My name is Paul Bissex, and e-scribe.com is my consulting business. I build web applications using as much open source software as possible. From September to June I teach web design and other important non-photographic professional skills to photographers. In the '90s I wrote technology commentary and reviews for magazines, newspapers, and web publications, including Wired, Salon.com, FamilyPC, the late lamented Web Review, and the Chicago Tribune. Feel free to email me.
I'm co-authoring a book, "Python Web Development with Django", with Jeff Forcier and Wesley Chun. It will be published by Prentice Hall in July 2008, but is available for pre-ordering on Amazon now.
This site is built on a fresh trunk checkout of Django, running on Python 2.5.1, served by Apache and mod_python. 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.
Akismet, del.icio.us, Django, dpaste.com, Emacs, FreeBSD, Freenode, jQuery, LaunchBar, MacPorts, Markdown, Mercurial, OS X, Postfix, Python, SQLite, Subversion, TextMate, Trac, Ubuntu Linux, wmii
Copyright 2008
by Paul Bissex
and E-Scribe New Media
My "Let's play a game" post, featuring a simple number game implemented in three different scripting languages, has received many comments and updates in the few weeks it's been up. There are now twelve implementations, seven written by me (wide variations in quality!) and five contributed by readers. The languages represented, as of today: Haskell, Io, JavaScript, Lisp, Logo, Lua, PHP, Prolog, Python, REBOL, Ruby, and Scheme.
I've learned a hell of a lot, and gotten some good ideas about which languages might be rewarding to dive into further. My favorite new discovery so far is Io. It's clean, simple, consistent, and yet very pragmatic at the same time (e.g. lots of useful bindings, embeddable, etc.). The messaging syntax feels very natural, and the lack of brackets (cf. Objective-C) gives more than just visual relief: you don't have to backtrack to the beginning of the expression to insert a bracket when you decide you need to chain one more message on the end.
As time permits I hope to also check out a few more languages (Slate or OCaml or, hell, even C#) and then pick one of the new-to-me languages for further study throughout the year (following the advice of the Pragmatic Programmers).
My criteria, broadly, are that the language should be: 1) fun 2) significantly different from Python (my primary work language these days) and 3) applicable to my own work in some way (so that I'm more likely to use and really learn it).
This survey has also been a chance for me to size up Python against a number of other options. For the most part it has reaffirmed my choice to center my coding work around Python for the foreseeable future. If I didn't already know Python it would likely be at the top of the list.
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The iPhone keyboard doesn't suck
Python one-liner of the day
7 comments
How not to advocate via Google Code
2 comments
99 problems
3 comments
bitmonk
Obscure "svn mv" problem solved
88 days ago
Charlie
Book news: Rough Cuts and Amazon
89 days ago
Simon Griffee
Django Mercurial mirror tweaks
106 days ago
Jason Calleiro
From PHP to Python
107 days ago
Yuli
dpaste.com
110 days ago
bruce
Neat Python hack: infix operators
114 days ago
David Reynolds
The original Lego Star Wars
122 days ago
At least 36615 pieces of comment spam killed since January 12th. Thanks are mostly due to Akismet.