On Sat, Feb 23, 2013 at 1:02 PM, Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info> wrote: > On Fri, 22 Feb 2013 20:47:20 -0500, Mitya Sirenef wrote: > >> It's been used for many important projects by a huge number of big >> companies: >> >> http://www.python.org/about/success/ >> >> Unlike Java and C#, it's not backed by a marketing effort of a large >> company, so its success is entirely due to its value. > > +1 QOTW > > > Well said. While Sun (now Oracle) have spent millions marketing Java, and > Microsoft done the same for C#, Python has got where it is almost > entirely on merit and word-of-mouth.
It's worth noting, though, that there are self-perpetuating aspects to it. I can happily distribute a .py file to a Linux audience, because many Linux distros come with a Python already installed, or at very least can grab one easily via the package manager. No matter how awesome Fred's Awesome Internet Language is, it's not going to be as good a choice as something that people can simply 'apt-get install', 'yum install', or whatever they're most familiar with. I don't have enough history with Python to know when that status began to be achieved, nor how it happened, but I'd guess that exciting/interesting a distro manager is different from being the best choice for writing an application. That said, though, Python is very good at both halves. But there might very well be a language far superior for writing (say) a GUI app, that just doesn't have the traction that Python does thanks to its usefulness in the plumbing. ChrisA -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
