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ok, small thing, but its perl ( not pearl )
and you should link to http://www.cpan.org if anything
not http://www.python.org for crying out loud..

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i mean really

Now this isn't meant as flamebait, but why Perl? I appreciate it's cross-platform, and great for some tasks, but I'm sorry, Perl isn't number one for writing object orientated applications in. Let's face it, Perl sucks as an OO language, with it's packages and it's "bless" function. Perl is simply an "enhanced" version of awk, and it shows.

People who write web pages for a living aren't going to want to write in Perl. JavaScript may not be the most powerful tool in the Universe, but at least it has a syntax which most people can get used to, even if they're not bearded hippy Linux gurus. Asking them to write stuff in Perl of all things is just plain stupid.

For a far superior alternative to Perl, see here./P.

Good luck... integrating CVS with any bug tracking system is going to be a bit difficult.

Greg Gallagher

duffbeer writes: "There is a 1.6 version of Python in alpha. In addition, they have a schedue for future releases and some warnings about code breakage expcted with those releases. It looks like the documentation will lag the releases a bit." Apparently it will break some code. The release notes describe them as "folkore APIs (that were never documented or endorsed but nevertheless were accepted and in common use)." The notes on 1.6 also lay out an ambitious roadmap toward Python 3000

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Modula-3 is not part of the FreeBSD base install. You are probably getting confused with the fact that a lot of FreeBSD users rely on CVSup, which is used for source-code updates and is written in Modula-3. Most of the time, you don't even need to install Modula-3 at all, you can just use the pre-built binaries of CVSup.

OBTroll: If you're thinking of Modula-3, look at Python :-)

You'd probably want Python instead for larger applications. Its large standard library and object model makes handling large projects quite easy. Python is a very nice language, for all sized projects.

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Errm, OK I'm a little biased, but Perl is more suited to quick hacks and text processing than full-blown applications. Try Python for an alternative scripting language - it's very easy to learn, has loads of useful libraries included and its inbuilt OO makes it a lot easier to write larger programs in - here where I work we've got a scripting module as part of our application which is roughly 3-4 Mb of Python code which I can maintain and extend quite easily.

While I would like to believe this, I strongly suspect its not true. Bjarne Stroustrup has shown no remorse for inflicting the disaster that is C++ upon the world. Indeed, you could argue that Larry Wall was merely the unwitting victim of a hacker culture that values the "quick and dirty hack" over the "spend some time thinking about it" approach. Unless you are a total moron (like the majority of Slashdot readers) you will realise that theoretically sound languages such as Modula-3 and Smalltalk are the wave of the future. You either have TRUE strong typing (as in M3) or you GET RID OF TYPING ALLTOGETHER (as in Smalltalk). The half-assed fence-sitting characterised by C++ and Perl is typical of the shoddy thinking of many so-called computer experts (Stroustrup and Wall in particular).

Now, of course I hate Perl and C++ as much as the next guy, but what I find more worrying is the underlying agenda of moral relativism implicit in Perl's slogan "there's more than one way to do it". It starts off with allowing the coder to use an associative array or a list, but eventually it will serve as a "gateway language" to even more screwed up languages such as TCL and Java, and from there onto "alternative" lifestyles, body piercing and fringe politics like Socialism.

While banning Perl superficially seems like a very attractive solution to the problem, look deeper and you will see this is not the answer. Banning Perl will simply drive it underground, and make it all the more attractive to young impressionable coders. Far better to educate these youngsters that there are safer alternatives out there, and they won't be labelled as "square" for using them. After all, who is more "cool" - the ravaged and weary Perl addict slumped over his poorly documented spaghetti code that looks like line noise, or the bright eyed and alert young coder with his clear and easily understood Python source ?

thank you.

