Python-URL! - 1999/08/23

by Cameron Laird - DejaNews: [1]

Next week: more working code, less territorial posturing.

• Quantitatively, the Pynews of the month was a conflict appar- ently about whether P-languages are in conflict. timbot left no doubt about his ownership of the intellectual high ground with a 160-proof exposition of Perl and Python as comparably inferior to SNOBL. Pathos, concision, the yacht race, public double dereferencing--the only thing it lacks is a gratuitous reference to Erlang (see DN513662476)
• The great Pythonist social event of the year is the Open Source Software Convention, now in progress. Early reports have it "well-organized"; David Ascher's tutorial was successful. Look next week for more detailed summaries http://conferences.oreilly.com/python/
• Logistics of the Eighth PyCon are largely set. Presenta- tion proposals are still being accepted http://www.python.org/workshops/2000-01/index.html
• A builder.com columnist reinforces the current run on pugnacity with his characterization of Python as "The Most Elegant Scripting Language You'll Probably Never Use" http://buzz.builder.com/cgi-bin/WebX?14@101.PwqganhkenJ^0@.ee7bc67/0
• Christian Tismer shows what "dynamic module generation" can mean in the hands of a master (see DN512188711)
• In the process of giving the one-line answer to the FAQ about trapping users who click on the go-away-X, Guido and Fredrik Lundh discover themselves trapped in one of their time machine's loops, as they jumble inspiration, intention, implementation, and documentation (see DN515152096)
• Another high point of the language wars is Tom Christian- sen's mention of Nigel Chapman's book. Although two years old and on a subject other than Python, it offers a lot from which we all can learn http://www.perl.com/language/critiques/ppc.html
• Prolific M.-A. Lemburg's mxProxy provides in its 0.2 re- lease not just fine-grained access control to objects, but also powerful weak reference methods (see DN514893032)