Yesterday I recommended that someone do a task with Python. It seemed like the ideal tool for a job (breaking apart a file into a bunch of web pages). I also know Python fairly well, and hey, it's an easy language to learn. My friend had some Perl experience in a college class, but they didn't spend enough time on Perl to be helpful. (And I don't remember enough Perl to be helpful either.)

So this afternoon my friend starting implimenting his solution, in Python. Frankly I was amazed at how fast he went from asking "stupid" questions like "How do I make a new script?" to intelligent sounding questions like "what modules do I have to import here?".

At the end of the day he was looking at the Python HTML::Template classes and figuring out how to integrate those into the body of his script.

Short answer: he went from knowing nothing about Python to dude, it just works! in an afternoon - and got I'd say about 40% of the scripting project done.

Stuff I learned from this experience:

• Python is wicked cool
• There seems to be a lot of Python tutorial pages
• A-IMing Python code back and forth sometimes isn't the best, formating wise
• But it works
• print "hello world", will print "hello world" without the extra carriage return
• Python's for... each.. in fileObj syntax doesn't seem to chop off the second line delimiter on DOS(the newline) - at least, not in 2.2.2

I was also surprised at how fast my friend picked up language, and very pleased. I give credit both to Python's lack of weird syntax (read: It's Not Perl) and my friend's ability to learn new languages (he was one of the top COBOL programmers in our class.. and that's saying a fair bit, 'cause the instructor sucked and the language is, well, bad.)

So I would say that this afternoon was a success. I converted someone to Python, and they got their work done.

And this entry probably wins the award for Longest Entry on h4ck3r+=boi.

Are Programmers People? If So, what do we do about it?

Reiterates the basic UI concepts:

• There should be only one obvious way of doing something
• Different Things Should Be Clearly Different
• etc...

but this time applied to programming languages

For the last few days I've been writting C++. I am both impressed at how much I can get done in an hour, and horrified by the fact that I could be ten times further in the project using Python or even Objective-C.

It's not that C++ is a bad language (it has it's good points) - it's just that for what I'm doing (dynamic "general" coding, where C++'s strong typing is just a hinderance, and not a help) developing in C++ tends to feel monsterously slow.

But it'll be a wildly useful class when I'm done with it, oh boy!

Patriot Act II: An EFF Lawyer's Take

Long and interesting article if you're... umm... interested.

kuro5hin | The Tip Jar As A Revenue Model: A Real World Experiment

The Internet may be one of the fastest, widest, and easiest methods of distribution to date. Apple's Music Store experiment will show how much people are willing to pay for stuff on the Internet.

MacMegaSite | New Themes for OS X

Have fun folks