python a bust?

[John Howard]

I've sent several messages over the last year asking about python -
Who teaches python? Is python losing steam? etc. I have noticed, eg,
the declinng number of books at my local borders. The last time I
visited a borders (last week), there was 1 (sic) book about python on
the shelve compared to dozens on perl & java! On my last inquiry about
who teaching python, I got two, maybe three, responses. I really want
to see python succeed! It's the best language I've seen. I see a lot
on www.python.org about development, but little on usage. I sent a
message to someone on the python site (I forget who - I know, no
excuse) about what I've done done on a site (grades, web application,
web registration, etc). No reponse. Sorry to ramble, but I wanted to
say a lot, but not have to go into a lot of detail.

 

[Ben Finney]

I have noticed, eg, the declinng number of books at my local borders.
The last time I visited a borders (last week), there was 1 (sic) book
about python on the shelve compared to dozens on perl & java!

What do you conclude from that?

I think the only meaningful conclusions you could draw from the stock
levels at Borders would be related to the purchasers for Borders, and
not to Python programmers.

On my last inquiry about who teaching python, I got two, maybe three,
responses.

What do you conclude from that?

Low response rate could indicate many things, a lot of them unrelated to
the level of teaching resources for Python.

I really want to see python succeed!

Keep using it then. Evangelise it by proving it successful.

It's the best language I've seen.

Glad to hear it. Prove it to others as well, if you want its usage to
increase.

 

[Asun Friere]

I've sent several messages over the last year asking about python -
Who teaches python? Is python losing steam? etc. I have noticed, eg,
the declinng number of books at my local borders. The last time I
visited a borders (last week), there was 1 (sic) book about python on
the shelve compared to dozens on perl & java!

If you were developing in Java or Perl maybe you would need dozens of
books. But Python is so elegant and intuitive a single one will do.

 

[Brandon J. Van Every]

(e-mail address removed) (John Howard) wrote in message


If you were developing in Java or Perl maybe you would need dozens of
books. But Python is so elegant and intuitive a single one will do.

It is still not a good sign. If Python is so easy, and it were also
popular, then presumably people would write problem specific books "in
Python." Do your website in Python, your database in Python, your game in
Python, your AI in Python, your laundry in Python...

--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA

Brandon's Law (after Godwin's Law):
"As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of
a person being called a troll approaches one RAPIDLY."

 

[Michele Simionato]

I've sent several messages over the last year asking about python -
Who teaches python? Is python losing steam? etc. I have noticed, eg,
the declinng number of books at my local borders. The last time I
visited a borders (last week), there was 1 (sic) book about python on
the shelve compared to dozens on perl & java! On my last inquiry about
who teaching python, I got two, maybe three, responses. I really want
to see python succeed! It's the best language I've seen. I see a lot
on www.python.org about development, but little on usage. I sent a
message to someone on the python site (I forget who - I know, no
excuse) about what I've done done on a site (grades, web application,
web registration, etc). No reponse. Sorry to ramble, but I wanted to
say a lot, but not have to go into a lot of detail.

Python is not backed by Microsoft or Sun, so there are less courses
and books about Python than about C#/Visual C++/Visual Basic or Java;
Perl is not backed, but it was there well before Python, and lots of
people know it and use it (even they do not necessarily love it , so
it has a definite historical advantage.

The present situation is clear: but then what? Should we ask Bill Gates to
adopt Python as the next Visual Basic? Or ask Sun to switch to Jython?
Or ask Larry Wall to convert to the Zen of Python?

The only thing we can do in practice is to predicate the verb of Python
to our friends, as we all do it already. Also, we can work on slick new
logos and to a restyling of the Python Website. But this will not raise
the number of Python books in the stores in a couple of weeks or months
or years. It is quite sterile to complain against things we have no real
way to control.
We can only wait and see (as in that old chinese said ...)

Michele Simionato

 

[Alex Martelli]

Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
...

It is still not a good sign. If Python is so easy, and it were also
popular, then presumably people would write problem specific books "in
Python." Do your website in Python, your database in Python, your game in
Python, your AI in Python, your laundry in Python...

Yes, there's quite a few of those -- "Game Programming with Python"
(by Sean Riley) came out last month, "Game Programming With Python,
Lua, and Ruby" (by Tom Gutschmidt) should be out any day now, "Text
Processing in Python" (by David Mertz) has been out for months,
"Python Web Programming" (by Steve Holden) and "Web Programming
in Python) (by George Thiruvathukal, Thomas Christopher, John Shafaee)
even longer, and similarly for other popular "specific areas" such
as XML processing.

Still, book-publishing is an "interesting" activity -- and stocking
bookstore shelves even more so. A purely anecdotal datum I just
learned about, for example: smack in the heart of downtown Milan there
are two excellent, large bookstores which are always hotly competing.
Somebody was looking for "Python in a Nutshell" at one of them and
complained on an Italian Python list that they had no copies at all
on the shelves; somebody else replied, quite perplexed, that the
_other_ of the two bookstores had _five_ copies on _its_ shelves...

