Slashdot Mirror
Python Development Team Moves to BeOpen.Com
Clyde Zellers writes: "The Python development team's leader, Guido Van Rossum, has just announced in an open letter that he is moving with his team to the Open Source startup, BeOpen.com. Guido and his team will now be devoting their full energies to Python developement and continuing with such innovative projects as Python 3000.
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okay, does anyone know if this BeOpen company has anything to do with the BeOS?
Guido and his team will now be devoting their full energies to Python developement and continuing with such innovative projects as Python 3000
Looks like a Microsoft press statement to me. Keep your eye on these Python folks.
What do you know about all the various open source portals? Does anyone have experience with SourceForge, BeOpen, Asynchrony, et al? Can you give any objective comparison between two or more of them?
Do OSS portals make any money, and if so, how?
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E2 IN2 IE?
Is BE( or not 2 BE)open More for smaller projects that need to get attention to them selves?
And doesn't every one already know Python?
If I am wrong then say so.
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If my facts are wrong then tell me. I don't mind.
I hope this creates a broader future for Python. I'd really like to see it go somewhere faster than it has been in the past. I like to hear things like this going on.
Python in an open-source environment? Nice. Always wanted to learn more about Python. Call me a newbie/dork/lamer/whatever, but the sound of a programming language named after a potentially deadly snake is appealing to me.
Stupid question time: anybody know what Python 3000 is?
I went to
but seriously, if Guido and his merry band of coders had put their blood sweat and tears into helping Perl just imagine where we would be today.
Whitespace sensitive PERL! Hooray!
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Think of programming languages as a form of expression. Some languages make it easier to express certain types of ideas than others. I'm sure everyone here has heard of the "30 different words for snow" in eskimo. Russian has similar motifs for concepts like oppression, I believe.
Programming languages work like that too. Perl and Python are opposite sides of the same coin. The perl motto is "There's more than one way to do it." I don't know if Python has a motto, but it should be "There's a best way of doing it." Perl is designed for quickly digging in and doing work. Python is designed for "higher", more structured design. Why else do you think Python forces indentation? It's certainly not for Guido's comfort.
In other words, Perl is like vernacular english and Python is like high english. Both are useful in different ways and different contexts for expressing different ideas.
-Ted
On the surface this looks good for Python, however with all that horsepower behind the dollars, I can't help but fear that the focus of the Python projects is goining to be tainted and rolled into just being a part of AboveNet or Metromedias product offerings as "exclusinve" and the Open Source beacon that Python was will come to an end.
I'm not bashing Perl, but I really think it's an ego trip for these guys. Lets put forth our efforts into Python and leave this perl nonsense alone.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
He's busily finishing up rewriting the Linux kernel configuration stuff in Python, instead of TCL/Tk. This over the rather loud protests of many of the kernel mailing list members...
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
It seems to be fairly common for authors of well-known utilities to either form their own start-ups or be absorbed into existing ones. If the ideology of OSS is to develop code "for the good of humanity," I am more than a little curious why Slashdot's absorbtion into Andover.net, L0pht's absorbtion into @stake, and now Python's absorbtion into BeFree has not spawned criticism. Since I view myself as somewhat of an outsider in relation to OSS, I see it as the natural evolution of OSS into the marketplace at large. In my mind, it legitimizes OSS more than it reflects on the founders' desire for material possessions.
How do you feel about OSS companies becoming part of for-profit ventures?
ByteMyCode.com: A Web 2.0 code sharing community.
I am a huge fan of Perl, and have used it successfully for years, but I honestly hope that Python continues to gain mindshare.
Let's face it, Perl is not a very readable language. TMTOWTDI basically guarantees that I am going to do something differently than my buddy in the next cubicle, and if you have ever tried to extend stuff from CPAN it becomes apparent there are a LOT more than one ways to do it.
Python isn't perfect either, but it is a lot easier to read. And when combined with wxWindows you have a easy way to create cross-platform (well Windows and *nix anyway) GUIs. Yes, I know, Perl has Perl/Tk, and no I don't think that counts :).
Besides, how cool it is to have a language where it is encouraged to put excerpts from Monty Python scripts in the comments? Very cool in my opinion.
In short I think that the Perl community should stop wasting their time on Perl and start working on Python instead :). Barring that, I think that we should all just get along and use whatever tools we like best. In the Free software community there is bound to be some overlap (just like in the commercial software community). The good news is that the success of Python does not necessarily mean that Perl will wither and die. It simply means the Perl hackers will have to raise the bar.
