Python Evangelism

[Paul Boddie]

Re: Cheese Shop -> BSOL?

Tim Churches wrote:[color=blue]
> Would it be possible to rename "Cheese Shop" as "Bright Side of Life"?[/color]

Well, you could replay the conversation I gave as an example elsewhere
to see if it sounds ridiculous or not, but what we've encountered here
is the problem of whether something should be given a distinctive
identity or a derivative identity. A long time ago, and possibly
continuing to this day, people complained about how nearly every Python
package, module or program had names starting or ending with "Py" -
announcing a module in a Python newsgroup and giving it a name starting
with "Py" seemed somewhat redundant, and there was always the issue of
not being able to scan long lists of packages comfortably, just like
with all the KDE application names that start with the letter K.

But even without "the curse of Py", many people don't just choose
arbitrary names for their packages: it often makes sense to include
related technologies in the name (eg. XML, XSLT, ado, dav), or to use a
descriptive component, possibly in shortened form (eg. auth, bayes,
bio, Cal). Yes, a search will often bring forth the right resource
regardless of what it's called, but many people underestimate their own
searching skills and overestimate what other people can find via things
like Google.

Of course, programs may downplay Python as the implementation
technology because the underlying technical details are mostly
irrelevant to end-users (eg. BitTorrent, b3, Eric, Glarf), but if we
look at distinctively named packages, we can see that they often
attempt to define their own identity distinct from Python (eg.
BeautifulSoup, Dabo, DejaVu, Django, Twisted, Zope), frequently because
they seek to be the primary point of reference for developers -
developing in Twisted or Zope is more specialised than just developing
things in Python. Some of the distinctively named package names employ
metaphors and/or cultural references that possibly make them more
memorable, but they don't necessarily make the names easy to guess.

So should a service for finding Python packages have a distinct
identity? It is possible that a package index could be someone's
principal view of the Python world ("I go to Camelot to get... what is
it I get there?"), but the things that emerge from such a service
aren't just downloads that have little in common with each other.
Consequently, I don't think a descriptive name, derived from the name
of the technology, is sensibly avoided in this case.

Paul

[Kay Schluehr]

Re: Cheese Shop -> BSOL?


Paul Boddie wrote:[color=blue]
> Tim Churches wrote:[color=green]
> > Would it be possible to rename "Cheese Shop" as "Bright Side of Life"?[/color]
>
> Well, you could replay the conversation I gave as an example elsewhere
> to see if it sounds ridiculous or not, but what we've encountered here
> is the problem of whether something should be given a distinctive
> identity or a derivative identity. A long time ago, and possibly
> continuing to this day, people complained about how nearly every Python
> package, module or program had names starting or ending with "Py" -
> announcing a module in a Python newsgroup and giving it a name starting
> with "Py" seemed somewhat redundant, and there was always the issue of
> not being able to scan long lists of packages comfortably, just like
> with all the KDE application names that start with the letter K.
>
> But even without "the curse of Py", many people don't just choose
> arbitrary names for their packages: it often makes sense to include
> related technologies in the name (eg. XML, XSLT, ado, dav), or to use a
> descriptive component, possibly in shortened form (eg. auth, bayes,
> bio, Cal). Yes, a search will often bring forth the right resource
> regardless of what it's called, but many people underestimate their own
> searching skills and overestimate what other people can find via things
> like Google.
>
> Of course, programs may downplay Python as the implementation
> technology because the underlying technical details are mostly
> irrelevant to end-users (eg. BitTorrent, b3, Eric, Glarf), but if we
> look at distinctively named packages, we can see that they often
> attempt to define their own identity distinct from Python (eg.
> BeautifulSoup, Dabo, DejaVu, Django, Twisted, Zope), frequently because
> they seek to be the primary point of reference for developers -
> developing in Twisted or Zope is more specialised than just developing
> things in Python. Some of the distinctively named package names employ
> metaphors and/or cultural references that possibly make them more
> memorable, but they don't necessarily make the names easy to guess.
>
> So should a service for finding Python packages have a distinct
> identity? It is possible that a package index could be someone's
> principal view of the Python world ("I go to Camelot to get... what is
> it I get there?"), but the things that emerge from such a service
> aren't just downloads that have little in common with each other.
> Consequently, I don't think a descriptive name, derived from the name
> of the technology, is sensibly avoided in this case.
>
> Paul[/color]

The problem I have with the cheese-shop is less a naming but a
usability issue. In some commercial projects that involve Python I
already integrated SQLite as a local database for storing and
retrieving all kind of configuration data as well as session data,
failure statistics etc. I also extended a Python console in order to
send SQL commands directly using this syntax "$ select * from reports
where...". I should mention that this kind of integration was one of
the most acknowledged features by those who where Python sceptics. I
wonder if creating a database client, integreting it with a Python
console and shipping it with a Python setup would not leave behind all
other solutions in the field? BTW I'm not only intererested in the
functionality of a package but how well it performs how well it is
tested etc. The packages checked into the cheese-shop obtain already a
rough classification. If classification schemes become more usable it
is likely that they could be extended.