....and unless you get friendly enough with the store's personnel to
chat about such issues, it's gonna be hard to learn whether one store
is cursing and swearing for wasting such shelfspace for a book which just
is not moving, or the other is desperate for more copies of a book it
has run out of...

Personally, I think my (admittedly risible "googling survey" is
a more accurate gauge of a language's popularity than eyeballing the
variety or abundance of titles about it at one or a few bookstores;-)


Alex

 

[Brandon J. Van Every]

It is quite sterile to complain against things we have no real
way to control.

True... but in most cases we're making an Existential choice about our
willingness to control. We are not in fact helpless. Such is the case with
Python. If you want to actually do something about marketing Python "like
the big boys do," I encourage you to join the marketing-python forum.
http://pythonology.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-python

Fair warning: you are going to hear a lot of people talking in circles. You
are only going to get things done if you are the kind of person who will
take a bull by the horns and actually get things done, even / especially
when others are yapping mindlessly and endlessly. Commercial outfits have
significant advantages over volunteer outfits when it comes to marketing:
they can order people to march in a particular direction, pay people lotsa
money to follow the orders, and fire them if they don't comply. Still...
commercial outfits are hardly immune to Dilbertism, but the high tech
landscape is dominated by companies like Microsoft who are not prone to
Dilbertism in their approaches to marketing.

We can only wait and see (as in that old chinese said ...)

Chinese philosophies, at least as received by Westerners looking for
alternatives to their high stress culture, often have the flaw of being too
Yin. The Tao is balance, not passivity.

--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA

Brandon's Law (after Godwin's Law):
"As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of
a person being called a troll approaches one RAPIDLY."

 

[Brandon J. Van Every]

A purely anecdotal datum I just
learned about, for example: smack in the heart of downtown Milan there
are two excellent, large bookstores which are always hotly competing.

To add to anecdotes, Python is always represented and well-displayed at
Barnes & Noble in downtown Seattle. B&N is a rather mainstream bookstore,
with reasonably well stocked but mainstream tech books. I haven't bothered
to look at how many Python books are actually on the shelf, I just notice
that there's always 1 or 2 in the "look at this" display.

--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA

Brandon's Law (after Godwin's Law):
"As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of
a person being called a troll approaches one RAPIDLY."

 

[Thomas Guettler]

Am Thu, 13 Nov 2003 16:10:36 -0800 schrieb John Howard:

I've sent several messages over the last year asking about python -
Who teaches python? Is python losing steam? etc. I have noticed, eg,
the declinng number of books at my local borders. The last time I
visited a borders (last week), there was 1 (sic) book about python on
the shelve compared to dozens on perl & java! On my last inquiry about
who teaching python, I got two, maybe three, responses. I really want
to see python succeed! It's the best language I've seen. I see a lot
on www.python.org about development, but little on usage. I sent a
message to someone on the python site (I forget who - I know, no
excuse) about what I've done done on a site (grades, web application,
web registration, etc). No reponse. Sorry to ramble, but I wanted to
say a lot, but not have to go into a lot of detail.

Me, too. I like python very much. But most people
who use computers since 1996 use either java, perl, C or bash.

They know their language and don't want to change.

One reason could be: python is too simple. If you write
code that nobody understands (perl) you are a guru.

thomas

 

[Anand Pillai]

In the ideal "techie makes decisions" world this would have
been a good thing. But not in the real world where the Suits
make decisions in corporates.

There might have been thousands of books published in C/C++
language and they have all helped to popularize it in one
or the other way. Contrast, in the python world we have one
Alex Martelli, one Wesley Chun, one David Mertz, really
countable by hand.

There is a limit to how much a single person can evangelize
a language. Questions similar to what the O.P posted arise
from the listeners.

I would prefer to see more books on Python though they all might
be useless from a pure techie point of view. Let us have
a book on Software Projects in python for example. It might not
have the technical superiority of a Martelli book, but more
attempts like that will save the language and help the
eyeball factor, which is so important in practical marketing.

-Anand

 

[Erik Max Francis]

Fair warning: you are going to hear a lot of people talking in
circles. You
are only going to get things done if you are the kind of person who
will
take a bull by the horns and actually get things done, even /
especially
when others are yapping mindlessly and endlessly.

So what have you done?

--
Erik Max Francis && (e-mail address removed) && http://www.alcyone.com/max/
__ San Jose, CA, USA && 37 20 N 121 53 W && &tSftDotIotE
/ \
\__/ Then conquer we must, for our cause is just ...
-- Francis Scott Key

 

[Alan Kennedy]

[Thomas Guettler]

... most people
who use computers since 1996 use either java, perl, C or bash.

They know their language and don't want to change.

One reason could be: python is too simple. If you write
code that nobody understands (perl) you are a guru.

This a very important point, IMO.

If you've got complex hard-to-read code, then you've got power and
job-security. I have met *so many* people in this business who work
like this, consciously or sub-consciously, building their little local
empires.

Whereas, if you've written readable and maintainable code, you may be
surplus to requirements, since someone else can easily take over.