Interesting.
:)
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A couple of pretty big sites use Python big time.
Here are some:
www.google.com
www.egroups.com
Ultraseek (Infoseek's search engine for sale) is also written in Python.
Sounds big to me
Simpy
No, see the bottom of that letter from Mr. Van Python. They'll be late.
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Simpy
you had actually presented some logical chain of events other than your misplaced fear of corporate sponsorship it might be easier to take you seriously. Do you feel the same way about O'Reilly sponsoring Perl? Do you feel the same way about Transmeta supporting Linux? How exactly is a co-location provider going to taint a programming language?
You answered your question retard. It leads to nice clean and readable code. I could say the same thing about {} why do I need those.
Got Code?
Poignantly, it is now time for the Penguin on your telly to explode...
As for the usefulness, a semi-consistant style makes reading other peoples' code easier and it means less characters onscreen (such as { and }) for marking the starts and stops of blocks - leaving more room for code.
It's not for everyone, I'll admit, but it didn't take me long before I'd forgotten about the indentation rules entirely. Now I don't even think about them unless someone reminds me.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
Okay, this is a troll and a half, but my Python-zealotry badge refuses to let me ignore the gauntlet:
You just answered your own question. /You/ have your own consistent, easy-to-follow way. I have my own consistent, easy to follow way. My friend has his own consistant, obfuscated perl-hacker-on-meth way. Problem is, when one of us looks at another's code, we have to keep dealing with your new way.
Python makes it a requisite to perform indenting. The sensitivity is something that you can get over, in the course of a few minutes, while you learn the language.
If you /still/ can't handle it, there is a preprocessor available, written in Python, that allows you to use BEGIN .. END style syntax. Just don't expect any Python programmers to respect your silly coding style. ;)
Weapons of Mass Analysis
I learned Perl a while ago, and love it in general. Not having to beat a language into submission in order to express my ideas is usually a good thing.
...
I then became interested in learning Python (after deciding that Perl didn't provide the bondage-and-discipline OO style that I want to use), and actually installed it on my Win98 system, only to discover that the included installation of Tk was somehow installed into the wrong place (re-install didn't help), and that as a result, IDLE wouldn't run.
I then went back, and took at look at the Python pages, only to discover Python 3000. While it really is a Good Thing(tm) that they're openly stating that there will be incompatibilities with current Python, it also does scare me away from learning the language somewhat
Granted, many things were deprecated between say, Perl 1 and Perl 5, and probably more things will be changed/deprecated in the future, but the only relatively recent surge of interest and thus use of Python seems to make the language "younger" (though chronologically Python's the same age as Perl, no?) and thus more subject to radical changes.
Anyone care to clue me in on how much Python 3000 might change things? I know that it'll be a total redesign, and that probably even the design stage isn't exactly completely finished at this point, but I'm just wondering how much Python I would have to re-learn when Python3k comes out, if I learn Python 1.5x or 1.6 now?
Oh yeah: Python rocks! Finally, a read-write language!
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IMO, Python's white-space sensitivity is a good idea because it takes "you" and "me" out of the equation.
It's great that "you" have your own "consistent, easy to follow" code format - which is easy to follow for, well, YOU. But what if that format isn't easy to follow for "me" or "the next guy"? (see: much existing C and Perl code for examples)
By taking code formatting, braces, and other religious formatting arguments out of the loop, Python code is pretty much readable by any Python programmer.
Imagine if programming languages required writing and saving the code in Word/WordPerfect or some other proprietary format; you could say that "your" file format was best, but I couldn't necessarily read it. Fortunately, code is normally saved as ASCII text so I can read it in emacs or vi and not care how you wrote it. I look at Python's "format enforced/religiously neutral" system as providing similar benefits.
paul
Silly Rabbit, sigs are for kids.
I don't think the hassles are all that bad, myself. Chances are the programmer is already using indentation to make blocks of code more readable, so why not use that information rather than force the programmer to duplicate block-marking effort? This could pose a problem for non-monospaced editors, but I don't think a lot of programmers use those.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
...sensitive.
It has been a very long time since you were able to write:
IfX=10ThenDoFoo()
There is simply the mandatory white space you are used to and the mandatory white space you aren't used to.
Out of curiosity, has your absolute unwillingness to format source code in a different way never caused you problems on the job? Are you still in college or do you always work alone?