I hope that Python or something like it simplify's things in the mid future. Surprising to see a couple of the names on this list (NASA?! Mission Control?!), this gives me reassurance that Python will at least exist for 5 more years (Government is slow to change decisions already made). DARPA is funding the whole shebang for Python. It was accepted under this proposal called - Computer Programming for Everyone. Python is so open because Mr. Guido van Rossum has left it unrestricted attempting to help it gain acceptance. Van Rossum believes in what he's doing, he's one of the (few) people I admire and respect in terms of integrity alone. CP4E aims to establish Python (Or an improved version of it, or something completely different later on - whatever is best) as the primary language taught to our children in school. I admire this goal and I believe as GvR seems to that this new form of "literacy" will reap untold rewards.
These are my opinions, please do not construe anything I say as a statement of Mr. Van Rossum's. If in doubt email him, he does answer all his email (patience though - you never know how many emails he has on his plate at any given moment).
The Night Angel

I hope that Python or something like it simplify's things in the mid future. Surprising to see a couple of the names on this list (NASA?! Mission Control?!), this gives me reassurance that Python will at least exist for 5 more years (Government is slow to change decisions already made). DARPA is funding the whole shebang for Python. It was accepted under this proposal called - Computer Programming for Everyone. Python is so open because Mr. Guido van Rossum has left it unrestricted attempting to help it gain acceptance. Van Rossum believes in what he's doing, he's one of the (few) people I admire and respect in terms of integrity alone. CP4E aims to establish Python (Or an improved version of it, or something completely different later on - whatever is best) as the primary language taught to our children in school. I admire this goal and I believe as GvR seems to that this new form of "literacy" will reap untold rewards.
These are my opinions, please do not construe anything I say as a statement of Mr. Van Rossum's. If in doubt email him, he does answer all his email (patience though - you never know how many emails he has on his plate at any given moment).
The Night Angel

Software Carpentry is running a contest with $200000 in prizes to be given away. Of course the final product will be coded in Python but that doesn't mean you can't prototype in Perl (although in a close match...).
Heh, I see a ton of Perl vs Python articles, it amazes me how people can completely miss the point. Research Python a bit. Research Java a bit. Python is a more flexible Java. Python's support librarys are inherited from too many open source projects to mention. Java has a ton of Sun proprietary standard extensions. Plus hopefully the one you want coming soon =) Sorry to be a bit off topic here, but go check out the above site for the money, the tools they want to develop will benefit the entire open source community regardless of language.
And of course if you want to check out Python, go here.

• The GNU General Public License (GPL);

• The GNU Library or `Lesser' Public License (LGPL);

• The BSD license;

• The MIT license (sometimes called called the `X Consortium license');

• The Artistic license;

• The Mozilla Public License (MPL);

• The Qt Public License (QPL).

• The IBM Public License.

• The MITRE Collaborative Virtual Workspace License (CVW License).

• The Ricoh Source Code Public License.

• The Python license.

• The zlib/libpng license.

-tim

IMO, I don't think we need BASIC, because we already have languages that are much better. However, development tools ( such as GUI buiders and IDEs ) to go on top of those languages would be cool.
Cheers,

I've used VB too, think rather highly of it, and would be using it right now if it was free (beer and speech) and worked on unix and macs.

As it's not, I've been learning Python. It's about as close as you are going to get to Basic. Go out and jump on it. I also recommend wxPython, a graphics system for it.

-Jeff

"Python as a standard teaching language?" Not going to happen. Using python as a teaching language was a popular topic at the most recent Python conference, in two papers by Jeffre y Elkner and Fra nk Stajano. But there is no standard programming language used in US high schools. The closest is, astoundingly, C++, because the standardized tests switched from Pascal to C++ a few years ago, and many schools teach only with an eye on the test. Wonder if this is giving students the impression that programming is painfully difficult, and frightening them away from the field?

"Python as a standard teaching language?" Not going to happen. Using python as a teaching language was a popular topic at the most recent Python conference, in two papers by Jeffre y Elkner and Fra nk Stajano. But there is no standard programming language used in US high schools. The closest is, astoundingly, C++, because the standardized tests switched from Pascal to C++ a few years ago, and many schools teach only with an eye on the test. Wonder if this is giving students the impression that programming is painfully difficult, and frightening them away from the field?

