[dagw]

From personal observation I'd say that for every person writing major applications in python you have at least 20 using it for glue code. And having written a major application in python, I'm not really convinced it's a good language for it.

[pdonis]

> From personal observation

Which is not a good metric. Have there been any actual surveys or studies of Python programmers to see what the distribution is?

> having written a major application in python, I'm not really convinced it's a good language for it.

Out of curiosity, what was the major application?

[dagw]

Nope no metrics, I doubt very much they exist. But if I can pile on a second personal observation, a significant proportion of people programming python aren't python programmers. They'er engineers, artists, scientists, analysts and statisticians whom are using python to do their job. So even if you somehow did manage to survey a statistically significant number of python programmers, you'd still be missing a large swath of the python community.

As to the application, it was a largely in house tool for an engineering and company I used to work for.

[pdonis]

> even if you somehow did manage to survey a statistically significant number of python programmers, you'd still be missing a large swath of the python community.

Depends on how the survey is done. If those engineers, artists, scientists, etc. are using Python, they're using Python, and there are ways to survey that. For one thing, you could look for users of the major Python frameworks listed in the Wikipedia article I linked to elsewhere in this subthread, like NumPy or SciPy.

If you want to claim that, for example, a scientist using SciPy isn't a real "python programmer" because he is only writing "glue code", I've already answered that in another subthread. Application logic is not "glue code". The scientist's application logic is in Python, so he's programming in Python, even if his job title doesn't say "Python programmer".

[coldtea]

>Which is not a good metric. Have there been any actual surveys or studies of Python programmers to see what the distribution is?

So where are your metrics?

[pdonis]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Python_software

This doesn't show how many programmers work on "glue code" vs. "major applications" (which is why I asked if anyone has data on that), but it certainly shows that there is a lot of Python code out there that is not just "glue code". Bear in mind that it's not just the particular packages listed on that page, since many of them are frameworks; there are also plenty of "major applications" written in those frameworks.

(I am counting major websites using a web framework, major numerical applications using NumPy or SciPy, etc., as "major applications", btw, not "glue code". I suspect on re-reading this subthread that the poster I was originally responding to might differ with me on that point, but application logic is not "glue code" in my view.)

[coldtea]

>but it certainly shows that there is a lot of Python code out there that is not just "glue code"

Well, of course, this list would have only NON glue code projects!

Glue code stuff is used internally, in companies etc. It's not (usually) something that you put on GitHub or open source.

[pdonis]

> Well, of course, this list would have only NON glue code projects!

And libraries and frameworks that support non glue code projects. Where is the list of libraries that are glued together by all this Python glue code?

> Glue code stuff is used internally, in companies etc. It's not (usually) something that you put on GitHub or open source.

People don't put their Django websites or their internal SciPy models on github either, so I don't think this means much either way.