[OT] Re: What Excites You?

Erik Price erikprice at mac.com
Sun Mar 30 21:02:13 EST 2003


On Sunday, March 30, 2003, at 04:52  PM, Bill Sconce wrote:

> Philosophical:  elmininating the possibility that the vendor of my
> favorite package may go out of business, leaving me stranded;  or
> reposition a product, leaving me stranded;  or someday require an
> expensive upgrade in order that I may continue to work with my own
> documents.

I was reading a post on /. today that (of course) criticized Java for 
being a proprietary solution, because of the very reasons you stated 
above.  I wonder -- given the tremendous amount of time, work, and code 
built on top of/with Java, including such incredible open source 
projects as Tomcat, Xerces, Jikes, etc, is this really a legitimate 
concern?  If you don't care for Java per se, imagine that some other 
proprietary solution had gained as much support from both commercial 
and OSS interests -- I'm not really asking specifically about Java.

> Honest to goodness neat:  Python, beyond question.  Python has
> (I believe) changed the professional life of almost everyone who
> has learned how to use it.

I'm with you there.  Though I learned Python before I had a 
professional life... actually I still don't have a professional life 
yet...


Erik




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