Two Thousand Posts Behind

While recording material for the first three episodes of a new Python podcast (you'll have to wait*) I realized that I've been less in contact with the doings of the Python community than usual over the last six months, due to project and teaching work.

When I am in "less busy" mode and have some spare time I often follow the comp.lang.python newsgroup, offering advice and opinion when the occasion allows. I also find the time to track the Planet Python newsfeed, which is full of interesting (and often detailed) information about what various Python personalities have been up to. When I get busy, as I have been this year, those information sources tend to take a background role.

I just started on the task of "catching up" with Planet Python, and have had to recognize that there is no way I am going to. There have been over two thousand posts since the start of June this year, and I just don't have the time to run through it all -- particularly not if I want to follow up all the interesting stuff I see. In the first minute of examination I saw details of an IronPython application that allows you to examine .NET binary assemblies and instantiate the various classes you come across, interacting with them through an interactive console.

This was interesting because it's been one of the reasons many Java shops keep Jython in their toolkit. Java is also a compiled language not an interactive one, and so it's difficult to learn about the tools without going through an intensive "write/run/debug" cycle that makes it difficult to condense your experience into learned material. With Jython you just use the interactive Python interpreter, creating instances as you like, calling their methods and examining their attributes. "Plays well with others" has always been one of Python's strengths.

Anyway, suffice it to say that there's been some amazing stuff going on in the Python ecosphere recently. I am really looking forward to next year's PyCon (February, in Atlanta). There were so many great proposals that even with an expansion from four tracks to five there wasn't room to accommodate all the stuff that could have gone in. So expect some pretty amazing Open Space sessions too!

* Provisionally entitled "A Little Bit of Python"

PyPy Continues to Catch Up

Interesting news from the EuroPython sprints at Vilnius via Holger Krekel. PyPy supports Django well enough to run the Pinax application put together by an open source team coordinated by James Tauber. It's great to see Python expanding in so many directions at once. The future is definitelyto be interesting.

Django seems to be becoming one of the "how good is your implementation" tests for Python implementations. Not only are the PyPy team using it in this way, but IronPython and Jython are as well. Since Jython is now in alpha with a Python 2.5-compatible implementation the picture is looking better and better every day.

The one thing nobody has discussed much is the attitude of the PyPy, Jython and IronPython development teams to migration towards Python 3.0. Does it represent the next wave, or will it end up as an isolated development?

Industry Support for Python Broadens

In a move of significance to all Python users Sun Microsystems has broadened its support for dynamic languages still further. There was some interest in their announcement less than six months ago that they had hired Charles Nutter and Thomas Enebo, developers of JRuby.

Today we learn that they have recruited Frank Wierzbicki and Ted Leung. Frank has been one of the two principal maintainers of the Jython project for a good long time now, and has brought the language forward to the point where it supports the newnew-style classes, a significant milestone in compatibility with CPython. Ted is a long-time member of the Apache Software Foundation who was a member of the OSAF's Chandler team for the last four years.

Sun was a great employer for me (I was badge number 1536, I believe, starting back in 1985), and I hope that Frank and Ted enjoy working there. It's certainly a great place to meet people with exceptional intelligence, and the fact that both Sun and Microsoft are now visibly taking a serious approach to dynamic languages in general and Python in particular is terrific.

Sun and Microsoft are both sponsoring this year's PyCon, for which registrations recently topped 900. If you want to meet them there then you still have four days to register at the pre-conference prices!