implementing an idea.  Their current vitality on almost
all software areas arise from the fact that they had been extremely
successful before Java, C#, and VB came into play.  Invented today,
they would be niche languages.

However, even C++ is really successful only when used as a GUI-aware
dialect.  Additionally, Python does not have this legacy bonus.

>> Therefore, GUI-aware languages attract much larger user bases,
>> and so they cater my definition of being successful.
>
> Since you haven't stated what that definition is, I can't really say
> anything about this.

Yes, I did.

> [...]
>
>> Legacy code is not a sign of success IMO because it implies a
>> difficult future.
>
> So you're saying that Python, Perl, Linux, the various BSD
> et. al. will have a difficult future? [...]

No.  All I said was that if a language's "success" relies almost
exclusively on the heavy presence of legacy code, its future is
difficult.  I see this for C and C++ excluding VC++.  They will
always be there, but "cool new things" will be made available
firstly (or only) for Java, C#, Python etc.

> [...]
>
> Or maybe you could switch to Jython, and just use swing?

Actually I'm very happy with CPython.  Besides, I don't like the
Java world.  When I left C++ last winter, I dithered between C#,
Ruby, and Python.


BTW this thread was extremely interesting for me.  I've learnt a
lot.  (Unfortunately, two weeks ago I opted for wxPython, after a
long and tough time of thorough pondering, and today this thread
informed be about progress on the Tk front.  *cry* ;-)

Tschö,
Torsten.

-- 
Torsten Bronger, aquisgrana, europa vetus