This posting provides some background for our new Python Center of Excellence (PyCOE) consulting offering.
We are slowly entering the post-honeymoon era of Ruby on Rails (RoR). For a while, the IT press was head-over-heels in anointing RoR as the heir apparent to J2EE/.NET development in the Enterprise. Now, there is a much more balanced pro/con view of RoR, especially among the Alpha Geeks.
While the press talks about IT fashion du jour, I think that IT and business folks alike are secretly pining for the next “Visual Basic”, where an easy-to-learn syntax coupled with powerful libraries can be used by normal people to solve real problems quickly in a variety of contexts.
Python fits that bill quite nicely, and is attractive to both hardcore programmers and the “IT is my day job” crowds alike.
Other languages are arguably more [INSERT ADJECTIVE HERE] than Python, but few combine its expressiveness and ease of learning.
Unfortunately for the typical IT manager, it’s hard to figure out what technology horse to bet on, since the popular bets are rarely the good ones. Taking the advice of the high-end IT sages will land you smack-dab in the middle of the pack at best. And following the advice of your sharpest go-to person may yield an approach that doesn’t scale across the talent continuum.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Bob is the smartest guy in the IT department. Bob falls in love with Rails, and makes the pitch to his boss that they should do their new development in Ruby. Bob backs this up with circa-2006/2007 praise that Rails received from…everywhere. They get started and the boss quickly learns three things:
- Bob is happy working in Rails. Woohoo!
- The simple stuff gets done quickly in Rails. Woohoo!
- Everything else carries a pretty steep learning curve for everyone but Bob. D’oh!
Our PyCOE offering provides a contrasting model, one that states that You should not base technology selection solely upon the tastes and preferences of your sharpest employee.
Rather, PyCOE provides a nine-step process for helping companies adopt Python and incorporate the set of tools and approaches that are appropriate to their existing environment, making sure that the tool selection is consistent with the culture, charter, and legacy considerations of the organization, among other factors.
Paradoxically speaking, it’s exciting to help make dynamic language adoption become boring and predictable.
