I think the python community should be prepared to accept an increasing number of people who just want to get something done with whatever tools they have available (windows, mac, .net, etc) and with whatever skills they already have acquired. For example (having been in this situation before) a biologist may need to write a program to make a calculation on a dataset so that a paper can be resubmitted with revisions. Maybe this biologist would love to read all of "The Art of Programming" but doesn't have a lot of time to determine that static typing is different than dynamic typing (or learn whatever fancy CS terms get thrown around these days) because a grant is hanging in the balance. For these people, "looks the same", is basically "almost identical". Trust me on that one.
The new breed of programmers will grab onto the easiest tools to use (e.g. shallow learning curve) and use them however they can. They will not study for 4 years about "compiler design" and "grammers" and other such esoteric pursuits, because they already studied for biology, or economics, or sociology, or whatever -ology happened to grab them when they were 20. No, the new breed will just want a chart that is a little to complicated to calculate in excel so they can make a figure so they can get out a paper or make a presentation. Unfortunately for the language elitists, python happens to be this type of easy to use tool. In how many other languages is it almost as easy to calculate the eigenvectors of a matrix as it is to write the "hello world" program? I haven't found any--and then again, I haven't looked too hard. And that's the point. So they (read "we") are coming. Be prepared. James On Sunday 19 December 2004 06:39 pm, Peter Hansen wrote: > As one uninterested so far in .NET, and not concerned primarily > with speed, and concerned definitely with maturity and stability, > and not in the least interested in static typing, I thank you > for saving me the time investigating further. > > "Virtually identical" indeed. :-) > > -Peter -- James Stroud, Ph.D. UCLA-DOE Institute for Genomics and Proteomics 611 Charles E. Young Dr. S. MBI 205, UCLA 951570 Los Angeles CA 90095-1570 http://www.jamesstroud.com/ -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list