Ted Leung has all the interesting reads today.

Python Pitfalls is a good read for a novice Pythonista like myself.  #1 is a killer - not only does an editor with consistent indentation (tabs or spaces) help, but an editor that displays whitespace (like the PythonWin IDE) is a big help.  The issues with mutable objects haven't bit me yet, but I'm sure they will. 

Ted's link to Patterns of Software came from lemonodor, where Gavin posted a link to his own comments, actually an excerpt from "The Quality Without a Name" chapter.  The excerpt's very much like a Joel Test at a code level, though probably more idealistic.  I was thinking about this as I took Elaina for a walk and I began to wonder that if these are the characteristics of quality software, I have to wonder if there's a place for quality in corporate America.  These days, you can still buy high quality furniture, just not at the places that take out 2 page ads in the Sunday paper, and probably not by running down to one of these stores and taking delivery in the next week.  But you can definitely buy serviceable furniture in this way.  I remember seeing a sign at a ski repair shop that said "Good-Fast-Cheap, pick two".  In America, Fast and Cheap seems to win consistently.

Finally, Ted linked to Philip Greenspun's post, What do they do at the Lisp Conference?  I can tell you that the local user group meetings often take on the tone of "Lisp did it better 20 years ago".  So it's good to ask, "Is that the best we can do?".  To me, Philip answers the question at the end: "You need to think about ways to write down a machine-readable description of the application and user experience, then let the computer generate the application automatically".  I think that a computer language is useful to the extent that it puts you closer to this goal.  I think that Paul Graham outlines a very good philosophy for programming: you should write something to allow a user to program their domain.  Look at JSP (or ASP for that matter) and how maligned those systems are now.  One huge problem was that JSP requires you to write Java to write a "dynamic web page".  In your experience, how realistic is that?  JSP allows Java programmers to create HTML, but how successful has it been at allowing HTML designers to create HTML?