Re: OT: Politics of Java

[Kirk Strauser <kirk@strauser.com>]

At 2002-11-21T17:42:27Z, Kent West <westk@acu.edu> writes:

> Shaleh was the one to plug python first. But what dman says here gets my
> attention. Do others concur that python is more cross-platform and more OO
> than java?

Both are available for pretty much every major platform.  Python is
available on more non-mainstream systems:

  http://java.sun.com/cgi-bin/java-ports.cgi
  http://www.python.org/download/
  http://www.python.org/download/download_other.html

Of interest, Perl and Python are moving toward a common virtual machine
(Parrot), although it may take a while.  I'd be a full-time Python
programmer if I knew I could transparently access my Perl codebase.

> What are the disadvantages with python as opposed to java?

It seems like there should be *something*, but I can't think of a single
drawback except that there are probably more development environments for
Java than Python.  I use Emacs, so both languages are pretty equally easy
for me to use, but Windows users may not be in the same boat.

> Why would someone pick java over python then? Is it only because of
> marketing, as dman says?

Actually, since you mention it, that's the only reason I can think of.
-- 
Kirk Strauser
In Googlis non est, ergo non est.