Hmmm, this will probably be moderated down as Flame Bait, but it needs to be said anyway. I really must question the wisdom of teaching kids perl as their first programming language. Yes Perl is extremely powerful in the right hands, but it can also be a breeding ground for poor programming practice (even among experienced programmers).
Perl encourages an attitude of "if it works, use it" - this is not good programming practice. I did hear that Python was going to become the standard teaching language in American schools and this seems much more sensible to me.

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There're packages that once installed, makes Python almost the perfect tool, at www.python.org/topics/scicomp/. I remember one of the most complete packages only have 2 not-very-long source files. Impressive.

If you don't use Python often, and need Matlab interoperativity tho, Octave is very good.

I don't think it is possible to overestimate the importance of the issue of data formats, at least not in the context of looking at word processors. If you want your document to be usable five years from now, it is ludicrously unacceptable to use whatever "document embedding" scheme MSFT uses this year.

The format has several notable effects:

• If it is "text-based," this may mean that you can email documents without worrying about special encodings.

  Note that the spreadsheet XESS promotes this as a "selling feature."

  (Others may say, uuencode is your friend. )

• If it is text-based, this means that you may be able to modify the document using other tools than the word processor.

  That's useful for debugging, solving problems, modifying the document when you move it over to a laptop that doesn't have the word processor installed and have to use vi.

• If the format is based on some normative standard, this means that you can expect to be able to create documents using external tools.

  For instance, if the program uses an XML-based format, it becomes reasonable to write a Perl, Python, or Scheme.

  Example-of-the-week: I've been working on generating spreadsheet files for use with Gnumeric. The plan is to write Scheme scripts that pull data out of GnuCash, and generate reports. I haven't gotten to the "extraction" part, but have generated some pretty slick demo spreadsheets.

  Someone in a law (or para-law) office might want to create a document template scheme where they run a K001 GUIed program that asks for names and sundry fields, and then generates legal documents. Given a sufficiently "open" format, that's pretty practical.

Using formats where there's at least some visible ASCII text seems to me to be the only reasonable way to go. I'll remain a bit skeptical of XML; just 'cause it's buzzword-compliant doesn't mean that the DTD will be in use in the long term...

Try the Python Language website, here.

But the online documentation is good! It's not as *big* as Perl's, but Perl's is ridiculous :-). See http://www.python.org/doc/current/ or something like that. Follow the links to other doc pages as well.

I'm working in education and have been gathering feedback for awhile on which programming language to introduce to middle school students.

I've just started learning Python (I'm workin on another ORA book, Learning Python) but hope to use it for some Windows programming. The PythonWin environment is very easy to use. Look at www.python.org for more info.

HTH
>K

In the hacker-howto, ESR recommends starting with Python. C/C++ are used widely, but they're not a good idea for raw beginners. Avoid Basic and Visual Basic.

"Programming Python" is a strange beast of a book, not very well suited for a newbie, whether it be to programming as a whole or to Python itself. If you already program in some other language, then the tutorial and library reference (at python.org) is really all you need. As to the absolute beginner... well there's "Learning Python" but I haven't read that one.

"Programming Python" is the kind of book you peruse over a pot of coffee and with plenty of free time on your hands. Don't expect to read/understand it all in one sitting either.

I don't think anybody's mentionioned Python yet. Without extensive knowledge of the other alternatives, all I can say is that with a little care PyApache works for me. It's much like usual CGI in use, with some tricks like a dictionary for each Apache child process.

There's a different implementation of the same idea (embedding the python interpreter) called httdapy, I think, that's a little deeper into Apache interface-wise; I seem to recall it would work with Zope, too. That project is a "web application server" done in Python, if you haven't heard of it yet.

...and more! In addition to the excellent official Python Web site, there's Tim M's brilliant resource called Parnassus.

