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Rediscovering Your Inner Code Geek?

Posted by Cliff on from the tarnishing-off-the-old-coder-inside dept.

tachijuan asks: "I'm an old time hand in the PC world (started with trash-80 in late 70's). Along the way I've gone from the geek in school with the only computer to a CS degree to a position as a senior systems administrator at a major university to industry. And that's where I went to the dark side and became not a geek. About 10 years ago, the corporate rat race caught me and now I'm an exec at a midsize company. After 10 years of no code, it seems like I've never worked on anything serious (still do Perl, PHP, shell, etc scripting at home). Now, I feel the need to change this. How does an old UNIX coder/SysAdmin turned professional corporate cog get back into coding? I've looked at all sorts of languages (C#, C++, Delphi, VB(eh gads), Squeak, IO, etc.) but my problem is that I have unlearned most of the S in CS and the learning curve for the API's to both UNIX and Windows has become...daunting. Short of going back to school, what would you soon to be fellow geeks recommend as a good kick start?"

1 of 58 comments (clear)

  1. Python Resources by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative
    Python is an ideal language for hacking in - I completely agree with your points about it being easy to pick up - and easy to pick up your own code again after a month or two away from it. Here's a handy list that I have prepared for whenever somebody mentions Python in a context like this one:

    Python Resources

    This is a list of what I consider to be the most useful Python packages. They give Python the ability to tackle almost any project.

    Core packages
    • Python - Get the Python interpreter, base libraries from here. The default install includes the IDLE editor.
    • Win32All - Windows extensions package that includes the excellent Pythonwin editor.
    GUI building
    • wxPython - Wrapper to the cross-platform wxWindows window manager library. It's a better windowing system than the TCL/TK library that is the default Python install.
    • Boa Constructor - GUI builder that uses the wxWindows library.
    Performance / Distribution
    • Psyco - x86 runtime compiler. Transparently improves the performance of most Python code - for performance-critical apps, it's often a much better solution than a C rewrite.
    • Py2Exe - Builds Python scripts into Windows executables. Perfect for distributing programs to systems that do not have Python installed. Use with Psyco for the best effect.
    Graphics Database
    • PostGreSQL - Full-function SQL database. More complete and advanced than MySQL.
    • PyGreSQL - Python bindings for the PostGreSQL database.
    Web applications

    Python includes a full suite of functionality to build internet applications in the core install, but the following are frameworks for building and deploying web applications.
    • Plone - Web applications, built on top of the Zope framework.