[OT] Python like lanugages [was Re: After C++, what with Python?]

[geremy condra]

On Sun, Jan 16, 2011 at 3:03 AM, Tim Harig <usernet at ilthio.net> wrote:
> On 2011-01-16, Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python at pearwood.info> wrote:
>> If the author thinks that Go is a "tried and true" (his words, not mine)
>> language "where programmers can go to look for work", I think he's
>> fooling himself.
>
> No I wouldn't say that it has reached market penetration yet; but, it
> has more momentum then any language I am familiar with.  I wouldn't be
> at all surprised to see it becoming quite common in the next five years.

I would be very surprised if this were the case. As you point out,
languages typically have very long incubation times before they reach
any kind of serious market penetration. This seems doubly true for a
relatively narrowly targeted language that is in many ways on the
wrong side of history.

> How long has it taken Python to reach its present level of market
> penetration?  And, I still don't see a huge amount of professional Python
> use outside of web developement.  Go has only been public for less then
> a year.

Python's very widely used for scripting and related tasks, and has a
pretty big user base in academia and the sciences.

> Personally, I think the time is ripe for a language that bridges the
> gap between ease of use dynamic languages with the performance and
> distribution capabilities of a full systems level language.

I agree. That does not make Go that language, and many of the choices
made during Go's development indicate that they don't think it's that
language either. I'm speaking specifically of its non-object model,
lack of exceptions, etc.

>This is after all the promise the VM based languages made but never
> really fulfilled. It is also high time for a fully concurrent language fully
> capable of taking advantage of multicore processors without having to
> deal with the inherent dangers of threading.  There are several good
> choices available for both a even a few that fit both bills; but, few of
> them have the support of a company like Google that is capable of the
> push required to move the language into the mainstream.

You might be right, but I doubt we'll know one way or the other in the
next 5 years. Personally, I'm hoping that functional language use
continues to grow.

Geremy Condra