Of course, this all ties into the point made earlier which is that interface design can be vastly improved. By this, I mean that if I'm going to make heavy use of an application (like my text editor), I should be able to change every miniscule detail about its operation--for a keyboard person like me, that means I set up all my own key bindings, using any keys that I wish (I don't use any of the bindings for my emacs keys which are intercepted by the windowmanager, like M-tab for ispell), and for the mouse-oriented person, that means that all menus/mouse clicks should be configurable. More at the core of the problem is that people noways think an application is usable if it allows access to all of its commands from a menu, and this is wrong. An application is configurable if I can combine its commands in ways that I think are useful. Every application that I'm going to spend a lot of time in should have some sort of powerful scripting language built into it. Emacs is a good example of this; if I see that I'm doing a lot of things repeatedly, I should be able to script those things and make them available as a command, either via keyboard or mouse (that's what computers are good at, automating repetitive tasks). To me, that's what seems to be the whole idea behing the unix shell--you combine a bunch of commands together and end up with something suited to your own tastes. When I use an application written without this in mind, I feel like George Jetson at his job, where he spent all day pushing a button; look at netscape for instance. I spend a lot of time hitting escape to continue loading a page when some advertisement banner linked from a slow server pops up. I should be able to right-click on these banners whenever I see them and say "Don't ever load any animated gifs from this server again." I would be willing to spend the time to learn whatever scripting language to get this simple feature (but I would not be willing to go through tens of megs of C that I don't have a hope of understanding). By the same token, I want a powerful scripting language which gives me access to all features of the application, not like the little javascript toolbar buttons you can set up in netscape which are deliberately watered-down (and whose documentation is not readily available, rather hidden away on netscape's site, as if it would confuse new users if there was an "advanced configuration" item under the help menu).

This idea has been said before--look at Guido van Rossum's current project, Computer Programming for Everybody. (Guido van Rossum is the creator of Python.)

While reading your post, I couldn't help think of the Perl's mantra there's more than one way to do it. Skilled Perl types can look at code and, quick as a flash, code up something that does the same thing but looks vastly different.

Python on the other hand positively begs for everybody to do things in a similar way, if not the same way. This makes six or 12 month old code very readable and developers can continue to develop instead of helping maintainers maintain. But does it make small chunks of copyrighted Python code the building blocks for copyrighting the whole language? It's as dumb as copyrighting a sentence but we live in dumb times when it comes to technology.

I know that's an extreme thought but who would have thought that Sun -- of all companies! -- would stick it to a seemingly non-threatening entity?

• A single, standard GUI library would be enormously helpful, but it would only get you marginally closer towards the "write once, run everywhere" ideal. Java may not have fufilled the promise completely, but it comes closer than standard libraries do at bridging the gap between otherwise-binary-incompatible operating systems.

Java's strong points are:

• Write it once, compile it once, run it anywhere
• The Object Oriented model in Java is very good. Similar to model OO languages like Smalltalk, Objective C, and Python.
• The API is logical
• Lots of marketing hype (no, this isn't a proprety of Java itself, but it effects its success in the PHB world)

• JVM is too slow to run anything realisticly. Write it once, compile it once, run it anywhere, but run it well nowhere.
• The programming over-head in Java API is huge. To do very basic things, you have to inherit classes, create objects, do bindings, etc. True, this is becoming the case in a lot of C++ API's *cough*MFC*cough*, but there are still easy and simple C/C++ programs out there.
• There no Java compiler that's actually completed out there with a free license. I'll spare you the Open Source propeganda, I'm sure it's been posted 30 other places in this thread.
• Java doesn't have many references; in terms of useful programs written in Java that run at a reasonable speed. Take HotJava - it was supposed to be the example of java's power and it runs slow, has page rendering problems, and is generally not very useful.

We are a small Internet development shop, running a few servers and a mixed bag of development stations. Currently, there are three Linux boxen on our network, running the latest RedHat releases. We are looking to put in three more systems, for a total of 5 running some Linux/UNIX like OS.

