What is Digg?31 Comments
- binaryfeed, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Google, IronPort, BitTorrent ... many companies (in the Bay Area) are using Python heavily for software development.
- yppiz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Very useful. It's got great libraries, a clean syntax, and is easy to learn.
I've worked for three companies that use it for prototyping or middle tier code. - darthmdh, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I guess this is a two-part question; firstly there's "who is using Python?" - there's Python success stories here; secondly there's "have you ever re-used it?" (ie, learned Python, done something on the job with it, then used Python again for other tasks in the future) - my answer to this is "yes".
I find the language easy to learn, extremely well documented, used throughout a variety of open and closed source applications I come across in the workplace, and generically suitable for practically any task. There's a variety of development tools that support the language, it fits in very well with most software development methodologies, and is very extensible. It is also very platform independant; quite often I've written on one to deploy on another - even gui applications - and things Just Work (tm).
Python has become my first choice for programming tasks and I highly recommend learning and using it. - auximini, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6As a SysAdmin, I've been using Python for all my scripts for the past year and a half. It all depends on what you're using it for, though: sysadmin, development, web programming, etc.
Can't hurt to learn it -- it takes all of 15 minutes to learn the basics. After that, you'll just have to become familiar with the different modules. - rastan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Have to agree. Python is fantastic for system administration and automation when you need to go beyond a shell script or need a cross-platform solution. If you have any programming experience, the free Dive into Python book (http://diveintopython.org/) is a great way to get up to speed fast on how Python works. It's what I used and I still come back to it.
- drag, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3If you want to see a extreme use of Python check out Plone or other stuff built on the Zope framework. http://plone.org/
The entire thing is built on Python. The web server, the backends, the configuration stuff. Everything. No Apache, No Mysql. etc etc. Pretty crazy stuff. Also it is suppose to be very mature and robust.
Shows off how powerfull a high-level language can be.
The downside, of course, is performance. Uses lots of RAM and a bit more CPU then other stuff. For heavy-use sites you have to run it behind a cache'ng Apache server or whatnot. http://plone.org/documentation/tutorial/optimizing-plone
Fun stuff.
Another unique python item is the http://panda3d.org/ engine. It's a open source item and would be considured FSF-style 'Free software' except for the fact that the developers require that you make changes you make back to them.
It's a 3d gaming engine designed by Disney corporation for MMORG-style games online. It's designed specificly to be used with Python... although itself is not actually written in it. - stalky14, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3My language experiences:
- I loved BASIC, but it's dead now, and really had no standard across platforms. Move along.
- Fortran was okay, but kind of clunky.
- Pascal: Dead, and deservedly so. Too limited.
- Modula 2: On the fence between C and Pascal. Basically a readable C or a useful Pascal. A shame this never went anywhere. I've heard it's similar to Ada though, for what that's worth.
- Assembly is fun, but only in non-x86 embedded environments.
- C, C++: Tried them. Yuck. Languages for lazy typists (Even its name is just a symbol!). Operator overload indeed. There's an old joke that C got its name because it was K&R's senior project and that was the grade that they got for it.
- Python: Freaking bliss! Nearly everything I want in a modern language. It has its weirdnesses, but they all do. IMO, good for anything where you don't absolutely need a compiled language. - nfollmer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2just a question because im curious......... How much is python really used on the job? Just wondering if I should take the time to learn it or not.
- shinynew, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2in recent games Civ IV acually uses it. They boasted the mod making abilities very high and if you use the same artwork you can make a mod useing only XML and Python.
- Stonekeeper, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I agree too. It's perfect for system administration. I just find it easier to use than bash scripts. Especially useful is the popen command so that you can read in the stdout of other programs and do something accordingly. It's easy to write fairly simple scripts that do fairly complex operations. Oh, and it's easy to read too.
- danielwsmithee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2For guis and Python I enjoy pyQt.
- timtop, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2python is awesome. got a full web app running on it now. literally using CherryPy module which is built in python. Its too easy to use to not learn. check out the reallife example if you want, for high functioning autistics
http://asdgames.dyndns.org - mr804, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Battlefield 2 uses it. So so a few other games. It's in most linux distro's or easy to add also.