Dang! So that's why I'm not filthy rich!

time-can't-be-deposited-in-the-bank-ly y'rs,

 

[Alex Martelli]

To add to anecdotes, Python is always represented and well-displayed at
Barnes & Noble in downtown Seattle. B&N is a rather mainstream bookstore,
with reasonably well stocked but mainstream tech books. I haven't
bothered to look at how many Python books are actually on the shelf, I
just notice that there's always 1 or 2 in the "look at this" display.

Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised of B&N and Borders aimed at just about
the same "audience", from what I know of both, yet it's not even all
that surprising, when comparing one large bookstore from each chain,
geographically near each other, to find that one has several books on
a given subject which the other one lacks. Buyers for specific stores
do get substantial freedom (in all bookstore chains I'm familiar with),
and whether they exercise it wisely or foolishly is another issue.


Alex

 

[Peter Maas]

Me, too. I like python very much. But most people
who use computers since 1996 use either java, perl, C or bash.

They know their language and don't want to change.

One reason could be: python is too simple. If you write
code that nobody understands (perl) you are a guru.

You are right. If you learn something that's hard to grasp for
others you are a guru. But in software development the tools should
add no unneccessary burden to the solution as the problems are
already hard enough.

An example of guru appeal I recently stumbled about are Perl's
Quantum::Superpositions which is really a nice idea. This module
is inspired by quantum physics but in fact applied probability
theory and predicate logic. But to say, "Hey, I just did quantum
computations in Perl" has surely more guru appeal than to say "Hey,
I just enumerated a sample space."

Mit freundlichen Gruessen,

Peter Maas

 

[Ben Finney]

There's a finite number of dollars being spent on general Python books

Your calculations imply that increasing the number of books available on
a topic does not increase the amount of money spent on books on that
topic.

What evidence do you have for this?

How do you account for contrary evidence, such as the evident thought
processes of many (not least the OP of this thread) that "more books on
X => more interest in X => I should buy books on X"?

 

[A.M. Kuchling]

I would prefer to see more books on Python though they all might
be useless from a pure techie point of view. Let us have

Consider two situations:

1) There are four introductory Python books. All sell X copies; the
publishers make money and are happy.
2) There are twelve introductory Python books. All sell X/3 copies;
the publishers lose money and let them go out of print. (Example: the
O'Reilly Python Standard Library book.)

There's a finite number of dollars being spent on general Python books; no
point in having 15 titles chasing after the same market. The recent run of
topic-specific books is very heartening, however.

--amk

 

[John J. Lee]

There might have been thousands of books published in C/C++
language and they have all helped to popularize it in one
or the other way. Contrast, in the python world we have one
Alex Martelli, one Wesley Chun, one David Mertz, really
countable by hand.

And thank heavens for that. Most books on C++ (and the same goes for
all kinds of other technical subjects) actually do nothing other to
make it harder to find the decent books. Ironically, the good books
often seem to get published first, followed afterwards by a glut of
awful ones jumping on the bandwagon. So much for competition...

There is a limit to how much a single person can evangelize
a language. Questions similar to what the O.P posted arise
from the listeners.

I would prefer to see more books on Python though they all might
be useless from a pure techie point of view. Let us have
a book on Software Projects in python for example. It might not
have the technical superiority of a Martelli book, but more
attempts like that will save the language and help the
eyeball factor, which is so important in practical marketing.

[...]

.... but I can see where you're coming from.


John

 

[smarter_than_you]

Chinese philosophies, at least as received by Westerners looking for
alternatives to their high stress culture, often have the flaw of being too
Yin. The Tao is balance, not passivity.

Sun Tzu ("The Art of War") was Chinese.

 

[Michele Simionato]

True... but in most cases we're making an Existential choice about our
willingness to control. We are not in fact helpless. Such is the case with
Python. If you want to actually do something about marketing Python "like
the big boys do," I encourage you to join the marketing-python forum.
http://pythonology.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-python

Unfortunately, I am not a kinda of marketing person ...

Anyway, I must congratulate you for the Python logo: it is ways better
than any other Python logo I have seen (so far) and it looks really
professional. The font is so and so, but the stylized snake is perfect,
and very original.

Chinese philosophies, at least as received by Westerners looking for
alternatives to their high stress culture, often have the flaw of being too
Yin. The Tao is balance, not passivity.

Yes, but the idea I had in mind was something like "relax, we are not
in war against Java or C# or anything else, let us wait for a bit before
complaining about Python dead". OTOH, if people think that Python is an
endangered species and want to start a promotional campaign to save it,
I am certainly not opposed. Anyway, one must be realistic and do not
expect that Python will replace Java any soon, just because the way
the world is. So, I do promote Python, but the pacific way

Michele

P.S. in Italian "pacific" means "peaceful" but also, referred to a person,
somebody with a slow pace, and/or somebody who doesn't worry too much
(like me not sure if the English word has the same connotation, but
anyway I meant that there is no hurry, as I don't see any sign of
Python disappearing soon, I see just the opposite actually

 

[Maxim Khesin]

Or perhaps Pythonistas are smarter than other people and buy their
books online.