• A MySQL server box
• A Firewall
• A Mail/Fileserver
• 2 Webservers running Apache / PHP(Zend)

When we perform this upgrade, we are willing to change operating systems if there is a demonstrable benefit. Due to recent slashdot postings we have started looking at OpenBSD as our server OS. Now, we do understand that RedHat is not the only Linux distribution available, but we don't really want to get into a Linux/Linux war here. We don;t mind changing if we should for technical reasons - but the Linux world seems more hip and vibrant, and we really like the penguin T-shirts we have... so if we can stay on Linux then we want to.

So far, we like what we hear about OpenBSD - but we don't know if the things we like are inherent in the relative designs of OpenBSD or if they are results of policy choices by the OpenBSD team. If they are the results of policy decisions, then with any luck a Linux distribution could be found that exhibited the same characteristics?

Features we like about OpenBSD:

• It seems like the release/testing cycle is extremely carefully controlled. While a freewheeling machine with lots of OpenSource code on the desktop is a good thing, for a server it seems that a smaller group exercising testing/release control is a more controlled system.
• The integrated crypto looks great, the one time use passwords look like a big winner here.
• There are a lot of references to OpenBSD's security and stability - but none with any specific examples or technical backing.
• The file layout on OpenBSD seems like a winner, it looks like things live in a well thought out and logical set up - not in a mishmash like RedHat.

Assumptions:

These systems will be running the server software they need, and X11 + (Gnome||KDE) for administration and so on. They will not be running the latest stuff from Linuxberg or a bunch of things that would be on a desktop OS. So we are going to try very hard not to introduce any instabilities. We aren't going to be compiling running games, sound drivers and the like that integrate directly into the kernel.

The questions are:

1. Is OpenBSD more secure in some fundamental way that a well maintained Linux distribution?
2. Is OpenBSD more stable than a well maintained Linux distribution?
3. Will the OpenSource software we normally need (firewall, Apache, PHP4, Perl, Python) and so on probably compile on OpenBSD?
4. Does OpenBSD have something like clustering support (Beowulf) and failover?
5. Is the performance of a well maintained OpenBSD system better than a well maintained Linux distribution?
6. Does Linux have anything like the one time use password system?
7. Does OpenBSD support multiple CPU's better then Linux?

Thanks for taking the time, and hopefully we can keep the flames down to nothing and talk about technical issues this time.

Perl and Python, of course! The former is of course more widespread but the latter is much more elegant (in my humble opinion).

much (most?) of the software that the Debian team puts in the DebianBSD distribution would still be GPL, which means FastBuck Inc. would not be able to take DebianBSD as-is and apply a closed-source license.

This is better than the opposite observation that I was going to point out, which is that there are components of Debian, such as Perl, Python, and XFree86 that already use non-GPL-like licenses.

A CPAN like mechanism would work well for languages that have very well defined, unambiguous specifications. Perl, for instance, behaves pretty much the same way on all (at least Unix) machines. Java and Python, as well as most other "interpreted" languages also share this characteristic.

C and C++, being much older, with more carryover "baggage", however, do not have the luxury of a fully specified language definition. In the ANSI spec for C/C++, there isn't even a set size for the basic data types! All that is required are various ambiguous properties such as sizeof(long) >= sizeof(int) >= sizeof(short)

A generic C/C++ code repository would face much difficulty in maintaining portable code that would just work for anyone, given the nature of these languages. As far as Perl, Java, and Python go, there are already many code repositories available: CPAN, Gamelan, and Python.org all contain links for downloadable "modules" for these languages, repsectively.

It's entertaining that nobody has brought up Java, The Language of The Internet, as an option... for a while, that was all anyone could think of.

Unfortunately, you lose some abilities:

• The ability to change a script "on the fly" whilst debugging, and have the change automagically deployed. With C++, you have to make and then go through whatever installation process is required to deploy the change.
• Scripting languages like Perl and Python provide built-in operators for doing all sorts of text manipulations.

