E-Scribe News : a programmer’s blog

About Me

PBX I'm Paul Bissex, and e-scribe.com is my consulting business. I build web applications using open source software, especially Django. In the '90s I did graphic design for newspapers and magazines. Then I wrote technology commentary and reviews for Wired, Salon.com, Chicago Tribune, and lots of little places you've never heard of. Feel free to email me.

Book

I'm co-author of "Python Web Development with Django", an excellent guide to my favorite web framework. Published by Addison-Wesley, it is available from Amazon and your favorite technical bookstore as well.

Colophon

Built using Django, served by Apache and mod_wsgi. The database is SQLite. The operating system is FreeBSD, on a VPS hosted at Johncompanies.com. Comment-spam protection by Akismet. Vintage topo imagery from the Maptech archive. The markup engine is Markdown.

Pile o'Tags

ajax apple blogs browsers business design django ebay fp fun google hardware haskell intellectual property iphone javascript linux media mercurial mobile open source os x oscon oscon2007 palm php programming python rails rants reading risks ruby site spam textmate the well tips tools unix vcs web development web frameworks webservers wmassdevs writing

Stuff I Use

Akismet, bitbucket, del.icio.us, Django, Emacs, FreeBSD, Git, jQuery, LaunchBar, Markdown, Mercurial, OS X, Postfix, Python, Review Board, S3, SQLite, TextMate, Ubuntu Linux

Spam Report

At least 95846 pieces of comment spam killed since January 2008, mostly via Akismet.

Soft launch

I quietly launched my first production Django site today, a replacement for a mess of legacy third-party PHP code. Unfortunately, it's a members-only service related to my job and so I don't have a public URL to share.

A couple interesting points: the new site was developed alongside the still-live legacy PHP apps, using some of the same data -- including a user table that's used for authentication. django-admin.py inspectdb made model creation fairly easy. I also found Scott Hurring's PHPSerialize module indispensible for working with the highly crufty legacy data.

This seems like a good time to thank all the authors and contributors to Django, as well as the folks who have answered my questions on IRC and the people who have taken the time to write up their experiences in technical detail.

It was a lot of work, and frankly I could have knocked out a PHP version in much less time. But I wanted to set the stage for cleaner, saner development in the future. I only expect to get faster.

More to come -- some of it open to the public, even.

Thursday, January 19th, 2006
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2 comments

Some related posts: Making your way from PHP to Python and Django • Moving the blog to Django • Let's play a game: BASIC vs. Ruby vs. Python vs. PHP • YAPWF: Aaron Swartz's web.py released • Django Docs in Plucker format • Python question: a better urlparse? • A minimal wiki in Django • Controller freaks • Django, Rails, and PHP • Python web framework mania
• Comment from radek , later that day

Willing to share some experience with the transition?

• Comment from Paul , later that day

Do you mean details on using the legacy data, or more general comments?

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