[Pythonmac-SIG] Mac User Python Newbies

Chris Barker Chris.Barker at noaa.gov
Mon Feb 14 21:27:18 CET 2005


Wolfgang Keller wrote:
> If for each given problem one implementation was chosen as "the official
> one" 

To some extent, while Guido could endorse something (which is more or 
less the case with IDLE), there is no way to name something the 
"official one", and even if there were, there's nothing to stop folks 
from going out on their own anyway. Thus is the nature of open-source. 
How many Linux distros are there?

Remember that most of this stuff is written by folks who are "scratching 
an itch". The scratching itself is as much the point as getting rid of 
the itch, and many people find it much more satisfying to do something 
in just their own way than adapting to other's ideas and style.

Very little becomes standard by declaration: If someone makes something 
really good, it could evolve into a standard.

By the way, I've often thought of forming a company that would produce 
just what we've been talking about here, but with a bit of a twist:

A set of Python environments for doing specialized development. Some 
ideas are:

--A database app environment, as easy to use as FileMaker, but with a 
real language at it's core.

--A scientific programming environment, everything that MATLAB gives 
you, but again, with a real language at the core.

--Maybe a web framework.

--And you'd probably need to do a general purpose IDE as well.

Anyone have any venture capital?

I know that there are open-source versions of all of these: SciPy, Dabo, 
Pythoncard, Zope, etc., but they don't have the polish that you'd need 
to attract the type of newbies that are at the core of this thread.

-Chris



-- 
Christopher Barker, Ph.D.
Oceanographer
                                     		
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Chris.Barker at noaa.gov


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