Yahoo! Launches Python Developer Center

SimonW writes "Yahoo! has launched a Python Developer Center as part of their Developer Network. The new site explains how to access Yahoo!'s many web service APIs using Python, and includes tutorials on using Python with REST, JSON, XML and RSS. The site joins Yahoo!'s existing developer centers for PHP and JavaScript."

Comments

Javascript

[kevin_conaway]

Python developer, I think this is great. I'm glad that Python is gaining more acceptance.

If the quality is on par with their Javascript library, we're in for a real treat

Whython

[CopaceticOpus]

It's pretty cool of Yahoo to provide so much to the dev community. It's definitely improved my feelings about the company.

I wonder why they've made this foray into the Python world? I know they decided to focus on PHP a few years back. Did they find some tasks were easier to accomplish in Python? Or are they simply trying to reach out to another developer community?

Re:Whython

[carlivar]

yp.yahoo.com uses Python.

Yawn.

[JoeyLemur]

Wake me when they create a Ruby/Rails section.

Guido! Let my whitespace go!

Re:Yawn.

[Anonymous Coward]

> Wake me when they create a Ruby/Rails section.

Snakes and a Train?

Re:How refreshing!

[Daytona955i]

Yes, because it's not like google has anything like this available.

Re:How refreshing!

[LnxAddct]

Because Google's Summer of Code, or code.google.com or, more importantly, code.google.com/hosting weren't enough? The hundred patches that Google gave back to Wine after getting Wine to work with Picasa, or the many other libraries and APIs that Google provides. What Yahoo is doing is great, but you're not giving Google nearly enough credit.
Regards,
Steve

Howto

[kevin_conaway]

Furthermore, unlike their previous offerings, they have released little new code here. The only code they have released is an API to their search engine. The rest seem to be HOWTOs on how to python to access their services.

Still good info though. Thanks

Value of their feeds?

[halosfan]

While browsing through this, I noticed the following in ther Weather RSS feed page:

The feeds are provided free of charge for use by individuals and non-profit organizations for personal, non-commercial uses.

and then

Yahoo! also reserves the right to require you to cease distributing these feeds at any time for any reason.

So, while it's cool and all, is there any value to using their weather RSS feed (and I assume it's similar with other services), beyond my ability to play with them? I mean, even I'm not making any money off it, presumably, if I put the effort in accessing those feeds, I expect them to be available to me in the future? Or do they provide a paid-for version for this?

Re:Value of their feeds?

[0racle]

I expect them to be available to me in the future

Why? It's their service, they could stop it or move it to a pay service at any time. Guess what, anyone providing a free service could do that even (gasp) Google. They could make GMail a pay service tomorrow if they felt like it.

Your expectations seem to be ever so slightly unrealistic.

Re:How refreshing!

[y5]

What Yahoo is doing is great, but you're not giving Google nearly enough credit.

You might be right. But I've had the chance to use the Web API's for Yahoo, Google, and MSN. Yahoo's Web Search API has been much easier to use than Google's or MSN's. I know there are many other API's to use than just web search, but I've been impressed with what I've seen from Yahoo, more so than from the others.

Direction is everything, and you have to admit Yahoo has been moving in the right direction lately. Here's to hoping they don't lose focus of what's giving them such good publicity! =)

Re:Is Python created by a religious person?

[abigor]

You're in luck! Here's a quote from Guido: "Maybe my spiritual beliefs shine through here -- I'm a convinced atheist."

I don't know anything about Ruby's creator, but Larry Wall has always creeped me out too. I sure was happy when Python came along - a sensible language created by a logical Dutchman.

Whitespace

[Anonymous Coward]

I know everybody gets hung up on the whitespace thing when they look at Python. But you know what? Once you start actually coding in it for any significant amount of time, it's not a big deal. When you first start, I know you expect it to be really annoying, but that simply doesn't turn out to be the case. The supposed problem evaporates.

Every time you hear anybody moan about Python's significant whitespace, ask them how long they've spent actually writing Python. You'll see the same thing as I do - that virtually everybody complaining has never given Python a chance, and that virtually everybody who has given Python a chance has realised that the significant whitespace isn't a big deal.

Re:Whitespace

[bhaberman]

No lambdas, no ternary operator (yes I know, not pythonic), no switch statement (think Ruby, not C++), scoping rules are wrong (for example, list comprehensions leak variables - C++ for loops don't!).

Underscores! __init__ __new__ __getattr__ __setattr__ __len__ __getitem__ . . . .

range(1,5) = [1, 2, 3, 4]

The list goes on and on and on and on and on. Python has an incredible number of infuriating misfeatures for such a useful language.

Python sort of pretends to be a functional language, and you can do a lot of functional-style things in python, but even Perl is much better at doing these things than Python.

My favorite part of Python is the whitespace rule! The way I see it, you're indenting your program anyways, so braces are just redundant. It makes Python code quite beautiful and virtually eliminates unreadable code. In fact, Python is just a wonderful language to write in in general because its design enforces good programming practices and makes it easy to produce incredibly maintainable programs. But sometimes these features (read limitations, and lots of them) are quite frustrating. Yes, Guido, map and filter suck, but only because Python lambdas suck. And nested list comprehensions look awful. And sometimes you really do want a one-liner.

