QOTW: "[Python demands more thought in optimization, because i]n
other languages, by the time you get the bloody thing working it's
time to ship, and you don't have to bother worrying about making
it optimal." -- Simon Brunning
"One of the best features of c.l.py is how questions phrased in the
m
QOTW: "I found the discussion of unicode, in any python book I have,
insufficient." -- Thomas Heller
"If you develop on a Mac, ... Objective-C could come in handy. . . .
PyObjC makes mixing the two languages dead easy and more convenient than
indoor plumbing." -- Robert Kern
Among other ac
QOTW: "Python: it tastes so good it makes you hungrier." -- EP
"I don't consider 'throws Exception' to be sloppy, I consider it to be
programmers voting with their feet." -- Roy Smith
The Centre for Epidemiology and Research has released a high-quality
suite of Python-based "Network-en
QOTW: "It might be nice if it was widely understood (in IT) that Python was
a language any competent programmer could pick up in an afternoon, such that
Java, C, and Perl shops would not be concerned about the need for their staff
to learn a new language." -- Eric Pederson
"What's kind of surpris
QOTW: "The right solution will end up being unique to Python though. It has
to feel like Python." -- Guido van Rossum
http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2005/01/amazon_devcon_g_4.html
"Sparring with Alex Martelli is like boxing Mike Tyson, except that one
experiences brain enhancement rather than brai
QOTW: "I've forgotten what we are arguing about, but I'm sure I'm
right." -- Jive Dadson
"I believe the best strategy against Identity theft is bad
credit." -- Tom Willis
"You can't live without unit tests. And once you have unit tests, the
added value of declarations is tiny, and their cost re
QOTW: "Who's 'Guido'?" -- Ilias Lazaridis
"I know this document. It has no relevance to me." -- Ilias
Lazaridis, on http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html >
"Nobody asked them to do this (AFAIK), it's more that nobody could
_stop_ them from doing it." -- timbot, on the work of Jason
Editor's note: "Python-URL!" is minimal. It doesn't support advertisements,
we never allow the subscribers' addresses to be used for other purposes, we
don't claim infallibility, and we even take a couple weeks off some years.
Occasionally, though--not as often as the US enters a shooting war, sa
QOTW: "Really, of course, the only things you need to make explicit are the
ones that readers don't understand." -- Steve Holden
"Working with unicode objects in Python is so transparent, it's easy to
forget about what a C extension would likely want." -- Kevin Dangoor
"You take leadership in a
QOTW: "Python's best feature is comp.lang.python." -- Joerg Schuster
"I learn something valuable from comp.lang.python every week, and most of
it has nothing to do with Python." -- Richie Hindle
Google writes successful (if suboptimal) applications. Google
relies on Python:
htt
QOTW: [Must be seen to be believed]
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/msg/7613422265cdc010
"If you don't read answers, don't post questions :-/" -- bruno desthuilliers
News from PyCon2005 emerges almost continuously. See, for
example, this blog startpoint:
QOTW: "This is a Python newsgroup. Assume that we all have been
brainwashed." -- Peter Otten
"[M]y experience porting Java to Jython is that it mostly involves deleting
stuff :-)" -- Kent Johnson
"[K]eep in mind, however, that not all problems in life can be solved with
software." -- Roy Smith
QOTW: "... So I started profiling the code and the slowdown was actually
taking place at places where I didn't expect it." -- Guyon Mor?e (and about
twenty-three thousand others)
"[A] suggestion from the world of 'agile development': stop making so many
decisions and start writing some actual cod
QOTW: "It seems to me that Java is designed to make it difficult for
programmers to write bad code, while Python is designed to make it
easy to write good code." -- Magnus Lycka
"Code attracts people that like to code. Tedious, repetitive c.l.py
threads attract people that like to write tedious,
QOTW: "If you don't have the time to be paranoid, try taking the time to
straighten out identity theft." -- K. G. Schneider
"The best way to make classes on the fly is generally to call the
metaclass with suitable parameters (just like, the best way to make
instances of any type is generally to ca
QOTW: "Using Unix for 20+ years probably warps one's perception
of what's obvious and what isn't." -- Grant Edwards
"... windoze users--despite their unfortunate ignorance, they are
people too." -- James Stroud
"The Widget Construction Kit (WCK) is an extension API that allows
you to imp
QOTW: "- don't use SAX unless your document is huge
- don't use DOM unless someone is putting a gun to your head" - Istvan Albert
"I wouldn't fret too much about a sharp remark from Fredrik Lundh.
