[Python-Dev] Re: Stability and change (original) (raw)

Alex Martelli aleax@aleax.it
Tue, 9 Apr 2002 09:26:30 +0200

On Tuesday 09 April 2002 01:51, Tim Peters wrote:

[Alex Martelli]

> ... > Judging by languages such as C or C++, stability seems paramount; > yet Java churned a lot and still managed to spread a lot too (not > without a lot of help from high-$$$ marketing efforts, though). Not to be cynical , but what those all have in common is the visible backing of multi-billion dollar companies. Ditto Visual Basic

Not an issue of being cynical -- it's just a fact that C enjoyed no "visible backing" from AT&T (or did you have some other corp in mind?) to help it gain mindshare, and neither did C++.

If "backing from multi-billion dollar corps" mattered as much as you seem to think we'd all be using PL/? or maybe some APL. Or do you forget who DID back those, and how much Big Blue dominated the computer scene until not-all-that-many years ago?

Alex