Python was in the doldrums for the first 13 years of its life. Then, it exploded onto the scene in 2004 (according to TIOBE). Was this because of continuing improvements to CPython during those 13 years? Really?
JavaScript has been around since 1995, but what made it the darling of the web in the past 5 years? Hard work? What hard work? (Serendipitously, Google launched AngularJS in 2009. Maybe this was the impetus?) What about Ruby? Twenty years old, it only exploded onto the scene in 2006. What did Rubyists do in the first 11 years to cause this jump in popularity? If it all came down to hard work, then why didn't Haskell and Erlang and D rise to the top? Are those communities made of laggards and deadbeats? Of course, we should work hard to improve the platform. However, that by itself is no guarantee people will adopt it. Python's success was *serendipitous*, to be sure. To suggest that it was inevitable because of all the work done to improve CPython is not clear. kilon.alios wrote > bingo !!! > +1.000.000.000 > > The problem is that there is so much hype about marketing thats easy to > miss the enormous fact that languages like C, C++, Java and Python are not > as popular as they are even with their big flaws without substance , > without solving some serious problem that requires serious resources . > Foremosts those languages have been evolving for decades , take Python > > and I am NOT talking the language itself I am talking the most popular > python implementation and the oldest , CPython, its 24 years. > > Let me repeat this... > > CPython IS 24 years OLD !!!! > > There is none smalltalk implementation that I am aware of that has been > actively developed for so long even though smalltalk as a language is far > older than that. > > Now imagine where Pharo will be in 24 years.... wow.... it blows my mind > just trying to imagine. > > And by the way Python had ZERO marketing , ZERO!!!! Zero funds, zero .... > no money.... nada..... nothing > > Just one dude working his ass off to make a great language for scripting C > projects. > > So in the end its all hard work, as it should be . > > So back to work improving Pharo :) > > On Sun, Dec 13, 2015 at 12:17 PM stepharo < > stepharo@ > > wrote: > >> why don't you spend the time to write such mails into >> - writing tutorial or >> - just improving class comments of the well-known classs (such as >> set, dictionary, booleans, strings), >> - create videos >> you would have already an impact. >> Now you are shouting in the desert and people will just put you on their >> black list. >> >> Stef >> >> >> -- View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/PharoJVM-tp4866633p4866826.html Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
