EP wrote:
> Robert Kern <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>>Which is exactly why I said at the beginning that people shouldn't
>>bother with this thread and should instead just get to work.
>
> Robert, you are probably right, but I think how we get to work is important
> as well.
>
> What I posted was a little intellectually thin, but it would be nice to stir
> the collective energy toward some common (and useful) objectives.
What I'm trying to say is that posting to c.l.py is absolutely
ineffective in achieving that goal. Code attracts people that like to
code. Tedious, repetitive c.l.py threads attract people that like to
write tedious, repetitive c.l.py threads. In the open source world, you
can't tell people what to do. It's often a waste of time even to try to
get them to *agree* on what they should do particularly when the group
("Python programmers") is so large and the goals ("create a powerful web
framework as good as the language") are so amorphous.
Ruby on Rails isn't the phenomenon that it is today because a bunch of
Ruby programmers got together on c.l.ruby and all decided to work on one
web app framework and bless it as the One True Way to write Ruby web
apps. Instead, they wrote good code that solved their problems, code
that would solve other people's problems, too. They released it in such
a way that got people talking about their code and people talking about
people talking about their code (and me talking about people talking
about ... yeah).
I'm not sure that this phenomenon is particularly repeatable. It was the
result of a large number of uncontrollable factors and relied very
heavily on network effects. Plone has, for a long time, made all-in-one
distributions of itself+Zope+Python+et al. for Windows and Mac just like
the one you tried for Ruby on Rails. When Zope was first released as
open source, it got the same kind of "people talking about people
talking ..." that Ruby on Rails is now getting; Zope was widely
purported to be *the* Killer App for Python that would draw users of
other languages in droves. Django is getting the right kind of
attention, and is simple enough to get started with a small project, but
it's in the unfortunate position of having come out *after* Ruby on
Rails. You can do everything right and still not get what you want.
There's a better question that you should have asked instead: "What can
I do to help make Python a more attractive language to program?" And I
would suggest that far and away, Python will get the largest payoff for
your effort if you hammer hammer hammer on
setuptools/PythonEggs/EasyInstall. Distribution affects *everyone* from
the hobbiest, to the Java guy who just wants to try out one of the funky
"dynamic languages," to the enterprise programmer. And there are a large
number of diverse, small projects that don't need a whole lot of
coordination with anybody else; you can do them without needing to forge
much consensus.
You can make your own packages distributable via eggs. You can sumbit
patches for your favorite 3rd party packages to work well as eggs. You
can build and donate binary eggs for the platforms you care about. You
can build a GUI interface for managing the installation of eggs via
EasyInstall. You can work out a way for eggs to work well with
dpkg/rpm/whatever package manager your system uses. You can add
signatures for eggs. You can work out a way to easy associate
documentation packages associated with the runtime eggs. The more you
improve this technology, even incrementally, the more people will buy
into it and thus improve it for you, too.
Or we can keep posting here. Your choice.
--
Robert Kern
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
"In the fields of hell where the grass grows high
Are the graves of dreams allowed to die."
-- Richard Harter
--
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