Tom Pierce: Python

Fri, 27 Feb 2004 15:32:12 GMT

Oh No! DTO!. Should DTOs have public variables? Or should they have private variables with getters and setters? [Artima Weblogs]

There's an interesting discussion going on in the comments of the blog. Worth reading - I'm sure we've all pondered this question before. Especially when you think of languages like Python where it's downright hard (well, at least contrived) to make member variables private.

Mon, 13 Oct 2003 12:30:21 GMT

ZopeMag Donates Archetypes Article. Mark Pratt sent me a note last week letting me know that the "Introduction to Archetypes" article by Sidnei da Silva is now freely available. Sidnei did a very good job with this article, as did the editors at ZopeMag.[Zope Dispatches]

This looks like a great how-to article explaining how to create products for CMF with the new Archetypes approach.

Wed, 17 Sep 2003 19:15:32 GMT

Python's Beachhead in OpenOffice: PyUNO.

Python can now author OpenOffice components. The new OO 1.1 release includes a Python bridge to its internal UNO framework, an interesting, if obscure, multi-language interop system akin to COM and CORBA. Background briefs mention flaws in the latter which inspired the former. With the new Microsoft Office strategy of subscription-fee services coupled to digital rights management, OpenOffice looks more enticing than ever.

Links: UNO concepts, CORBA comparison chart, UNO details, PyUNO, C++UNO.

[Lambda the Ultimate]

Coming to grips with Python class methods vs. module level functions

Mon, 04 Aug 2003 15:49:09 GMT

I've been coding in Python again in my spare time. I miss Lisp a little, but Python is fun because you get alot for free with the huge module library in the base distribution. I still have a long way to go with on the Lisp learning curve, so I'll be back to it one day.

One of the things that Lisp and Python have in common is that functions are fist class citizens along with classes. That means that you can easily mix and match functional, imperative, and object oriented programming styles. This enables some really expressive and powerful programming experiences.

However, all that flexibility can be a bit confusing to me. I recently struggled with the question of when to use a class and when to just use a function nested in a module. After reading through other people's code, wasting alot of time (and getting nowhere) searching the Internet, and talking to peers, I think I've finally got a handle on it. Even if it's not the answer, I'm going with it.

I believe that most of my Python programming should be OO. OO offers and easy way to separate concerns and map concepts to software. However, there are times when OO seems strained to me. In those cases, I'll use module level functions.

An example that comes readily to mind is persisting objects to a data store. Should your classes have methods that save and load themselves? If they do, then the load method is really strained because it has to populate an instance of the class with data. So, that means you instantiate the object and THEN call load. Doesn't this seem wrong? Shouldn't the instance be instantiated by loading the data?

Perhaps you should make a new class that encapsulates the persistence mechanism for the other class. You could have a data store manager that persists your objects. When the data store manager received a load request, it would instantiate the object with the data from the data store and return it to the requester. This seems cleaner. However, the data store manager class doesn't really encapsulate any instance data. So, it's just a bag of methods. Mmm... strained?

This is an example of where I would use a couple of module level functions. One to store the classes that are part of the module and one to load them. This allows me to separate out a behavior that is not really an object action, but is an action on the object. This makes the solution very clean because, to me, there is much less strain on trying to force object interactions.

Whew! Inner conflict resolved. Breathe out... let the code flow...

Fri, 01 Aug 2003 04:40:48 GMT

Just found a cool article in the ASPN Python Cookbook about creating a generic thread pool. It seems to be a small, clean implementation.

Wed, 09 Jul 2003 22:22:32 GMT

Andy McKay: Introduction to Plone. Andy McKay from Agmweb Consulting is giving an Introduction to Plone. Plone is an open source content managment system built on CMF and Zope, which I've always thought of as an open source content management tool. Actually, Zope likes to think of itself as application server for content. [Windley's Enterprise Computing Weblog]

Note to self: Check out the latest release of Plone.

Seriously, if you are in to Zope and haven't checked out Plone, you really should. It's a very nice interface on top of the CMF (Content Management Framework). It makes using the CMF much easier and prettier.

Tue, 20 May 2003 23:27:46 GMT

PABlog 1.4 released. New version of PABlog, a blog tool for CMF and now plone as well. Changes in 1.4 include better documentation, and adding plone support. It's here. PABlog 1.4 released [Zope.org]

Sat, 10 May 2003 02:54:41 GMT

Strong Typing vs. Strong Testing.

In recent years my primary interest has become programmer productivity. Programmer cycles are expensive, CPU cycles are cheap, and I believe that we should no longer pay for the latter with the former. [Thinking About Computing]

Excellent article by Bruce Eckel on Strong vs. Dynamic Typing. He gives his examples in Java vs. Python. Bruce contributes to the growing sentiment that compilation checking in statically typed languages is really just a small number of tests. To determine if code is really correct, then you have to use unit tests. If you are using unit tests for your dynamically typed code, there is no reason it won't be just as correct as your statically typed code. Plus, dynamic languages are usually much easier to work with!

Great praise for "Python" in this article.

Sun, 27 Apr 2003 18:33:38 GMT

Great article about Erann Gat losing his faith in Lisp and finding it in Python.