They're pretty much all that way. ;) It looks like you already did the
right thing - read past the
QOTW: "The lesson for me is to spend much less time on Python discussion
and much more on unfinished projects. So even if I never use the new syntax,
I will have gained something ;-)" - Terry Reedy
"In short, this group is a broad church, and those readers with brains the
size of planets should
QOTW: "You can tell everything is well in the world of dynamic languages
when someone posts a question with nuclear flame war potential like 'python
vs. ruby' and after a while people go off singing hymns about the beauty
of Scheme..." - vdrab
"ctypes completely rocks." - Grant Edwards
Mich
QOTW: "... '[B]ut assume that I have some other use case' isn't a valid
use case". - Fredrik Lundh
"Rolling your own solution, on the other hand, can end in a long road
discovering what those CORBA people were doing for all those years." - Paul
Boddie
NOTW: sceptifications.
Steven D'Apra
QOTW: "Python makes it easy to implement algorithms." - casevh
"Most of the discussion of immutables here seems to be caused by
newcomers wanting to copy an idiom from another language which doesn't
have immutable variables. Their real problem is usually with binding,
not immutability." - Mike Me
QOTW: "... and to my utter surprise it worked." - Andrew Nagel on
his move from wxPython to programming Tkinter in desperation
"Python has more web application frameworks than keywords." - Skip
Montanaro (but probably others going back years)
Frithiof Andreas Jensen writes frankly on use o
QOTW: "If I feel the need for languages that enforce my design
decisions, I know where to find them." - Mike Meyer
"There's ... unavoidable complexity involved in managing a software
distribution composed of third party software packages. At the very
least, you've got the original sources and t
QOTW: "[P]ortability is an n-way street." - Paul McGuire
"Python's polymorphism support is so good that it makes inheritance much
less important than it is in other languages." - Ben Sizer
Skip Montanaro presents the affirmative case for Python as
a unit-testing framework for C++:
QOTW: "My wild-ass guess is that, same as most other Open Source
communities, we average about one asshole per member." - Tim Peters
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/msg/02236cc5ab54fd90?hl=en
"[T]he only fundamentally new concept that has been added since Python
1.5.2 is gener
QOTW: "Dangit! I need to find a less honest programming language. Anyone
have a Perl cookbook handy? ..." - Lonnie Princehouse
"The pursuit of orthogonality, while admirable, can lead to insanity if
pushed too far." - Steve Holden
One of this week's half-dozen examples of the, "Is there a
QOTW: "On the other hand, lousy testing is practically worthless." - Steve
D'Aprano
"Komodo adds no goo to your code." - Trent Mick
A nice if implicit comparison of stylish use of a regular
expression vs. an equally stylish procedural approach: which
is easier for *you* to maintain
QOTW: "Actually, Python has the distinction of being both a great tool
language *and* a great Zen language. That's what makes Python so cool
;-)))" - Ron Stephens
"It is probably possible to do the whole thing with a regular expression.
It is probably not wise to do so." - John Zenger (among MANY
QOTW: "This PyCon has been better in so many respects than the three that
preceded it. ... PyCon will continue to improve." - Steve Holden, chairman
of PyCon 2003-2005
http://holdenweb.blogspot.com/
"Design patterns are kind of like sarcasm: hard to use well, not always
appropriate, and di
QOTW: "Generally, you should always go for whatever is clearest/most easily
read (not just in Python, but in all languages)." - Timothy Delaney
"You will find as your programming experience increases that the different
languages you learn are appropriate for different purposes, and have
differen
QOTW: "Making a user class work anywhere you can put a mapping in Perl is
deep magic, but easy in Python. Creating types that act like files and can be
used wherever a file is used is SOP in Python; I'm not even sure it's
possible in Perl (probably is, but it's again deep magic)." - Mike Meyer
".
QOTW: "You can gain substantial speed-ups in very certain cases, but the
main point of Pyrex is ease of wrapping, not of speeding-up." - Simon Percivall
"The rule of thumb for all your Python Vs C questions is ...
1.) Choose Python by default. . . ." - Ravi Teja
Do you remember Python's ea
QOTW: "Check out BeautifulSoup -- you will never write HTMLParser-based
screen scrapers again. :)" - Jonathan Ellis
"You clearly need something instead of XML." - Paul McGuire
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/msg/09e943c8dbf1e8c5?
Johann C. Rocholl donates a PNG manager i
ANNOUNCEMENT: we had an incident with backups of the "Python-URL!"
mailing list. It's possible we lost one or two transactions from the
last week. If you aren't receiving an e-mailed copy of this weekly
news digest that you should, or are receiving one when you shouldn't,
please alert me through
QOTW: "In short, it's never what you think it is ;-)" - timbot,
probably on the subject of performance
"Real efficiency comes from elegant solutions, not optimized programs.
Optimization is always just a few correctness-preserving transformations
away." - Jonathan Sobel
http://www.cs.indiana.
