Marketing Programming Languages

Filed in archive Business on March 5, 2006

Guido van Rossum posted an article on Artima Developer that is making me think about things a little differently. In the article he talks about how Ruby is getting a lot of attention and that Python needs to be marketed more by potential evangelists on there blogs, etc... When you think about it that would really be the only way to "market" something that is open source I guess. Python doesn't have a company like Sun MicroSystems backing it. This gives me some insight, once I pull my eyes off the keyboard after actually using these languages to create things, to see the programming language landscape that surrounds me.

I guess I'm naive in thinking that the reason a language or framework gets attention is because the best simply float to the top after people start using them and people shake out the good from the bad or the good from the mediocre.

Soon I will have the opportunity to see for myself whether Python is better, IMHO, than Ruby. I just finished a project for someone using Ruby and now I need to up to speed with Python for another project I will be working on within the next couple of months. After experiencing both I will see whether Mr. Rossum is simply wining or Python really does need to be marketed better. I mean are these Ruby evangelists somehow manipulating me and others in thinking that their product, I don't know how else to refer to it at the moment, is better or is it getting all this attention because it deserves it? I hope to soon find out for myself.