Tue, 22 Apr 2003 00:55:10 GMT

...Ape, short for "Adaptable Persistence", is the new name for Adaptable Storage. Ape adapts Zope objects to storage on the filesystem, in relational databases, or practically anywhere else. It combines the advantages of transparent object persistence with arbitrary databases and formats. It is especially designed to work with ZODB, but can work independently of both Zope and ZODB.

Ape 0.6 and DBTab 1.2 Released [Zope.org]

Very cool! I can't wait to see this mature into 1.0 status. I would love to store my Photo objects on the filesystem, but treat them as thought they were internal. It would make backups feel a little better, plus I could access individual Photos from outside Zope.

Wed, 26 Feb 2003 13:35:25 GMT

Six-part interview with Guido van Rossum published [Python News]

I started reading this last night. If you are at all interested in Python and where it came from, this is a great interview.

Tue, 25 Feb 2003 15:30:57 GMT

Six-part interview with Guido van Rossum published [Python News]

Tue, 18 Feb 2003 23:09:44 GMT

I just saw that Plone 1.0 has been released.

Tue, 18 Feb 2003 22:57:08 GMT

DocmaServer 0.2 released.

Infrae is happy to announce DocmaServer, a standalone application that integrates with Silva to generate and read structured MS Word documents. Edit Silva content from within Word, or edit Word documents from within Silva!

You can find DocmaServer here. DocmaServer 0.2 integrates with Silva 0.9.1 (beta).

DocmaServer 0.2 released [Zope.org]

Uh... Wow! Editing Word documents from within Silva seems interesting.

Thu, 06 Feb 2003 01:43:49 GMT

Just a reminder for those that are interested, here is a WebDAV plug in for Frontier and Radio from Nicholas Riley. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]

Cool! This plug in allows you to upstream with WebDAV. Yet another way to publish Radio blogs to a Zope server.

Mon, 27 Jan 2003 22:21:13 GMT

Markov poetry. Randomly generated output using Markov chains and my own weblog as source material. I consider it a poem. (933 words) [dive into mark]

Too funny. Mark randomly walking all over his web with Python.

Sat, 25 Jan 2003 13:55:15 GMT

Fredrik Lundh's Python RSS reader supports the comments feature described above. Excellent. [Scripting News]

XML.com: Parsing RSS At All Costs [Jan. 22, 2003]

Thu, 23 Jan 2003 22:05:42 GMT

Another great article by Mark Pilgrim. This time he brings up the problem with RSS producers -- many are not producing valid XML. So, his idea is to build parse-at-all-costs parser, essentially ignoring validation. AND, his solution is in Python...

Mark Pilgrim's Python script to retrieve and decompress a compressed RSS feed

Thu, 23 Jan 2003 13:26:21 GMT

Here's a script by Mark Pilgrim that retrieves compressed RSS feeds. I think Mark may be one of the few who actually have compressed RSS feeds.

Thu, 23 Jan 2003 03:49:08 GMT

Open Letter to the Community. This is an Open Letter adressed to the Community and to Zope Corporation and the decisionmakers in the New Zope.Org project. Please go "here":http://plone.org/Members/zwark/plone-nzo to read my letter to the community about the new zope.org website, and add your comments. Open Letter to the Community [Zope.org]

This is a letter about using Plone for the new zope.org site. I am in favor of that. I like the idea of basing the site on a really great product to show the world what Zope can do. Also, the internationalization support is key for international users. Finally, I like focusing on what Zope 2 can do for us today without banking on Zope 3 until it's finished.

Wed, 22 Jan 2003 15:21:45 GMT

Plone 1.0 Release Candidate 2 available. [Zope.org]

Plone is a sweet layer on top of the Zope Content Management Framework (CMF). If you are interested in setting up a portal with Zope, you should be looking at the CMF and Plone.

Tue, 21 Jan 2003 14:35:55 GMT

Here's a nice article on RSS and its different formats from Mark Pilgrim. It gives an example of how to parse and work with RSS in Python.

Sun, 12 Jan 2003 22:53:06 GMT

As you may or may not know, Zope rules. Today I fully realized the power of the "version" capability of Zope. Versions are useful when you don't want others who may be using the system to see what you are working on (or in my case breaking) until you are finished with development.

My father and father-in-law had mentioned that they were confused about navigating our photo albumn. When you clicked on a folder that had nothing in it in my tree navigation, nothing showed up -- not even the folders below the one you clicked on. This confused them because they were used to how Windows Exploerer lets you navigate through folders.

I quickly realized that the users were right, and I set about changing it. So, I added a new version to my Photos folder. Then I made some changes to my methods and my style sheet. I tested it all out and got it looking as good as I could. Then, after I was satisfied, POW! I saved the changes in my version and everyone could see them. Tre cool!

Love Zope! Love it!

Mon, 30 Dec 2002 03:25:02 GMT

I would like to dig in to the Python Community Server and see if it can be used to upstream Radio entries from Linux or any other operating system supporting Python. If so, EXTREMELY cool.

Mon, 30 Dec 2002 03:21:49 GMT

Here's a link to a blog post about an Ebay to RSS Python script. The enticing thing to me is that it appears to be an HTML parser that will generate RSS from the matches. Pretty nifty stuff.