[Zope] The Zope Starship (for Python PSA)

[Jeff Bauer]

Robert OConnor wrote:
> What is the BIG PICTURE here?  Is Python so good
> that lot of programming tomes are unnecessary?

As a language qua language, Python is so good in design
and implementation that it has few dark mysteries that
require a lot of documentation to explain.

The existing Python books are quite good, with at
least 4 more in the works.  More Python books are 
necessary to explain things like Win32/COM programming, 
for instance, than the language itself.  Perl has
lots of books, because for the past 2 years, almost
anything that offered to make Perl programming easy
was given shelf space.  Java has lots of books
because almost everything in Java has to be written
in Java, and the Java libraries have been a moving
target for so long.

More important than the number of books (how many
Perl books do you really need, after the Camel?) is
the level of support/platforms in the Python community,
which is quite high.  It will probably never attain 
the proportion of mindshare that Perl or Java has,
but is has critical mass, and a lot of compentent people
who contribute code.  Too many companies now rely upon 
Python as their core development language for it to go 
away anytime soon.

More importantly:  You'll spend more time learning about
the eccentricities of whatever your environment demands,
be it Unix, Windows, web servers, CE devices, COM, Tk, etc.
than learning the language itself.  This is Python's 
great (and under-reported) strength.

Best regards,

Jeff Bauer
Rubicon, Inc.