Re: Two points of "sale" (Roy Smith)

> Selling a programming language only works in (1) and otherwise amounts 
> to trying to sell a better way to solve an already-solved problem, 
> which is not very useful, or simply is missing the mark as to what 
> people are interested in.

I'm a complete newbie to Python. I've bought Python In A Nutshell and
read about it but haven't programmed in it (yet).

I have worked writing softare for 17 years - 12 of those with Microsoft.

I'd just like to comment that I believe you can mainly sell a language to
a mainstream audience by proving it's "productivity". But it's not just the
language. It's the IDE, debuggers, libraries, samples, documentation,
case studies and community support too.

I do like Python but I've been completely underwhelmed by the (free) IDE's
I've
found so far. But I've only tried a couple so I might have missed something.
The bits and pieces seem to be all there but Python could really use being
packaged together with a great IDE. When selling to managers, it's easier to
sell an integrated productivity tool.

At least, that's my experience.

Ian Wijesinghe