Skribit Schmibit?

I just noticed that Skribit log the number of followers for each writing suggestion on the blog, and some of the suggestions that have been made actually have people following them. Presumably this means that people would like to read such posts, so in the New Year I am going to try and pen at least one article a week on a Skribit topic.

This leads me to the question: how do I tell Skribit that a particular piece satisfies one of their suggestions, and should therefore be notified to the list of followers. Or is Skribit just making this information up as they go along? If you can't help me I'm going to have to read the FAQ ...

PyCon Friday: the Calm Before the Storm

Late to bed last night, and clearly too sleepy to set the alarm properly, so woke up today feeling a little groggy rather later than I had intended. Laptop behaving so far, fingers crossed.

Breakfast and the keynotes first. For the morning session the only two talks I want to hear clash with each other! PSF members' meeting at lunchtime, then chairing a session in the afternoon (a good way to make sure you get to hear some talks you want to). Trying to leave the evening open for "social business" activities.

I'm asking all the newcomers I meet what made them come to PyCon this year in an attempt to understand the explosive growth. It seems that a lot more people are starting to use Python now, vindicating my ten-year master plan to be involved with a significant technology by the end of this decade. Wonder whether it will do me any good.

Alex Martelli says I should consider writing another book, and wants me to contact a publisher. Whenever anyone says this I always remember the $2.50 royalty check I got once for Python Web Programming, and this brings me back to reality. I told him I might consider it if he'd be my technical editor again. His encyclopedic programming knowledge was terrifically useful last time.

Talking to Glyph Lefkowitz in the bar about books, he asked me how sales were going and I told him it is still in print but I am waiting for it to be remaindered (though it's hardly Books-a-Million material). He was nice enough to say that compared with other six-year-old books on web technologies there was still a lot that was relevant, which is definitely a complement. I did try hard to include explanations of the fundamentals, and I guess that counts for something.

Enough, I'm getting hungry.

Will McGugan on PyGame

I see from this blog entry that Will now has some idea of the shape of his (?) forthcoming book on Pygame. Good luck with the book, it's a hard road to hoe.

Refactoring for Journalism

Strange journalistic synchronicity.

Today the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) notified their contacts of a telco lobby to the administration to evade legal liability for possible anti-constitutional crimes. I wanted to blog about it in my Yorkshireman in America blog, and sought editorial scrutiny from the Foundation. Their Danny O'Brien replied:

Looks fine! Perhaps worth adding that Congress still has a chance to show some spine, and that you can call Pelosi or Reid to demand they stand up to the lobbyists.

So I did. Look at me, Ma, I'm a journalist :-)

All this success on the same day I learn that the first issue of the new Python Magazine is going to be electronic and free (as in beer, at least - the editor will have to speak to the rest). Look for the news on holdenweb.com - if I can get that blasted del.icio.us summary program working again ... but anyway I have some sort of an end-piece in it (which I wrote so long ago I am unsure of its subject, let alone its gist).

Misunderstandings

Here's a quote from an article about agile programming which is otherwise quite well-informed:

But because of their simplicity, languages such as Python and Ruby are better-suited to writing small applications.

This is the kind of myth that really needs to be squashed at the source. Unfortunately the source in this case is a journalist who has written an article and moved on with her misunderstanding of the issues and the facts completely untouched.

It's difficult to know how to attack this problem, because even the Python Software Foundation's advocacy coordinator were to contact the journalist in question and correct the mis-impression the damage is already done, and another opportunity to gain the wrong idea about dynamic languages is out there to be used as "evidence" by those looking to press the advantage of some other technique. It must have annoyed David Goodger (one of the Foundation's directors) to be quoted shortly after that misstatement.

In this particular case the author of the article did manage to get a lot right - technologies should come second to business needs, agile methods can save money by delivering business value faster and avoiding large amount of rework, and so on. So the content wasn't all bad, but the misunderstanding of Python's suitability for large projects spoiled it for me.

But then, I (and, I presume, most of thios blog's readers) already know that Python can be used successfully to build very large systems indeed.

The Python Community

This page is clearly seditious, as it claims that there are activities that are "more fun" than programming in Python*.

It does start to give you some idea of the breadth of the Python community. Strange as it may seem, after 40 years working with information technology I like the Python community as a place I don't necessarily have to do technical stuff. So I have tended to organize conferences rather than present at them.

With PyCon and EuroPython, and now individual conferences all over Europe and South America starting up under the PyCon [the page is a bit out of date] banner, Python has a truly international community.

Through its various electronic media, both interactive (newsgroups/mailing lists, Wiki, IRC) and with groupings based on geography and technical interests, everyone gets a chance to contribute no matter where in the world they are. The jobs list is also worldwide.

The Python Software Foundation's Advocacy Coordinator (Jeff Rush) certainly has his hands full!

* ObGeek: Outrageous suggestion.

Writerly Advice

Kurt Vonnegut died recently, but one of his legacies is this advice for writers. We could all read it and benefit from it, but I hope it will be of particular use to anyone responding to my PSF blog entry encouraging people to write Python articles for Sys Admin magazine.