Not quite sure what you mean by that but I don't think Python will fit the bill, either. I like Python but I doubt it's OO capabilities could ever be described as "bondage and discipline". It lets you break encapsulation almost whenever you feel like it. It doesn't have strong typing or static type checking.
Something like Eiffel might be more to your liking, but that isn't very widely uesd.
Also look at www.alice.org for a very cool use of Python.
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Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
IIRC, Ultraseek isn't actually written in python, it's got python embedded for use as a configuration language.
Thawte used python extensively in their site; and I think Yahoo's webmail is python based, too.
A rebuttal to the myth (there are many). There's no such language as "Eskimo," and, like the fish in the proverbial fish story, the number of snow words tends to grow with each retelling.
Unlike certain whitespace-sensitive syntaxes (Makefiles), python interprets tabs as being equivalent to 8 spaces, which is how most editors (in default configuration) show them. If the lines look lined up, they are lined up.
True, you can configure any decent editor to show tabs as 4, 2, 12, or seventeen spaces. Personally, I like an indentation level of four spaces. With vim this means I set softtabstop=4. Tabs still show up as 8 spaces (as G--d- intended), but each time I whack the tab key I get four spaces.
I have been watching the python mailing list (gated from comp.lang.python) for a while and code in Python professionally. I have never seen anybody come to the newsgroup with a problem in their code caused by invisible indentation problems, and have never seen it in the code I work with,
I have seen several flame wars in this issue, but have yet to see any evidence that it is a problem in practice.
The principle is that, whenver possible, computers should be made to do what's easiest for the person, and not vice-versa - and the indentation is easiest for the person to read. The layout manifests the programmer's intended structuring - for the programmer and and the computer.
As for not being able to do what you want - all python imposes is that separate lines at the same block level must have the same indentation, and increasing levels have greater indentation w.r.t. their containing blocks. (The amount of indentation is up to you, and can vary.) I would be surprised if this is contrary to the vast majority of seasoned programmers' personal styles. The only thing you have to lose is your braces (and you can use parens to force groups in expresions, besides) and semicolons (and you *can* use the semicolons, but why?).
Voila.
everything leaks
At this point, I've read two replies from BeOpen and both of them are laced with insults.
Allow me to advise the author to relax and to be more open.
1. Enforce indentation rules to make code readable.
2. Braces are now redundant, so get rid of them.
(Reality reasserts itself sooner or later.)
`individual' developers homegrown `consistent, easy-to-follow' layout;
There are bad ways to do whitespace dependent layout, and there are
good ways. Python is the latter, but experience with the former have
led to ingrained prejudices. Without whitespace, Python would start
to look like Scheme or XML.
Dear "Director of Strategic Business Development,"
You might find a lighter tone more effective. So far I've read five comments by you, and all were laced with flame. Even though I saw no reason to disagree with your comments, your tone made me dislike you immediately. Show your responses to your "Director of Public Relations" and ask for advice next time.
(Reality reasserts itself sooner or later.)
try :
;-)
.oO0Oo.
code
except :
print "error"
but if while I'm debugging i want to turn the exception handling off to see what exceptions are thrown :
#try :
code
#except :
print "error"
generates a syntax error
this was really bugging. I came up with a workaround
#try :
if 1:
code
#except :
print "error"
but you can see where that could lead me if I missed taking one back out again.
I've only been doing python for a few weeks so forgive if there's a proper way (and tell me what it is 8-)
I like the language so far.
I got it decoding jpegs from newsgroups automatically in the first few days
and project 2 uses wxWindows(GTk & Windows Widget Abstraction - www.wxpython.org) to separate my Everquest message text across six windows (auction, guild, group, tell/say, shout & the rest)
I hope the move to BeOpen is a positive one.
If the guys can relax a bit I'm sure it's propell the whole thing forward (into a bloated feature rich bloody mess
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
and routes around it
.oO0Oo.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
What I hope to see for Python 3000 is mostly cleanups that weren't possible in earlier versions because of backwards incompatibility: a simpler, leaner implementation with a "nicer" interface to C++ code, lexical scoping rules, and a simple full garbage collector in place of reference counting. Moving the NumPy numerical array type into the core would also help with creating numerical extensions. But that's largely all I would like to see in the next major release of Python.