QOTW: "Write code, not usenet posts." - Fredrik Lundh
"If an embedded return isn't clear, the method probably needs to be
refactored with 'extract method' a few times until it is clear." - John Roth
The comp.lang.python collective has become quite expert
at answering "Which book should
QOTW: "Alas, Python has extensive libraries and [is] well documented
to boot." - Edmond Dantes
"Locking files is a complex business." - Sybren Stuvel
File-locking *sounds* like an easy thing; it just isn't
so in any operating system that often appears on desktops.
Take advantage of t
QOTW: "[U]sing Python is not programming, it IS a fun!" - Tolga
"The reason for making complex a builtin is _not_ to ease a single
program, but to create a convention allowing different modules which
operate on complex numbers to communicate." -Scott David Daniels
Komodo 4.0 debuted at last
QOTW: "It's not out of the kindness of our hearts that we help. Heck, I
don't know what it is. Probably I just like reading my own drivel on the
internet and occasionally helping others is a good excuse." - Neil Cerutti
"Well, if you're only watching mtv, it's easy to think that there's
obviou
QOTW: "If you want your objects to know their name, give them a name as
an attribute." - Georg Brandl
"Unfortunately forty years of programming experience has taught me that
there's an essentially infinite supply of mistakes to make ... your
mistakes just get smarter most of the time." - Steve
QOTW: "... [N]ow that I've made the switch to python, I'm several orders of
magnitude more productive ..." - Rob Knapp
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/msg/8a4efd549bfb451a
"Hanging out around the Python community will make you a better VB, dotNet
or C++ programmer ..." - Carl
QOTW: "Well, I haven't yet seen a definition of 'Integrated Development
Environment' which would exclude Emacs..." - Slawomir Nowaczyk
"Let me tell you: There are times when I'm really glad that as a German,
I'm not supposed to possess any sense of humour at all." - Georg Brandl
Pythoneers
QOTW: "If you want to become a good Python programmer, you really need to
get over that 'I need a oneliner' idea." - Fredrik Lundh
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/msg/9e10957173a20e73
"It is the shortsightedness of the Python core developers that keeps
the palindrome related f
QOTW: "It is humbling to see how simple yet powerfull python`s view on
things is" - Ãric Daigneault
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/msg/bbd842715bb5b6eb
"[I]f a machine is expected to be infallible, it cannot also be
intelligent." - Alan Turing, 20 February 1947, lecture
This is the first time you've received "Python-URL!" in 2007. No,
that's not the fault of your mail server; we've just been on sabbatical.
Now we're back.
QOTW: "'Doesn't seem to work' is effectivly even more useless than
'doesn't work' [as a symptomatic description]." - Bruno Desthuilliers
QOTW: "I have a fake supervisor reference generator for job interviews, a
fake house inspection generator for real estate transactions, and a fake
parole testimony generator - maybe you could adapt one of them
(unfortunately, they are written in dissembler)." - Paul McGuire
"... I think that [PyP
QOTW: "This whole charset mess is not meant to be solved by mere
mortals." - Thorsten Kampe, a day or so before solving his
symptom with a codecs method:
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/msg/a2e573ccc54f66db
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/msg/a2e573ccc54f66
QOTW: "Dictionaries are one of the most useful things in Python. Make sure
you know how to take adavantage of them..." - Jeremy Sanders
"Python has consistently failed to disappoint me." - Tal Einat
"super() only works on new-style classes ..." and "has its own
set of gotchas":
QOTW: "The users." - Ali, answering a question on what's special about Emacs.
"Dynamic languages look at WSDL and shrug - another example of the hoops that
static typing forces humans to go through." - Gordon Weakliem
http://lists.community.tummy.com/pipermail/frpythoneers/2007-April/001342.
QOTW: "That is just as feasible as passing a cruise ship through a phone
line." - Carsten Haese, on transporting a COM object across a network.
Less vividly but more formally, as he notes, "A COM object represents a
connection to a service or executable that is running on one computer.
Transferrin
QOTW: "As a general rule, *ALL* multithread operations are at least that
troublesome, and most are far more so." - Gary Herron
"I'm a recent, belated convert from Perl. I work in a physics lab and have
been using Python to automate a lot of measurement equipment lately. It
works fabulously for
QOTW: "Sometimes you just have to take the path of least distaste". - Grant
Edwards
"I want to choose my words carefully here, so I'm not misunderstood. They're
a bunch of fucking idiots." - Charles Wang, billionaire chairman of software
giant Computer Associates, asked to assess the quality of
QOTW: "Modules are objects too - they're a good example of singletons. If you
want to create a class containing only static methods: use a module instead.
If you want to create a class having a single instance (a singleton), most of
the time you can use a module instead. Functions don't *have* to
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