Having great fun with python since I last wrote - written a magazine catalogue which deals with everything in objects. It's a simple process and with python it's very clear as to what is happening. All I need to do next is to put it a web-front end on it and tidy it up and then it may be ready for release.

Python rocks - it's certainly a nice easy language to pick up. My first foray into it was a small application that helps me record magazine articles and save them away - python certainly does the job here and it makes it easy to write applications quickly. I especially like the way that you don't have to declare variable types - this takes out a lot of the headache, and yet is intuitive and flexible enough to get stuff done.

All I have to do now is think of project number 2.

Hrrm - where is java going?

First I read this< from Ross and also this from RMS, and it makes me think even more about switching to python. Just what exactly are Sun up to and what are their long-term plans? The 'Java trap' is actually a nice way of putting it and drives me further to look into alternatives.

Am thinking about nice projects for python - the first that comes to mind is this one which stores the magazine articles - all I need now is an idea about how to store them - XML or just in plain files? I'm open to suggestions - please feel free to write to adamc@linuxmail.org with your ideas if you have them.

I've not had as much time as I'd like to look into python - however, I've written my obligatory calc script (with no error checking).

Feel free to try it for yourselves (note that advogator doesn't really look after indentation, or I haven't found out how to do it yet). Indentation is key in python.

First impressions are that python is nice and clean. I could do some special stuff with this, given my time commitments now. I'm thinking about writing a little app which keeps tracks of my computer magazine collection and the articles within (I waste loads of time flicking through all the magazines to find an article from Nov 2002). If something comes of this, I'll post it here.

#! /usr/bin/env python import sys

arg1 = raw_input("What is your first number?:") oper = raw_input("What operation: +, -, *, / ?") arg3 = raw_input("What is your second number?:")

num1 = float(arg1) num2 = float(arg3)

if oper == "+": answer = num1+num2 print answer elif oper == "-": answer = num1-num2 print answer elif oper == "/": answer = (num1/num2) print answer elif oper == "x": answer = (num1*num2) print answer

print num1, oper, num2, "=", answer

Am I the first to think about switching from Java to something else, with the latest announcement from Sun that Java will not be open-sourced? Is it the principle of it, or is it just a trend? I don't feel comfortable with something that is controlled by a company who may not have my interests, or the interests of a wider community, but hey, I bought into that when I took java on. I also like the way that Big Blue is trying to get Sun to open Java, but have few contributions themselves (will websphere ever be opened up?)

So, Python beckons - and looks nice too. How does it compare with the multiple widgets system, and which one to chose?