  With web applications, what you're largely manipulating is text, which means that having the language oriented to that is extremely valuable. Furthermore, since there are powerful, well-optimized operators built-in to these languages, the interpreter disadvantage is significantly diminished.

Also, if you read LinuxToday, you might have noticed the recent announcement of the Python Consortium being formed. HP is one of the initial members, and they're hardly an insignificant company.

Mind experiment: implement java in perl, now implement perl in java which of those two programs do you want to maintain?

Neither, I'd rather use Python!

Who'd a thunk that the show would eventually have a computer language named after it?
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Anaconda kicks much tail.

Does anyone else notice a pattern here?

• Anaconda
• Asp and Asp 2
• Boa
• Bushmaster
• Caiman
• Cobra (Mk I and Mk III)
• Copperhead
• Coriolis
• Gecko
• Krait
• Mamba
• Python
• Sidewinder
• Viper 1 and 2
• Worm 1 and 2

Nominating companies or applications to match Hognose, Dodo, and Thargoid is left as an exercise to the reader.

python.org Go to "documentation" and choose "Tutorial". That and the library reference (both free) will get you pretty far, though I must say that ORA's "Learning Python" is an amazingly well-done book that covers more than the python tutorial.

The official Python tutorial is on-line, and there are some other intros here.

I know you said you're a broke student, but if you can save up enough Ramen noodle wrappers, consider David Ascher's excellent "Learning Python", which O'Reilly recently put out.

For Python/XML, I'd of course advocate my company's open-source 4Suite, but the XML-SIG also has an excellent package.

If you have any questions, try the XML-SIG's mailing list, where many python/XML gurus hang out.

Good luck.

--Uche

The official Python tutorial is on-line, and there are some other intros here.

I know you said you're a broke student, but if you can save up enough Ramen noodle wrappers, consider David Ascher's excellent "Learning Python", which O'Reilly recently put out.

For Python/XML, I'd of course advocate my company's open-source 4Suite, but the XML-SIG also has an excellent package.

If you have any questions, try the XML-SIG's mailing list, where many python/XML gurus hang out.

Good luck.

--Uche

The official Python tutorial is on-line, and there are some other intros here.

I know you said you're a broke student, but if you can save up enough Ramen noodle wrappers, consider David Ascher's excellent "Learning Python", which O'Reilly recently put out.

For Python/XML, I'd of course advocate my company's open-source 4Suite, but the XML-SIG also has an excellent package.

If you have any questions, try the XML-SIG's mailing list, where many python/XML gurus hang out.

Good luck.

--Uche

Sorry to shout, but this needed to be said: Python was orginally designed to be a beginner's scripting langauge that scaled up to other (real world) tasks. Actually, Guido says it best:

http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw.py?req=search&q uery=history&querytype=an ykeywords&casefold=yes

So yeah, it wasn't intended to be SOLELY a learning language, but it had enough of Guido's 'learning language' ABC background to make it a synthesis of ease and power. What use, says he, of a leanring langauge that you immediately have to drop using once you understand it?

So Python IS meant to be a learning language...

I've never used python or do I know anything about it

Then schedule a visit one of these day to and see for yourself...

It is a really nifty language.

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Well Python support for Windows is more or less ok, for the proportion of Windows users might be higher. Your specific example isn't perfectly true, since http://www.python.org/windows/win32/ says: win32pipe A module that provides popen() functionality (and more!) to work from a win32 GUI process (which os.popen doesnt!). This module also exposes the win32 pipe API, allowing you to create and connect named pipes. More impressive, you can use COM objects from Python (and write COM objects in Python), etc...

The idea has been bounced around on the Matrix-SIG of Python. There is some work going on to create a data analysis environment in Python, but lack of free time seems to be interfering. Additionally, Python is still missing Open Sourced graphing capabilities that can match IDL's.

Volunteers are appreciated!

Robert Kern - kernr @ ncifcrf.gov

Oops! Forgot the pointer to the proposal! Here it is. Doh!