3. Python

The subject of an O'Reilly book (which is almost always a good sign), Python is an object-oriented scripting language that runs on nearly as many platforms as Perl. It was originally developed as a component of the Amoeba operating system.

Python may arguably be the best of the scripting languages; it has the advantages that:

• The author has designed other scripting languages before ( ABC), thus already having experience with what ideas may be good, and what ideas may be bad (Perl and TCL are their authors' first scripting languages);

• Python is not the result of a "design by committee" exercise (C++, Ada, FORTRAN, C suffer drastically from this);

• Python does not have a predecessor with which it needs to be backwards compatible (as is the case with successive Perl versions), meaning that no compromises were necessary.

• Python "steals" many of the best features from a variety of other languages, having the flavor of a dynamic LISP -like language with a relatively Algol -like syntax (not so many parentheses), associative arrays (ala awk), a nice system for building parsable regular expressions (ala Perl), along with an object system (that I can't so readily corner). It can readily parse itself (thereby combining some of the best bits of Perl, TCL and Scheme), and produces platform-independent bytecode (not unlike Java). For applications requiring high performance, you can even compile in tuned C or C++ libraries.

  Modula-3 is the origin of a number of Python features.

• Amazon present Programming Python (Nutshell Handbook); Mark Lutz; Paperback

• Amazon present Internet Programming With Python ; Aaron Watters, et al; Paperback

• Free Software for ISBN (Bookland EAN-13) Bar Codes (Python --> EPS)

• The ZOPE (Z Object Publishing Environment) is a web-oriented application framework that uses Python pervasively throughout. Database support via ZODB.

• Python Compared to Other Languages

• PMZ - Poor Man's ZOPE

  Allows embedding Python code inside HTML documents. (hosted at SourceForge )

• Stackless Python

  A Python implementation that uses minimal amounts of C stack. This permits massive recursion, and provides support for Scheme-like continuations.

• Python for Lisp Programmers

  Peter Norvig, of PAIP fame, a notable CL programmer, essays a comparison of Python with Common Lisp.

  Basically, Python can be seen as a dialect of Lisp with "traditional" syntax, but maintaining most of Lisp's essential features (except macros ).

  It could be an interesting idea to build a parser to transform Python code into Common Lisp.

• Continuations Made Simple and Illustrated

  Continuations are most closely associated with Scheme, but this paper illustrates them from a Pythonesque perspective.

• Instant Hacking

  Learn how to program with Python

• Beginner Python Tutorials

• Fnorb - Python ORB

• A Python/Perl phrasebook

• Soth: Distributed Processing Environment

  Simply put, Soth server runs on master node machine and Soth clients run on slave machines across the network. If you give the list of machine running as clients and list of Python-scripted jobs to Soth, it will connect the clients and send the jobs in a order and keep doing it till all the jobs are done.

• web2ldap

  A full-featured LDAPv2+ client written in Python designed to run as web gateway.

• Psyco

  Python Specializing Compiler, offering the possibility of massive speedups for Python code...

• Python Tutorial for the Already Programmer

• PyChecker

  A tool that searches for bugs in Python code, somewhat corresponding to C tools like Lint or lclint.

  It warns about things like variables that are unused or misused, and function/method calls that pass the wrong number of parameters.

• PyZine - a Python Journal

• Python Journal

• Pyro - A somewhat CORBA -like "distributed object" system for Python.

• bridgekeeper - Perl -to- Python source code translator.

• PythonCard - GUI Construction Kit using wxWindows

• There is a PalmOS port

• Multimethod.py

• Python MSS

  MSS is a simple web service written in Python that sits on a port and listens for an HTTP GET or POST request. These requests are in the form of standard web form GET/POST queries. After receiving a request, it then looks for the appropriate python service code and calls it.

• I wrote a chapter on the use of Python for SOAP and XML-RPC in the book Professional Open Source Web Services.

• PyPy

  The PyPy project aims at producing a simple runtime-system for the Python language. We want to express the basic abstractions within the Python Language itself. We later want to have a minimal core which is not written in Python and doesn't need CPython anymore.

• Lython

  Lython is a new lisp front-end for the Python programming language. It resembles Common Lisp and compiles directly to Python bytecodes and transparently integrates with existing Python code and libraries.

• Prothon

  A classless prototype-based programming language a la Self with the sensibilities of Python.

• Strong Versus Weak Typing

  An essay by the creator of Python on the robustness of systems built using dynamic typing versus those built using static typing.

• CLPython

  An implementation of Python that runs atop Common Lisp, allowing one to access Lisp libraries from Python code, and vice-versa.