Kay

[Scott David Daniels]

Re: Cheese Shop -> BSOL?

Just wrote:[color=blue]
> In article <f5n412hgfraua2 joto3011s6926v8 2b89k@4ax.com>,
> Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfraed@ix.net com.com> wrote:[color=green]
>> On Sat, 11 Mar 2006 13:30:43 +1100, Tim Churches
>> <tchur@optushom e.com.au> declaimed the following in comp.lang.pytho n:[color=darkred]
>>> Would it be possible to rename "Cheese Shop" as "Bright Side of Life"?[/color]
>> I think I'd prefer "The Larch"...
>> Or just "SPAM" (<something> Python <something> Modules ?)[/color]
> Standard Python Archive (of) Modules?[/color]

Some of these names are so much fun that I'd be happy to have

http://cheeseshop.python.org

http://larch.python.org

and http://spam.python.org

all get to the same page.

--Scott David Daniels
scott.daniels@a cm.org

[Michael Tobis]

Re: Cheese Shop -&gt; BSOL?

I like cheeseshop just fine, but have been a Monty Python fan since
they appeared on the CBC in, I think, 1969. I'm one of those people who
is always surprised when a MP bon mot is greeted with confusion and the
suspicion that I have finally lost my mind altogether. So...

If we are moving to the snake motif (which probably would be better
marketing):

"Pythons lay eggs which they arrange in a pile. They coil around the
pile until all eggs have hatched. Since pythons cannot regulate their
internal body temperature, they cannot incubate their eggs per se;
instead, they raise the temperature of their eggs by small movements of
their body-essentially, they "shiver". This is one of only a few
documented cases of parental behaviour in snakes."
--Wikipedia article "python"

Pythons build no nests. Their eggs are found in coils. coil.python.org
?

Tadpoles ( http://python.org/images/python-logo.gif ) are immature
frogs. If we keep the logo, we can change the name of the language to
"frog". Then the eggs would be found in lilypad.frog.or g . I personally
do not like this choice but it would have the virtue of consistency.
(Did I mention that I don't like the logo?)

mt

[Torsten Bronger]

Re: Cheese Shop -&gt; BSOL?

Hallöchen!

"Michael Tobis" <mtobis@gmail.c om> writes:
[color=blue]
> [...]
>
> Pythons build no nests. Their eggs are found in coils. coil.python.org
> ?[/color]

Better eggs.python.org . Would support the spread of the new file
format, too.

Tschö,
Torsten.

--
Torsten Bronger, aquisgrana, europa vetus ICQ 264-296-646

[Christos Georgiou]

Re: Cheese Shop -&gt; BSOL?

On 11 Mar 2006 03:22:42 -0800, rumours say that "Paul Boddie"
<paul@boddie.or g.uk> might have written:
[color=blue]
>Tim Churches wrote:[/color]
[color=blue][color=green]
>> Would it be possible to rename "Cheese Shop" as "Bright Side of Life"?[/color][/color]

[Paul]
<snip>
[color=blue]
>So should a service for finding Python packages have a distinct
>identity? It is possible that a package index could be someone's
>principal view of the Python world ("I go to Camelot to get... what is
>it I get there?"), but the things that emerge from such a service
>aren't just downloads that have little in common with each other.
>Consequently , I don't think a descriptive name, derived from the name
>of the technology, is sensibly avoided in this case.[/color]

I like the BSOL idea, but in that case what will the package extension be
instead of .egg? camelot.python. org has the advantage of suggesting an
obvious extension: .graal

So you go to the Camelot to get the graal (or one of them :). In case this
catches on, I'd like to upload ASAP one of my packages [1] called "wholy".

PS "Grail" was a web browser written in Python (or an attempt at one).


