For a long time I’ve wanted to try working with Bicycle Repair Man, the Python refactoring tool. Unfortunately, the fact that it had neither documentation nor integration with my favorite editor kept pushing it to the back burner.
About a month ago I was excited to come across a post from a guy named David Coffin who had created a BRM integration script for TextMate. I hooked it up per his instructions, and with a little fiddling I got it working.
Python 3, formerly known as “Python 3000”, is coming. If you want to get up to speed, here’s my simple three-step program:
Watch this talk Read this PEP Try this tool on your code Now you’re an expert!
Chas Emerick commented on Wed Mar 28 17:06:03 2007:
I started to write a comment, but it became far too long, so I moved it off to (a blog post)[http://blog.snowtide.com/2007/03/28/python-growth-lack-thereof].
Oh, and BTW Paul, your comment box is really tiny in my Firefox (in both dimensions).
One of the neat things about PyCon, even for those of us who aren’t attending, is that people save up goodies to announce and release during the conference. Django is certainly a hot topic at this year’s PyCon, and as of today at least two significant new Django-based sites have launched:
One is CheeseRater (great name!), from Jacob Kaplan-Moss, a quick-rating system for items in the Python community’s official package index, the Cheeseshop.
I came across this neat Python hack on reddit today, a technique for defining arbitrary infix operators. Not overriding + or >> et al., but creating keyword-style pseudo-operators that… well, the code is probably as clear as any description I could come up with:
class infix(object): """ Clever hack (slightly modified) for defining infix operators. Via http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/384122 Intended for use as a decorator. >>> @infix ... def removing(str, chars): ... for char in chars: .
Over on the Well we’re having a discussion with Salon.com co-founder (and longtime Well member) Scott Rosenberg about his new book, Dreaming in Code. The book follows the Chandler project – conceived as a radical reinvention of the personal information manager – from its inception in 2002 through… well, through multiple stalls and restarts that lead not to a triumphal “Rocky of software” finish but to our embedded journalist moving on after deciding he just can’t wait any longer.
Syntactically significant whitespace is one of those debating points frequently raised in unproductive language thrashes involving Python. One persistent implication made by SSW-haters is that it’s a freakish mutation unique to Python. Or, if they’re feeling particularly vicious, they’ll bring up Fortran. Cold comfort.
In fact, there are quite a few other languages that have gone down this path. Flipping through a big fat book that I bought because Steve Yegge recommended it, I came across mention of a couple that were new to me.
I’ve created an updated Plucker version of the Python Library Reference for Python 2.5. It weighs in at 1.7MB, a bit fatter than the last one mostly because I tweaked the spidering depth to keep deeply nested pages from being skipped. All twelve of you who have an interest in such a thing can find it here:
http://e-scribe.com/reference/python_lib_ref_25.pdb fietske commented on Thu Jan 4 18:01:01 2007:
great Paul !
I just downloaded it so I can use it on my Nokia 770 internet tablet with FBReader (supporting plucker as well)