I'm not sure that the transition to BeOpen.com of the development effort is altogether a good thing. If this results in extra resources and they are focussed on enhancing Python, Python may become too complex and featureful; a number of other languages that started out like Python have gone down that road and become marginalized. Or Python may simply end up being a side-line for some other business, just like what seems to have happened with Scriptics and Tcl.
Python is Guido's baby, and it's his to decide where to take it. But I hope he'll keep these kinds of concerns in mind.
I found it amusing that Devil's Avocado was first to respond to Devine Intervention!
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"Rex unto my cleeb, and thou shalt have everlasting blort." - Zorp 3:16
Sacred cows make the best burgers.
I believe Yahoo Mail also uses Python. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that other Yahoo sites use it.
An excellent point (that a lot of OSS or Free Software devlopers "sell out"), and an excellent question (how do I feel about it).
It doesn't matter how I feel. At least in the case of Free Software (as opposed to Open Source), what the developers do doesn't effect the software or the users. If we don't like where the developer is taking the product, we don't have to upgrade.
The whole point of Free Software is that since we (the users) are free to support the product ourselves, we are not dependent on the original developer in any way. Whatever the developer chooses to contribute, we may or may not choose to use, and vice-versa. The products themselves are independent of the developers, and if the developer ceases to contribute his or her efforts "for the good of humanity", another developer may step in and take over. The motivation of the developers is also unimportant as long as the efforts are contributed without restrictions.
That being the case, while there are no guarentees, there are no limitations either.
So, the answer to the question "how do you feel" is "who cares". Noone's feelings are relevant. All that is relevant is what people actually contribute, not what they think of feel.
Talk about a meritocracy!
Would some moderator with half a brain please moderate this back up? This is not flame bait. It's a comment about a feature of the language.
(If you want a flame, though, how about this? Why the fuck does the lameness filter kick in when I use "Flamebait???" for the subject??? Apparently two question marks is ok, but three is lame. Who the fuck came up with such a lame lameness filter???)
/peter
As for the issue of cramping your style, most style issues boil down to where you put brackets, which is of course a non-issue in python. If you really are consistent, I doubt you'll hate it.
In practice, being forced to indent properly isn't more difficult than being forced to close those brackets. It's a nice clean language, partly because of the whitespace thing.
Of course, I could go on all day, but the only way you will be convinced is if you really gie it a shot. But I came into it like you -- I was sceptical and a big perl fan. I'm still a big perl fan, but python is also pretty cool.
Hear hear!
Mind you, from your appreciation of "horses for courses" I can tell you are a true Perlite. It's so hard to have a holy war when one side keeps on saying "OK, do it your way, after all there's more than one way to do it"
No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up.
Let's face it, Perl is not a very readable language. TMTOWTDI basically guarantees that I am going to do something differently than my buddy in the next cubicle, and if you have ever tried to extend stuff from CPAN it becomes apparent there are a LOT more than one ways to do it.
For the love of Sweet Christ I'm going to smack the next person who calls Perl unreadable and unmaintainable. You know what? All langauges can be obfuscated. Even Python. That Python doesn't require statement terminators, uses white space to implicitly denote blocks and lacks variable prefixes do NOT aid its readability. If a langauge with syntax subtlety bothers you, try Pascal. If you want readable code, you must Do It Yourself.
There is NO silver bullet for creating code that documents itself. At least Perl's endearingly eccentric prefixes inform the reader of a variable's data type. You can look at Perl code and easily separate the pluralities from the singularities. That in itself is a tremenous help. But let's look at some basic operations in both languages.
Here's Perl.
my $a = 'hello';
my $b = $a;
print $b, "\n";
my @c = ("I'd", "buy", "that", "for", "a", "dollar");
my @d = @c;
$d[4] = "ten";
print join, " ", @c; # list c is unchanged
@e = (@c, @d); # makes one list with 12 elements
Here's roughly similiar Python.
import string
a = 'hello'
b = a
print b # oh, I get a newline for free
c = [ "I'd", "buy", "that", "for", "a", "dollar" ];
d = c
d[4] = "ten"
print string.join(c, " ") # what the? c got changed?
e = [ c, d ]; # one list with 2 elements (each a list)
Let's look at the Python code. Since all thingies in Python are objects and only references get copied, it won't surprise experienced hackers to find that collection types copy only references during assignment. However, the novice Pythoner will wonder why an assignment to an element in d now magically changes an element in c. After all, changing the singularity b doesn't change the contains of a. So Python copies *some* objects shallowly. That's a design feature and a good one, except for the newbie who is supposed to be aided by Python's clean syntax.
