vex.net — "The Vaults of Parnassus is a large collection of links to third-party software for Python programming. If you need to do something special with Python, the Vaults is usually the best first place to look for resources." - Learning Python
Nov 19, 2005 View in Crawl 4
kimastergeorgeNov 19, 2005
Same, I use Python as a calculator, too, because:a) there are no semicolonsb) there's a shellc) it's easyCiv IV uses Python and XML probably to script AIs and scenarios and campaigns etc.The page really sucks (from a design point of view). If you want to learn Python, go to <a class="user" href="http://www.python.org/">http://www.python.org/</a>Python is nice because it is scalable: it can be used as a little administration script, or it can be used as a big GUI application.
Closed AccountNov 19, 2005
Python: The language that branches on whitespace. Ugggh. No digg.
zonk3rNov 19, 2005
Put the python in your pants.
manuzhaiNov 20, 2005
The Vaults of Parnassus have been superceded by <a class="user" href="http://cheeseshop.python.org/.">http://cheeseshop.python.org/.</a>
allanl5Nov 20, 2005
One of the nicest things about 'modern' computer languages (ie post Fortran 77) is their flexibility in formatting -- basically one or more white-spaces, one or more tabs, CR, LF, it doesn't matter to the compiler, it's all treated as one delimiter.This lets you be flexible in your source-code formatting. This is considered mostly A Good Thing.One of the MAJOR PITA factors in Make was that it used a SINGLE-TAB following a 'target' line to signal the beginning of a 'rule' line. Not 8 spaces, not 2 spaces, not 2 tabs, but ONE TAB. Since the person editing the file couldn't SEE 'one-tab', this led to obscure (hard to track down, hard to see, once found easy to fix) bugs.I'm a big believer in requireing things at their proper level. If you want a style guide (usually A Good Thing) then write a style guide and have your programmers follow it. Don't require the LANGUAGE for heaven's sake to enforce your style guide -- that's too low a level.Some people say always use TABS for indentation. Some say NEVER use TABS for indentation, since if you only uses spaces the code will look the same no matter WHAT TAB setting your editor uses. I like the no TABS position myself.So I'm very suspicious of Python's using white-space in this way. It seems like a return to an approach that was dropped (for very good reasons) long ago.
theqweNov 20, 2005
AllanL5- python accepts either tabs or spaces, as long as the block is indented. I was skeptical of the language for that reason until I sat down and learned it :)
jhsbkkNov 22, 2005
Focusing on Python syntax is great, but there are more benefits than that.The reason I like it is because everything is done quite transparently. The big inside joke about Python (I think) is that it brought LISP to the masses. (Well, the best of LISP). The trick to LISP is that it has no syntax. You program directly what other languages get parsed into: code and data are one and the same. Thus you can have code that returns data which is more code.Read Paul Graham's essay about the value of LISP to a (web) developer.Next, look at some of Python's shining achievements, like SQLObject, which uses metaclasses (code that outputs more classes) to turn classes into SQL tables. That, to me, is the big with with Python, and for that matter, Perl and (probably) Ruby.