[1] It's mostly useless but I trust wholy.graal will be downloaded by
millions.
--
TZOTZIOY, I speak England very best.
"Dear Paul,
please stop spamming us."
The Corinthians

[Douglas Alan]

Re: Python Evangelism

Andrew Gwozdziewycz <apgwoz@gmail.c om> writes:
[color=blue]
> Douglas Alan wrote:[/color]
[color=blue][color=green]
>> Ruby didn't start catching on until Ruby on Rails came out. If
>> Python has a naming problem, it's with the name of Django, rather
>> than Python. Firstly, Django doesn't have "Python" in the name, so
>> it doesn't popularize the language behind it, even should Django
>> become very popular. Secondly, Django just doesn't have the ring
>> of "Ruby on Rails".[/color][/color]
[color=blue]
> I'll admit "Ruby on Rails" is a clever name. The fact that you
> mention it "didn't catch on" is only partially true.[/color]

I'm sorry if I wasn't clear. By "didn't catch on", I only meant that
it had little mainstream success. At least in the US. I'm certainly
aware that it has had a significant community of devotees for some
time now.
[color=blue]
> Rails did however jump start it's new career as the definitive
> web2.0 language, but who cares? Not me![/color]

Well, I'm not sure that the threat to Python is being fully
appreciated here. I have friends who are fully convinced that Python
is doomed because Ruby has all the buzz now. I think that their
predictions of doom and gloom for Python are overstated. For one
thing, I point out to them that Rails is what really has all the buzz,
not Ruby per se. But such subtle distinctions seem to often get lost
in the type of buzz that causes technologies to succeed or fail. This
is an example of how names are indeed very important.

There *is* a serious worry here. For instance, look how PHP
completely decimated Perl in its biggest market niche at the time (CGI
programming) in just a couple of years. PHP couldn't use that
advantage to threaten the more general scripting niches, but unlike
PHP, Ruby might certainly be able to leverage that advantage, as it is
also a perfectly good general-purpose programming language. Ruby's
domain is not limited to just server-side web scripting.

For those who don't believe that Ruby on Rails does have an incredible
amount of buzz going for it right now, I do have a number of personal
data points that seem to indicate that it is indeed undergoing
exponential growth at the moment: (1) I'm sitting in on a class at MIT
on developing web applications. For their projects and assignments,
the students are allowed to chose whatever programming languages,
databases (as long as they are ACID-compliant), and development
environments that they prefer. From what I can tell, more than half
of the class is using Ruby on Rails. One group is using C# and .NET.
Another is using JSP. No one is using PHP. No one is using Django.
One group was doing straight Python CGI, but I think they switched to
Rails. (2) I've started to see advertisements for web hosting
services where the ads say, "PHP! MySQL! Rails!". (3) I have
friends who work in companies that are big Python shops, but they seem
to be moving to Rails for web development.
[color=blue]
> Hell I like django quite a bit, but anyone writing something for
> django knows it's written in python.[/color]

Yes, and for Rails, everyone who has never even seen a single line of
Ruby code knows that it is Ruby-based. The same cannot be said for
Django.
[color=blue]
> If some non-programmer decided to create a new web app, and his
> friend said, 'I hear django is quick and oh, it use's this really
> cool easy to learn language python,' What's the difference?[/color]

There's a huge difference. Ruby on Rails gives Ruby great brand
recognition, while Django does nothing at all for Python's brand
recognition. Just pay attention to TV commercials: a large fraction
of them have nothing to say whatsoever about the merits of their
product -- the ads just want to get the brand name into your head.
For better or worse, this is how human psychology works.

In any case, it's almost certainly too late for Django to achieve the
kind of popularity that Rails is achieving; if you Google
"web-development rails", you get 3 million hits, while if you Google
"web-development django", you get 82,000 hits. So, unfortunately, how
to best use Django to help popularize Python is almost certainly moot
at this point.

|>oug

[John Pote]

Re: Python Evangelism

If I get time I'll expand my thoughts and experiences but for now,
Don't know what Ruby on Rails is but it's catchy and current high volume of
interest makes me think - I should look into it. Django, skip reading this
thread before and I had not even picked up it was a Python product (still
don't know what it is too little time to look!)

Python seems to concentrate on language development rather than environment
development. Programmer productivity depends much more on the associated
environment - docs, code editor, libraries, wysiwyg GUI designer - than the
language. So far my experience is that the further away from the core
language the worst things get. My principle moan about the standard library
is lack of formal stating of ALL exceptions that can be thrown by a module.
Sometimes the detail is burried in the general text about the module which
makes it difficult to eye ball quickly. httplib does not mention any of the
socket module exceptions that can be thrown. This makes it difficult to
write stable bullet proof code.

