[TIP] Everybody wants a pony!

[m h]

Interesting

On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 10:47 AM, Trent Nelson <tnelson at onresolve.com> wrote:
> No idea what the context is here, but I'll chip in anyway.
>
>> -> I think Titus was referring to non-helpful platforms such as
>> -> hpux/aix/cray/weird mainframes that are now stacked up in his
>> office,
>> -> that don't have such nice package management.
>
> We've got Tru64, AIX, HP-UX and Solaris coverage.  The latter three are still actively used in the enterprise.  Tru64's been EOL'd; the only reason we've got Tru64 coverage is because I *heart* OSF1 and Alphas, and I like the nostalgia.

This is cool.  And you are running python apps on these machines?

>> -> My concerns for snakebite would be:
>> ->
>> -> * Who really cares about those platforms?
>
> The enterprise?  You'd be surprised how little open source OS alternatives like Linux/BSD have penetrated certain markets -- AIX, HP-UX and Solaris are ubiquitous in the enterprise.

Please elaborate on these certain markets.  Also has python penetrated
them?  Not trying to flame here.  I'm really curious.

>
>> From what Guido said, he doesn't.
>
> Citation needed ;-)
>

Umm, from his keynote at PyCon (I was half asleep).  But he mentioned
something similar to "maintaining multiple platforms is a pain".
"DVCS should help people who want to track python and have a personal
port to an alternative platform".   "We are going to focus support on
the big 3"  (Not direct quotes, people at PyCon can
correct/confirm/declare me a heretic....)  He didn't explicitly say
what the 'big 3' were, but I'm assumming Win/Mac/Linux.

> (I suspect you might be referring to a recent thread where everyone generally accepted that IRIX was dead and that there's no problem in ripping out chunks of IRIX-dependent code if it's breaking other stuff -- or deprecating support for it going forward.  I'm sure he *never* said "Neither I, nor Python, care about HP-UX, AIX or Solaris".)
>

Nope, referring to PyCon keynote.

Titus, why do scientists care about these platforms?  With cheap
commodity hardware it seems most people would scale google style.
Aren't x86 going to be cheaper/faster?  I guess if you are talking
about some super optimized fortran compiler, yeah you care, but this
is python we are talking about.

-matt