Acceptance of OpenOffice.org

Ben Scott dragonhawk at gmail.com
Thu Mar 16 10:17:00 EST 2006


On 3/16/06, Michael ODonnell <michael.odonnell at comcast.net> wrote:
> That Tour de Babel essay I recently mentioned here:
>
>    http://www.cabochon.com/~stevey/blog-rants/tour-de-babel.html
>
> ...touches on that question.

  I read it when you posted it.  The reason given (to paraphrase) is:
"A bunch of people hate the whitespace thing.  All the Python people
hate hearing about the whitespace thing.  So there is too much hate."

  While I think there may be something to that, I don't really think
it's *enough* of a reason to explain the slower uptake for Python.

  Didn't Guido originally design Python because he wanted a good
teaching language?  If I am remembering that correctly, that might
explain a difference in acceptance between Python and Perl.  Perl was,
right from the start, intended to be a tool used by people who had
problems to solve.  It was "marketed" that way, if you will.  A tool
that is "marketed" for teaching, OTOH, tends to have a much slower
acceptance rate.

  This is, of course, pure, uninformed speculation on my part.  So it
fits in with the rest of this thread perfectly.  ;-)

-- Ben



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