Finding myself slowed down too much by hand coding tkinter (and modifying it
weeks later) I've switched to wxPython and Glade. Certainly better but
wxPython docs are not ideal. (only reason for switching is lack of wysiwyg
GUI designer for it)

I get a myApp.pyw working on one machine. Copy to another and maybe forget
something (usually updating my own python library so a header import fails)
and what happens? nothing if tkinter has not yet fired up the gui. and even
if it has and there's an uncaught exception the app just closes. Any error
message and traceback are dumped because there's no dos box.

On the positive side Twisted (I have the docs and book) looks exactly what I
need in all respects.

I think the language has already made Python, the rest is down to its
'environment'.

Best wishes to everyone,

John Pote




"Douglas Alan" <nessus@mit.edu > wrote in message
news:m2wtesen95 .fsf@lexx.mit.e du...[color=blue]
> Andrew Gwozdziewycz <apgwoz@gmail.c om> writes:
>[color=green]
>> Douglas Alan wrote:[/color]
>[color=green][color=darkred]
>>> Ruby didn't start catching on until Ruby on Rails came out. If
>>> Python has a naming problem, it's with the name of Django, rather
>>> than Python. Firstly, Django doesn't have "Python" in the name, so
>>> it doesn't popularize the language behind it, even should Django
>>> become very popular. Secondly, Django just doesn't have the ring
>>> of "Ruby on Rails".[/color][/color]
>[color=green]
>> I'll admit "Ruby on Rails" is a clever name. The fact that you
>> mention it "didn't catch on" is only partially true.[/color]
>
> I'm sorry if I wasn't clear. By "didn't catch on", I only meant that
> it had little mainstream success. At least in the US. I'm certainly
> aware that it has had a significant community of devotees for some
> time now.
>[color=green]
>> Rails did however jump start it's new career as the definitive
>> web2.0 language, but who cares? Not me![/color]
>
> Well, I'm not sure that the threat to Python is being fully
> appreciated here. I have friends who are fully convinced that Python
> is doomed because Ruby has all the buzz now. I think that their
> predictions of doom and gloom for Python are overstated. For one
> thing, I point out to them that Rails is what really has all the buzz,
> not Ruby per se. But such subtle distinctions seem to often get lost
> in the type of buzz that causes technologies to succeed or fail. This
> is an example of how names are indeed very important.
>
> There *is* a serious worry here. For instance, look how PHP
> completely decimated Perl in its biggest market niche at the time (CGI
> programming) in just a couple of years. PHP couldn't use that
> advantage to threaten the more general scripting niches, but unlike
> PHP, Ruby might certainly be able to leverage that advantage, as it is
> also a perfectly good general-purpose programming language. Ruby's
> domain is not limited to just server-side web scripting.
>
> For those who don't believe that Ruby on Rails does have an incredible
> amount of buzz going for it right now, I do have a number of personal
> data points that seem to indicate that it is indeed undergoing
> exponential growth at the moment: (1) I'm sitting in on a class at MIT
> on developing web applications. For their projects and assignments,
> the students are allowed to chose whatever programming languages,
> databases (as long as they are ACID-compliant), and development
> environments that they prefer. From what I can tell, more than half
> of the class is using Ruby on Rails. One group is using C# and .NET.
> Another is using JSP. No one is using PHP. No one is using Django.
> One group was doing straight Python CGI, but I think they switched to
> Rails. (2) I've started to see advertisements for web hosting
> services where the ads say, "PHP! MySQL! Rails!". (3) I have
> friends who work in companies that are big Python shops, but they seem
> to be moving to Rails for web development.
>[color=green]
>> Hell I like django quite a bit, but anyone writing something for
>> django knows it's written in python.[/color]
>
> Yes, and for Rails, everyone who has never even seen a single line of
> Ruby code knows that it is Ruby-based. The same cannot be said for
> Django.
>[color=green]
>> If some non-programmer decided to create a new web app, and his
>> friend said, 'I hear django is quick and oh, it use's this really
>> cool easy to learn language python,' What's the difference?[/color]
>
> There's a huge difference. Ruby on Rails gives Ruby great brand
> recognition, while Django does nothing at all for Python's brand
> recognition. Just pay attention to TV commercials: a large fraction
> of them have nothing to say whatsoever about the merits of their
> product -- the ads just want to get the brand name into your head.
> For better or worse, this is how human psychology works.
>
> In any case, it's almost certainly too late for Django to achieve the
> kind of popularity that Rails is achieving; if you Google
> "web-development rails", you get 3 million hits, while if you Google
> "web-development django", you get 82,000 hits. So, unfortunately, how
> to best use Django to help popularize Python is almost certainly moot
> at this point.
>
> |>oug[/color]