[Pythonmac-SIG] Mac User Python newbies

[Roger Binns]

> Yeah, exactly.  There's not even twice as many Windows projects as Mac 
> OS X projects, and far more Linux projects that Windows projects.  

Note that it didn't include Windows 98 or the generic Win32 category
(trying to categorise a project on SourceForge is a real pain!)

>> It doesn't matter how cheap and fast it is for 5% of the market.
> 
> Sure it does, if you release OS X first it can fund Windows development 
> and testing.  Worked fine for us.

A counterpoint (see 1/3 of the way in)

  http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000051.html

wxPython certainly goes a decent amount of the way towards his underlying
message.  And MacOS is on a nice uptick since that was written.  This
is all just proof of the network effect and what it takes to overcome
it (perseverence).

Some other food for thought:

   http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000017.html
   http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Platforms.html
   http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000020.html
   http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html
   http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000052.html

It is all our interest to make Mac a better platform and to make
it very easy to write code that just works on Mac and elsewhere.
One of the things I am proud of in BitPim is the almost equal(*)
seamless support of all platforms.  As a developer, operating
systems and APIs matter to me.  But as a user, they are irrelevant.
You want programs to just work on whatever is connected to your mouse,
keyboard and screen.

(*) The Mac is the least equal due to wxWidgets and me not being
able to get a reasonably priced Mac.  The Mac mini fixed the latter
and OSAF paid for some of the former.

> I think we're probably going to have real GNUStep support for PyObjC 
> sometime in the next few months.. though I'm not sure whether the NeXT 
> roots count as Mac or not.

I did have it in my draft email, but couldn't find suitable Python
bindings.  I'd be happy to count it as Mac.  Which incidentally is
one of the annoying things come fresh to Mac as a developer.  There
is all this legacy NS crap!  It is *nowhere* near as bad as the
legacy in Windows though, or even the Linuxisms :-)

Roger