python resources for the week

[Kragen Sitaker]

This is the last week I'll do this for a while.

    I favour Kent Beck's aphorism: "Make it work, make it right, make it fast."
        -- James Kew

Programming Libraries:

    Logilab's 'constraint', a constraint satisfaction problem
    programming environment for Python, which lets you program in
    Prolog style in Python, has released version 0.2.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1023468735.788.python-list%40python.org

    Twisted, an event-based framework for Python applications,
    including network servers, has released version 0.18.0.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1023121326.9358.clpa-moderators%40python.org

    Rdflib, which includes a store for RDF triples and XML
    serialization facilities for them, has released version 0.9.0.
        http://redfoot.sf.net/

    The proposed standard Python logging module has been released
    version 0.4.5.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1023398221.4689.clpa-moderators%40python.org
        http://www.red-dove.com/python_logging.html

    scgi, yet another FastCGI clone, with support in Apache and Python,
    has released verion 0.3.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1023213423.29409.clpa-moderators%40python.org

    Skunkweb, a web application framework for Python, has released
    version 3.2.1, which supports Apache 2, among other things.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1023380951.25710.python-list%40python.org

Python Development News

    Oleg BroytMann posted glue that automatically moves vim users to
    the locations of syntax errors in their Python source code, much
    like C-c - in Emacs.
        mailman.1023368949.9130.python-list@python.org
    Google may not save the attachment, but pipermail does.
        http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2002-June/107625.html

    Skip Montanaro wants help making Python better at detecting where
    various pieces of BSD DB are installed, and also wants to know if
    it's OK to stop supporting obsolete versions of BSD DB.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1023479590.27892.python-list%40python.org

    IDE Studio, an enhanced version of IDLE, including features like a
    graphical class browser, pydoc integration, and method syntax
    tips, released version 1.6.
        http://starship.python.net/crew/mike/Tide/idledev/IDEStudio.html

Discussion on Features of Python:

    Andrew Kuchling has written "What's new in Python 2.3?"
        http://www.python.org/dev/doc/devel/whatsnew/

    eval and exec still need real dicts for variable lookup, which is
    a wart.  This is not a new topic.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1023324129.19618.python-list%40python.org
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1023322808.24525.python-list%40python.org
        http://groups.google.com/groups?th=2338421ec8397bec&seekm=mailman.1004338951.27778.python-list%40python.org

    The timbot described the implementation details of the built-in
    list type, how it struck a balance between efficient reallocation
    behavior and efficient space usage, and why simple benchmarks may
    not always reveal the whole truth.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1023657975.22641.python-list%40python.org

Problems and Solutions:

    There's a new Python Cookbook recipe describing how to produce
    lazily-computed attributes in Python 2.2.
        http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/131495

    David Mertz wrote an article about how to use generators to get
    cooperative multithreading.  It turns out that "yield" really does
    mean "yield" after all.
        http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-pythrd.html

    Vojin Jovanovic is building a system for describing systems of
    interdependent lazily computed nonscalar values in Python, and
    he's annoyed that his variable names all have to begin with
    "self.".  This is a little different from the standard "Python is
    different from C++ and therefore bad" thread.  Holger Krekel,
    among others, suggested a solution, but it was not sufficient.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1023224648.434.python-list%40python.org

    Thomas Heller posted a sort of emulation of classmethod that works
    in Python 2.1.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=ado5v8$uih9$1%40ID-59885.news.dfncis.de

    Uwe Schmitt wanted help talking to his barcode printer directly on
    Microsoft Windows.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=Xns9226F1A931224cliechtigmxnet%4062.2.16.82

    Cimarron Taylor posted his procedure for building a Python
    interpreter with Tkinter and Pmw.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=29e28c51.0206090021.72466d4b%40posting.google.com

Miscellaneous:

    ONLamp.com interviewed Guido van Rossum about Python.
        http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/python/2002/06/04/guido.html

    EuroPython has posted some more interviews, including one with
    Steve Alexander and Stephan Richter, in which they talk about
    Zope's place in the world and Zope 3.
        http://europython.zope.nl/interviews/entries/steve_stephan_zope

    Domenic Merenda, who used to work at BeOpen, is running a
    home-grown ERP system written entirely in Python on an AS/400 to
    manage the operations of a hundred-million-dollar manufacturing
    company.  He hopes to release it as open source. He's looking for
    other people who have done this.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=KHkL8.21383$eD2.2399923271%40newssvr10.news.prodigy.com

    The discussion about ERP systems generalized to large Python
    projects --- more than a few tens of thousands of lines.  Michael
    Chermside posted a summary of a few such systems.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1023460091.14067.python-list%40python.org

    Domenic Merenda posted a list of several dozen large Python
    projects that BeOpen had compiled in 2000.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=QX8M8.21882$EP.2548532334%40newssvr10.news.prodigy.com

    Tim Churches answered a question about how to compute confidence
    intervals in Python with an overview of available statistical
    software for Python, including SciPy, RPy, Gary Strangman's stats
    module, and NumPy's MLab.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1023574153.24062.python-list%40python.org

    Chris Armstrong is developing a Python-source serialization module
    for arbitrary object instances that works along the same lines as
    pickle, but is human-readable and human-editable.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1023668414.25769.python-list%40python.org

    Dean Goodmanson described what features of Python he avoided when
    trying to write Python that would be easy to translate into C++.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=e81be8b2.0206022315.3a0bf9a9%40posting.google.com

    Peter Hansen eloquently praised test-first development.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=3D02FB3B.CF75E925%40engcorp.com

    Dave Cole wrote about why he wrote Albatross, a web application
    framework for Python, when there were already so many web
    application frameworks for Python.
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=mailman.1023539113.15573.python-list%40python.org