What happens when two lists are added together into a third? In perl, you get one long flat list that has no continuing relationship to its contributing parents. In Python, you get a list of references. Suddenly, you've got a multidimensional array. For the pro, this is a great labor saving feature. For the newbie, this might be a little weird, since they have to wrangle with "those durn references ag'in". Worse, the elements of the new list references (not surprisingly) the members of the lists that created it. How will the newbie make a deep copy of these lists so that the original lists remain unchanged?
Digging deeper into the mysteries of Pythonian indexing, one can take the slice of a singularity. This is sort of neat coming from Perl. Yet if one can index into a singularity, won't this look like an array to the newbie? After all, we can do the same operation to lists. And yet lists are different (assignments), but they look the same as singularities. Things That Are Different Should Look Different. Oh wait, that's Perl.
Python appends newlines to print statements without explicit instructions to do so. Certainly, this will surprise the experienced hacker more than then novice.
As for Python being a better Perl, I have yet to see this. There is nothing that Python does that Perl can't. There are things that Perl does that Python will *never* do (like soft references). But, as the python zealots tout, those are bad Perl features that are confusing.
Python is a great language with a bright future. Its syntax is clean, if punctuation bothers you, but it is not consistent. Word on the street is that Guido is fixing this. That Python helps create truly cross platform GUIs is great. I hope the world gets more scripting languages with garbage collection and dynamic scoping.
If Python helps *YOU* write and use more Open Source Software, then we all win. If Python is just cutting your vegetables up for you because you can swallow some mild complexity, then it is no better than VB. I know Python was designed to be a superb teaching language, but I would hope the curious mind would soon thirst for more meat.
I will reiterate my call for better cooperation between the Python and Perl communities. There is more in common between us than other languages. Perl and Python are, I hope, the future of programming. Neither is perfect, but both are better choices for getting your job done faster to drink more beer. And that's a Good Thing (tm).
As for the "The Sky Is Falling" comments, which I don't know if I agree with, The Python team has shown no indication that their mission will change, so why don't we just let time tell the tale. They have been leaders in Open Source in the past and I have full confidence they will continue to develop strong product and guidance on how to make money using the open source model.
Just my two cents.
I've had this problem when working with C code in a vi editor. I was editing the code on a friends account. He had tabstops set to 4 spaces, and autoindent turned on. I added code, using spaces. Vi happily converted those lines into tabs for each line after the first. When I looked at the code in more, the indentation was completely screwy. While I was in university, I encountered this problem several times. At that time, I couldn't tell vi NEVER USE TABS . Perhaps this is something Vim handles better. Annoyingly, I had similar problems in Emacs. When I heard of Python's penchant for using indentation as semantically important, I decided this was a bad idea, from YEARS of past experience where indentation gets mangled one way or another. Further, I recently had problems with an editor under Win32 mangling things. The problem there? The editor was using proportional fonts. In a case like that, it became impossible to know for certain whether things were properly indented, because the fonts didn't show spaces consistently, and don't line up properly. The point Python pundits miss is that making your code fragile is not a good idea. And white space CAN be fragile. Please understand, I wish more languages forced coding standards on developers - more code would be readable. I rejoiced when I found that perl forces braces around ALL blocks. But I don't think that making a language potentially fragile is a GOOD solution. An editor doing something stupid with your indenting can totally destroy the semantic content of your code. And, unfortunately, it can be impossible to figure out what went wrong if you are maintaining code YOU didn't write. Anyone up to making a version of Python that avoids the indentation problems? Python sounds fun AND powerful. Shannon Mann
A comment overheard in a corn field `If you have better ideas, lets hear them. I am all ears.'
What makes BeOpen superior to SourceForge? Easy. BeOpen is not affiliated with VA Linux Systems, of which we've already established has a near monopoly on resources when it comes to the Linux community. Looking past the "VA Linux Systems will screw you and your project raw if you let them" argument, the simple act of merely housing everything under one umbrella is dangerous. If VA Linux Systems goes straight into the crapper (seen their stock performance lately?) like the vast majority of other
Diversity is a good thing for Linux. One company owning and running it all is not.
My $0.02,
Bowie J. Poag
Bowie J. Poag
BeOpen.com would like to thank the Slashdot community for generating such volume of conversation on the Python issue. Because some rumors have been flying around today, we would like to let the community know a little more about BeOpen.com as a company, as well as answers some of the questions that have been raised.