- cisox, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I work in a computational biology lab and we use it all the time. It is constantly used for things anywhere from scripting to websites. I personally like perl better, but python is well worth learning.
- OBKenobi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1DICE should read this and fix BF2!
- willistg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Dugg cuz python is a great productivity enhancer, even though I think I've seen this article before. Python is a programmers secret weapon.
- dblanchard, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I have had trouble with Python's regular expression syntax, and prefer Perl only for text munging tasks. Everything else about Python is a dream. It has been a while since I've worked with RegExes in Python and it may have gotten easier; the language evolves even as I type this.
- nfollmer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Thanks
- CaughtThinking, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Let's see, just about any smart person would use Python, Blizzard, Google, NASA just to name a few. And not in a small way, we're talking serious investment.
- Swivelhead, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I remember asking the same question about 3 years ago about python and the only things answering were the crickets.
The problem was that once you proceeded into intermediate-beginner level, every Python published cookbook-project concerned using it to extend a thingajabob that you never heard of in Java or C.
It was almost as if you were teaching your kindergardener about primary colors and then asked them to paint the house.
I was thinking, "I didn't want to pick up Python so I would have to learn something even more difficult in Java/C!"
I would love to pick it back up for the long haul, since Python's my personal favorite. I just hope there are more realizable uses for it now. - Manhigh, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Python is amazing. Quick, easy, well documented. Unless computational speed is of the utmost importance (when I use Fortran 9x/200x).
- CaughtThinking, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Hell, it's perfect for gui systems too.
Check out wxPython for all those adventurous souls who want a serious gui toolkit. - atrerra, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I keep hearing contradicting things about the speed of python. Examples:
"The downside, of course, is performance. Uses lots of RAM and a bit more CPU then other stuff. For heavy-use sites you have to run it behind a cache'ng Apache server or whatnot."
and
"Battlefield 2 uses it. So so a few other games.."
"a 3d gaming engine designed by Disney corporation for MMORG-style games online..."
I'm confused - it's too slow for (some) web sites but perfectly fast enough for leading edge 3D games? Can someone clarify?
One other thing - is there a python GUI IDE for OS/X?
Thanks... - danielwsmithee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It is used extensively at my Job. We do a lot of test software. Very valuable skill.
- Haplo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"Check out wxPython for all those adventurous souls who want a serious gui toolkit."
I have used wxWindows/wxWidgets with Perl (wxPerl), and hmmmm.... even the SWI interface under RISC OS was a more serious GUI toolkit IMO. - Arevos, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I'm not sure the string concatenation advice applies in the latest version of Python. A while ago I ran some tests using join and straight concatenation, and the timing didn't appear to be significantly different. I think Python optimises it out in most cases.
- Haplo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1"- Pascal: Dead, and deservedly so. Too limited."
Misinformed nonsense. - bhmckendrick, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I had messed around w/ Python professionally but never got real familiar until recently ... It gave me a good chuckle to hear folks on this board praising the documentation - that's a freakin' larf. If you come from a more structured language like C / Java you're in for a shock! The standard library doc is useless ( but the standard tutorial is pretty good ) - wait till you get to the 3rdparty/OS libs ... You are in for a lot of the 'if you're not willing to reverse engineer my code to figure out how it works ... You shouldn't be using it' type of attitude ... I have never seen anything like it ...
Otherwise - it's a great language ... Just stick it out over the first couple o' weeks ... - Haplo, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1"and is easy to learn."
As a very skilled programmer I can say: it is not easy to learn. Moreover, there are no easy to learn programming languages. Note: learning doesn't mean you grok the syntax. An interesting read: http://www.norvig.com/21-days.html
As for learning Python I can recommend the following two links:
http://diveintopython.org/
http://greenteapress.com/thinkpython/
"it takes all of 15 minutes to learn the basics"
What basics? You mean "Hello, world!"? You are a long way from becoming a programmer... - tuna1, on 10/12/2007, -20/+2Yeah I got a tip to add.
Use perl.
Check out the new & improved 
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