Chandler
Chandler is pining for the fjords. Carlos Perez blames Python; Ned Batchelder comes to Python’s defense.
First of all: I have always thought that Chandler was dubious marketing for Python, to be honest. When it was first announced, much was made of the fact that it was going to use Python as the development language… and then it just sat there for years, showing very little progress.
Upon reading Dreaming In Code, I got the impression that programming languages (whether Python or Java) are not to blame, but rather the fact that the project’s goals were very vague and unclear, right from the start (which caused a slew of other, related, problems). Writing a revolutionary PIM is a great idea… but nobody knew what it should look like exactly, much less what it should do.
Python is great, but it doesn’t design the program for you. :-} As such, I don’t think it has anything to do with Chandler’s failure (and neither does the static-vs-dynamic typing issue). If you don’t know what you want, you can have the most productive language known to man, but it won’t do you any good.
(And, of course, the fact that most of the developers were unfamiliar with Python, did not exactly push the project forward either…)