My three favorite languages now are Perl, Python, and Haskell. Perl because it is useful, even though it is a terrible language (Perl 6 is awesome though). Python because it is wonderfully easy to code in. Haskell because it is beautiful and makes my head hurt. Incidentally, Haskell also relies on whitespace, which I guess means that meaningful whitespace is officially a Good Thing, as defined by leading computer scientists.

The interesting thing I think is that Ruby, though much cleaner than Python and much more expressive, is much much harder for me to read. I don't like the mix of pure OO and functional style so much either. It seems like a wonderful language, but once Perl 6 comes out I can't really see it being so relevant.

Re:Whitespace

[idlemachine]

No lambdas? Seriously? So the lambda keyword that my copy of Python 2.5 recognises is..what? A local patch? Or simply evidence that you don't have the slightest clue of what you're talking about?

No ternary operator? Firstly, this isn't C, and secondly, you'll be happy to know that people who're unwilling to learn new approaches have bitched often and hard enough that it now exists in a pythonic form: http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0308/ You'll find the PEP interesting for at least two reasons (hint: it includes an example that uses a lambda).

No switch statement? What's wrong with using a dictionary dispatch method instead? It's faster.

Confused by the performance of range? Try using the goddamn help:

In [1]: help(range)
Help on built-in function range in module __builtin__:
range(...)
range([start,] stop[, step]) -> list of integers
Return a list containing an arithmetic progression of integers.
range(i, j) returns [i, i+1, i+2, ..., j-1]; start (!) defaults to 0.
When step is given, it specifies the increment (or decrement).
For example, range(4) returns [0, 1, 2, 3]. The end point is omitted!
These are exactly the valid indices for a list of 4 elements.

It seems to be behaving exactly the way it's supposed to, assuming you put aside your preconceptions from other languages and actually take the time to understand how it works.

And you hate the use of double-underscores to indicate an implementation detail, is that correct? I'm guessing that's what your point is, as it appears to be just petty aesthetic sniping.

Yes, Guido, map and filter suck, but only because Python lambdas suck. And nested list comprehensions look awful. And sometimes you really do want a one-liner.

I can imagine that allegedly non-existent lambdas would suck. And if you really hate, as you appear to, everything that makes Python pythonic apart from its use of significant whitespace, I just have to ask: why the hell don't you stick to a language that better fits the way you want to code?

Or better yet, how about sticking to a language you actually seem to know something about? Because puffed up posturing of your multilinguistic abilities aside, you clearly don't know jackshit about Python.

Great, and good packages

[masklinn]

Not only did they release a nice guide, but the guide is actually good: while the first XML library they talk about in XML parsing is xml.dom.minidom, they also explain how to use the XML API with effbot's ElementTree (and link to both ElementTree and cElementTree), which is more than likely the best Python XML library. And the recommend UFP (Universal Feed Parser) for RSS parsing.

The worst thing you can say about them is that they did their homework, kudos to the Yahoo guys.

You're not helping things.

[Virak]

If you want people to switch to Scheme, explain why they should and how it would benefit them, don't just say "lol ur language is teh sux, use mine". That's exactly the kind of stupid shit that gives Lisp users a reputation as a bunch of arrogant assholes.

And yes, Scheme is a great language, and I love it, but it's not the best thing for every situation. If you truly think one language is the best choice for everything, then you're a total idiot.

Also, no even slightly popular browser supports client side scripting with Scheme, and most web hosts don't offer server-side scripting with it either.

2004

[booch]

Python is so 2004. Everyone knows that Ruby is the current language du jour. Yahoo needs to catch up.

Re:Is Python created by a religious person?

[swartze]

As an atheist, I'd like to stick to a language created by an atheist

Wow, That's quite a religious conviction you've got there.

Hard to do if you are a GNU user

[amightywind]

As an atheist, I'd like to stick to a language created by an atheist.

You are narrowing your options considering who who developed the initial versions of GCC.

Snakes are naturally quiet

[suitepotato]

I'm just glad they did this ahead of any Ruby foray. Online, all I hear anymore is loud rowdy Ruby peope and anti-Python people, some of whom are the same. At the bookstore, I easily see two times more Python books than Ruby. This tells me that despite the online hype, there's still a lot of quiet interest in Python and it isn't that Ruby or anything else is pushing us aside, it's that we're not very vociferous.

Which is fine with me. As long as Yahoo and other outlets keep that in mind that is. Python is not dead no matter what some people want to believe from the SNR.

Re:Snakes are naturally quiet

[abigor]

Python is used commercially all over the place. My friend bought Civilization IV, and I was astounded to see it supports game modifications via Python. Meanwhile, I read an interview with the guy behind PyQt, the Python bindings for Trolltech's Qt library, and he said he has over 200 commercial users - including Disney, Pixar, and Industrial Light and Magic. All of these companies use Python and Qt, an extremely powerful app development environment if I've ever seen one. It seems like a natural match.

So the reason you don't hear Python hype is because the language simply doesn't need it. Ruby hasn't "arrived" yet, so its supporters are more vocal. It's all very similar to desktop Linux.