BeOpen.com is a venture-backed Silicon Valley start-up based in Santa Clara, CA. We are an application publishing company fully committed to Open Source and the community surrounding it.
We did, in fact, receive funding from individuals who were the founders and deal makers behind Exodus Communications and AboveNet. We are not, however, "owned" by AboveNet. We feel that having access to these successful and highly intelligent business professionals is an asset to our company.
BeOpen.com has acquired LinuxDEV.net, Geeks404.com, and GNULinux.com, providing content and community around these sites. We have also interviewed a number of Open Source luminaries on the BeOpen.com site, including Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation, Jordan Hubbard of FreeBSD, Inc., Matthias Kalle Dalheimer of the KDE Project, and Beau Vrolyk of SGI. As well, we have produced a number of documents relating to Linux and its usage, which inform and aid the community as a whole.
BeOpen.com has also been in contact with Richard Stallman concerning an equipment donation to the Free Software Foundation, one of our many community outreach programs.
The Core Python development team has joined BeOpen.com. We have signed an agreement with Guido and his team stating that we will always release our Python products as Open Source, ensuring that the community's rights are protected.
We continue to employ members of the community to produce content and develop software. We also support several projects on SourceForge, paying the salaries of the developers in charge of these endeavors.
We hope the community will recognize through our actions the strong commitment to giving back and promoting the Open Source and Linux movements that BeOpen.com has displayed and will continue to foster.
Thank you all for your interest in BeOpen.com and in Python. We look forward to working closely with the community to promote Open Source and Linux.
Domenic R. Merenda
Director of Strategic Business Development
BeOpen.com
ASP is another snake-based language, but there is certainly nothing cool about it. CORBA is pretty close to COBRA, and is also pretty cool, so I guess we should mention it also.
Supporting Unicode shouldn't be that big a deal, though there are still things to argue over, and it's slated for 1.6. The current interface is documented in this Unicode proposal; what's described there is mostly already implemented in the 1.6 alpha releases and CVS tree. Outstanding issues still remain: 1) the default encoding to use, 2) a Unicode-aware regex engine (partially there in 1.6a2, with a new version about to hit the CVS tree) and 3) declaring an encoding for Python source files (probably going to be left to 1.7). If you want to see good Unicode support in 1.6, I'd recommend compiling the CVS tree, trying it out on your application, and complaining loudly if you find shortcomings. Experience with an actual application is worth dozens of vague speculations.
Python is Guido's baby,
I observe that Van Rossum is getting married and going on a honeymoon. Congratulations! Let's see the wedding pictures.
But "Python" is an unusual name for the child. Let's see...what can we suggest...."Spam?"
Unfortunately you are right on this. Perl is becoming a 'Church of Perl', and its main designers and contributors are 'The high priests of Perl'. Their discussions often degenerate into kind of 'how many angels can fit into a perl-based Hash table'. Of course I shouldn't say that. I did use Perl many times - but I usually limit myself to its fairly small subset.
please try to concentrate on the subject at hand, your comments do not bring anything of value to the discussion. If thats what your into there are other sites out there for you, please leave this one centered on the code...
FREE THE CODE, OR DONT CODE AT ALL
It is contraray to mine. I use an extra half-indent to indicate a continued line. Even in languages that require the backslash on the end of the last line. It is a pretty rare quirk, but I have seen other use it, and more importantly, it helps me a great deal when I look over code (as for avoiding long lines, that's hard with long typenames, and C/C++ functions decl syntax, esp. with C++'s constructor init-list syntax as well).
I have also seen a lot of code that uses "extra" spaces to line up parts of similar lines to emphisize similarity. Sometimes those spaces are before the first non-white space. This isn't something I do (I like moving the common parts into local const variables when I can, or macros, or I line them up but only after the first non-whitespace), so I won't miss it.
That said I don't hate Python. I dislike one feature. I can't think of a single language I use that doesn't have at least one feature I don't dislike. Sometimes even as strongly as Python preventing me from throwing in a bit of extra indentation where I think I need it.
I don't use it because I have plenty of mid-performance psudo-embedable languages in my toolbox allready (Perl, Tcl, sh). I have little need for another. Hell I have little enough need for the three I know! Mostly I'm stuck doing stuff that really needs to be in C (part of an existing C program -- like a device driver), or C++ (new program, but expected to be CPU bound, and pushed hard). A pity I can't get my boss to let me try Eifel for some production system.
