Chas Emerick wrote: > On Aug 23, 2006, at 11:50 AM, Ben Sizer wrote: [...] > > I was having a discussion with a friend of mine recently, where I told > him how depressed I became for a period after I realized that sales, > marketing, and perception are all that really matter in this kooky > technical world we spend so much time in. For years I thought that
That's an overstatement. They aren't "all that matter", although there is undoubtedly a section of the community (many of them in senior positions and with pointy hairstyles) that can be and is swayed more by marketing hype than by technical issues. > "most people" make technical decisions based on the facts on the ground > and the merits of each alternative. While that's a great ideal to > aspire to, it's not realistic as long as technical laypersons make very > technical decisions -- in such an environment, heuristics, guidelines, > and rules-of-thumb rule. Ergo, it's good to have marketing firepower, > because that can move the needle on rules-of-thumb *really* easily. > Yes, but then look at the resources that deploying "marketing firepower" requires, and ask yourself where those resources are going to come from. I don't know how much you know about the Python Software Foundation, but in essence it has very limited manpower, and certainly doesn't have the skills or experience to provide large amounts of "marketing firepower". > So, back on topic, I think regardless of how we got here, or who's > better (Ruby or Python -- and really, it's better for the larger > universe of 'agile' languages to grow anyway), if we want to improve > Python's attractiveness to mainstream Java developers and their > managers, providing (and promoting!) an easy migration route like JPype > is a no-brainer. > I appreciate your enthusiasm, but I'd like to just temper it a little by pointing out that no change of this size to the Python distribution is "a no-brainer", as a brief perusal of either the python-checkins or the python-dev lists will confirm. This is engineering work, and release engineering is neither simple nor straightforward. Just as a first issue, can you provide a version of JPype that will work out of the box irrespective of which version of which virtual machine the user installing Python happens to have on their computer? regards Steve -- Steve Holden +44 150 684 7255 +1 800 494 3119 Holden Web LLC/Ltd http://www.holdenweb.com Skype: holdenweb http://holdenweb.blogspot.com Recent Ramblings http://del.icio.us/steve.holden -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
