You wrote: Python was a great Unix-y language is not equivalent to "Python only ran on Unix and never supported Windows at all",
Let me elaborate further. I recall that Mark Hammond at one of the Python conferences around 2000 said that Python was the language with the best support for Windows outside of the languages developed at Redmond. Hammond did much of the heavy work in making that happen.
I didn't mean to sneak in a dishonest argument.
I am under the genuine impression that Python worked well for Windows, with the narrow Unicode build that matched the UCS2 encoding that Windows used, and was comparable to the experience of developing under Python for Unix.
Similarly, I thought the native Mac support under, say, OS 9, was also well supported, and matched the Mac environment.
I'm not saying that there weren't problems, and I agree that that web development is one of the places where those problems came up.
Rather, I'm saying that I think the native Unix, native Windows, and native Mac support were roughly comparable, such that I don't think it's right to say that there was a really strong bias towards Unix.
What I said: Python was a great language for writing traditional Unix-y things like shell scripts, daemons, sysadmin tools, and here's an example of it adopting something that made that much easier.
What you are trying to twist that into saying: Python somehow didn't run on or wasn't used on or was terrible on operating systems not explicitly named "Unix".
I don't see any way to assume good faith on your part given you've repeated that attempt at putting words in my mouth while demonstrating knowledge that indicates you understand perfectly well what it was I really said. I'm going to ignore you now.
> Python 2 continued an earlier tradition of saying "yes" to almost everything from one particular group of programmers: people working on Unix who wanted a high-level language they could use to write Unix utilities, administrative tools, daemons, etc. In doing that, Python said "no" to people in a lot of other domains.
> Python 3 switched to saying "yes" to those other domains much more often.
I would like to know why you singled out Unix when it seems like Python also said "yes" to MS Windows.
Of course Python developers said "no" to other domains. Every language says "no" to some domains. I thought you were trying to make something more meaningful about a specific bias towards Unix.
Eg, as I recall, the Perl implementation was biased towards Unix and was difficult to compile under Windows. The glob syntax, for example, called out to the shell.
Honestly, I was expecting you to point out a difficulty that Python had with non-Unix OSes, specifically with MS Windows, which has since been remedied with Python 3.
I didn't expect this response at all, nor have my attempts to explain myself seemed to have made a difference.
I still don't know why you singled out Unix in your earlier comment. And it seems I will never know.
"Unix-y" is a paradigm or design philosophy, not an operating system. You can write unixy things for any OS. That's what the parent is talking about, not an operating system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy
Your wording wouldn't have cause me to raise an eyebrow.
But ubernostrum seemed to be making a stronger statement that Python favored "one particular group of programmers: people working on Unix ... to write Unix utilities, administrative tools, daemons, etc."
While I know that I used Python 2.x with the win32 extensions to write daemons for MS Windows, and to write an ActiveX extension for Excel.
That's why I wanted clarification on the basis for ubernostrum's statement, with pointers to why I thought Python was well-supported on other OSes.
Let me elaborate further. I recall that Mark Hammond at one of the Python conferences around 2000 said that Python was the language with the best support for Windows outside of the languages developed at Redmond. Hammond did much of the heavy work in making that happen.
I didn't mean to sneak in a dishonest argument.
I am under the genuine impression that Python worked well for Windows, with the narrow Unicode build that matched the UCS2 encoding that Windows used, and was comparable to the experience of developing under Python for Unix.
Similarly, I thought the native Mac support under, say, OS 9, was also well supported, and matched the Mac environment.
I'm not saying that there weren't problems, and I agree that that web development is one of the places where those problems came up.
Rather, I'm saying that I think the native Unix, native Windows, and native Mac support were roughly comparable, such that I don't think it's right to say that there was a really strong bias towards Unix.