Microsoft once released a Basic interpreter for Apple II. It was called Applesoft (aka FPBasic), and all 10 kilobytes of it were burned into the ROM of all Apple II Plus and later Apple II computers. You could do things like
and the line editor would translate it intoWill I retire or break 10K?
The best thing of all is that it runs on so many platforms, I've got it installed on all my OS's - so I can code on Win32, Linux, && my WindowsCE PDA.
One of the things is that Python is used in many areas and doesn't have the profile that Perl has, like RedHat's installer, or in some apps as the embedded scripting language, and (in Australia at least) it's used to control quite a few of our major stadium TV screens/scoreboards, not to mention that its apparently used extensively in CG places like Industrial Light & Magic et al as a glue language because its a RAD language.
Nearly forgot, some have also said that Python's best use is in Zope, an object based web publisher (with server built in). And did I mention it's RAD?
just my slightly one eyed opinion ;-)
Translation: They own our asses right back to the perineum, and have options on our various penises, testicles and women's parts, too.
John Montoya, going to business school and law school so you don't have to.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
You forgot to mention Yahoo. Their Mapping and Address pages are also run in Python. One of the coolest uses I have seen, and powerful too!
While MST3k is a great show, Python 3000 refers to the projected release date for the next version. Guido's thinking is that with a date like that, it might be released before the marketing deadline. This was announced at the last Python conference (which was probably the best conference I've ever attended).
PYTHON 3000
AUTO SECURITY SYSTEMS
The Newest Technology
In Vehicle Security
giggle.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
First thing I thought is that BeOpen is a site for BeOS Open Source Software.
Are you still in time to change it to something more Pythonesque?
__
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Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
After learning cgi-bin and then learning how bad it is because of spawning new processes and that things like servlet engines, mod_php, mod_perl, etc solve this problem - What is there like this for python Not to start a flame war but the closest I've seen involves ASP with Python on (of course0) only Win32
Bowie, you just don't seem to get it, at all. There are a -ton- of sites that we have nothing to do with, including LinuxToday, BeOpen, advogato, Kuro5hin and the rest. A near monopoly means that we could prevent other sites from even happening, which, clearly, we could not do. Also, for it to a be a monopoly we would have to have a service that people were forced to use. You are welcome to not use any of the aggregate web sites.
For those of you who don't know, Bowie thinks VA screwed him and "stole" his idea in creating sourceforge and has been whining like a child ever since. In fact VA had been doing hosting for years and sourceforge was a logical extension to that. Just click around on slashdot to learn about poags issues with VA.
I'll agree with you that diversity is a good thing, though, and I for one am glad BeOpen is around.
Chris DiBona
VA Linux Systems
--
Grant Chair, Linux Int.
Pres, SVLUG
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
Thank you, but I dont need you of all people telling the rest of the community what I "think" of your company Mr. DiBona. If you're going to do that, at least get your shit straight. It's what I know about your company (from working with you and others for nearly two years) not what I think.
You also failed to point out that you are an employee of VA Linux Systems. More importantly, you're their mouthpiece. "Linux Community Evangelist", isn't it? Tsk tsk.. Its only when people look at your bio that they see you're an employee of the company.
In the meantime, feel free to pull your head out of your ass anytime you feel up to it, Chris. From the looks of it, it sounds like it may take a while to dislodge. I'm not afraid of people hearing what I've had to say about your company (and what I'll continue to say) because all of it is basically true. Why should I be afraid?
On that note, here you go, kids..Knock yourself out:
A list of everything I've written on Slashdot in the past 9 months or so.
Enjoy!
Bowie J. Poag
Bowie J. Poag
I'm not afraid of people hearing what you have to say at all, I mean, anyone with half a brain can read what you have to say and dismiss it. My -job- is to point out that you are wrong, so that those who are seeing your childish rants for the first time understand that and give us the fair chance that we deserve.
Chris DiBona
VA Linux Systems
(hey, that's how I sign -every- post!)
--
Grant Chair, Linux Int.
Pres, SVLUG
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
I've followed Bowie's ranting against VA for a while, and frankly, it reeks of childish pique. Get on with your life Bowie. If you still want to run something like SourceForge, think of a different name, and write some code. You're just not convincing anyone of anything except that you're a petulant child.
--
There is no K5 cabal.
I am not the real rusty.
Chris
--
Grant Chair, Linux Int.
Pres, SVLUG
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.