Reply to: Java Platform Any Good?

[eek]

Now to figure out the database...which might end up being one of these NoSQL jobs as the data is highly conceptual with almost everything having attributes and yet also being located somewhere is a user-defined hierarchy. fun.

.

Been there done that. It's a multi tier hierarchy you will need then. One to store their user defined bits and another to contain the actual data.

No SQL doesn't really solve the user defined problem. You still (somehow) need to index the fields they navigate through

[NickFitz]

Learn Python The Hard Way

Ah, the inimitable Zed Shaw

He's got a good list of Python resources at his needs-to-be-URL-shortened-to-get-past-the-naughty-words-filter site Programming, Mother****er: Become a Programmer, Mother****er

[Contreras]

Dive into Python is good, although it hasn't been updated since author Mark Pilgrim suddenly removed himself and all his works from the net the other year. Other than that there's the usual selection of stuff from O'Reilly, such as Python Cookbook (good, though I've got the 2nd edition and the 3rd is out) and Head First Python (never read it, mixed reviews on Amazon).

There's also a lot of good tutorials and blogs a Google away; Python folk seem to enjoy sharing their knowledge online. And the Python docs are thorough and informative in my experience.

I'll second that for Dive into Python if you already know 'programming'. It helped me get up to speed FAST (like less than a day) to the point where I can read/debug/hack other people's code and even do a fair job of writing my own. Other books that were recommended to me but I haven't read were O'Reilly Learning Python (a weighty tome) and Learn Python The Hard Way. I'd like to work through LPTHW at some point if can find the time.

[lilelvis2000]

Hmmm...this is a bit of a thread hijack..

But it does seem that Apress have released a new 'Pro' book about Django.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pro-Django-2...eywords=django

Though I always tend to just Google around and sites like stackoverflow et al. are very handy. Often no real need to buy a book.

[NickFitz]

P.S. ON OS X upgrading to Mavericks broke my 1.5 installation; I haven't got around to looking at that yet.

OS X upgrades have the unfortunate habit of replacing the existing site-packages folder with an empty one due to it being under /Library/{blah/blah}, which is (strictly speaking) reserved for the system, even though it's also the place Python packages get installed

The best thing to do is to install virtualenv and virtualenv-wrapper. That way, after an upgrade your stuff will still be there. It also makes it easy to have different configurations for different projects, which is useful if they have dependencies on different versions of the same package.

Any recommendations on good books on Python itself?

Dive into Python is good, although it hasn't been updated since author Mark Pilgrim suddenly removed himself and all his works from the net the other year. Other than that there's the usual selection of stuff from O'Reilly, such as Python Cookbook (good, though I've got the 2nd edition and the 3rd is out) and Head First Python (never read it, mixed reviews on Amazon).

There's also a lot of good tutorials and blogs a Google away; Python folk seem to enjoy sharing their knowledge online. And the Python docs are thorough and informative in my experience.

[Sysman]

The Django docs are a model of what documentation ought to be, with both tutorials and reference materials: https://docs.djangoproject.com

Yes the Django docs are very good. A couple of things to note:

• I made the mistake of trying to configure Apache for Django as the first step (before I read the documentation). You really don't need to go through this to get started because Django has its own built in webserver which you can run from your project directory. This means you can get stuck into the tutorials right away.
• The CentOS package is as expected somewhat down-revision - the unfortunate thing here is that the tutorials are incomplete. Get 1.5 (stable) or 1.6 (bleeding edge) for more complete and up to date tutorials. Update: I see that 1.6 was released on 6th November.
• The Ubuntu package (? well the one that comes with Linux Mint anyway) is stuck at 1.3, woefully out of date - do yourself a favour and don't go there

P.S. ON OS X upgrading to Mavericks broke my 1.5 installation; I haven't got around to looking at that yet.

There's also the Django Book: though it's very outdated now, covering 1.0 while the project is up to 1.6, it can still be useful for some of the basics. The Django Book

I thought it might be too much out of date but I'll have a look.

Any recommendations on good books on Python itself?

[lilelvis2000]

Thanks guys a few things for me to look into. Gots to fill them in next week with recommendations.
I'd had .Net, Mono, Java on the short list and will check out this Django tool.

Now to figure out the database...which might end up being one of these NoSQL jobs as the data is highly conceptual with almost everything having attributes and yet also being located somewhere is a user-defined hierarchy. fun.

As well thinking that we may need a Java Applet on the UI to present a spreadsheet view to the user -(they are management accountant types).

Still so long to go on this product.

[NickFitz]

Do you have any recommendations for books / training resources for Django and Python?

The Django docs are a model of what documentation ought to be, with both tutorials and reference materials: https://docs.djangoproject.com

There's also the Django Book: though it's very outdated now, covering 1.0 while the project is up to 1.6, it can still be useful for some of the basics. The Django Book

[CheeseSlice]

C#/.NET is superior to Java in every way.

There you have it people, it has been confirmed.
There is no need for any further discussion on the matter, case closed!

[russell]

C#/.NET is superior to Java in every way.

[Sysman]

Django is extremely good, and it means you/the developers get to work in Python, which is much better than working with PHP or Java.

Do you have any recommendations for books / training resources for Django and Python?

[Sysman]

Nothing crazy about the indentation. Python uses indentation to delimit blocks. This is no stranger than using some arbitrary set of brackets that happened to be unused for any other purpose and were available on the keyboard of a terminal in common use in the early 1970s to delimit blocks.

The one place Python indentation catches me out at the moment is when copying and pasting bits of code off web sites.

Being lumbered with Swiss keyboard layouts especially the abortion created by Apple



Go on, guess where [ , ], {, } are...

Hint: backslash is alt-shift-7

I am only too happy to use indentation rather than curly or square brackets (oops Python fails that one with the square brackets).

If Kernighan and Ritchie were creating C (whose syntax Java and many other languages that copy it, such as C#, use) today, they might well use any of the many characters available in Unicode to delimit blocks. I quite like the idea of 🚀 and 🐔, or - if arbitrarily chosen delimiters must have some cultural association - ☞ and ☜.

US layout keyboards are a handy accessory when dealing with their legacy.

[CheeseSlice]

Are you saying the old days when your multi-tier application called stored procedures which returned only the data you wanted was better than the current approach.

Perish the thought......

Its not just that, there has to be some balance between the two. Unfortunately the balance doesn't often happen with in-house applications, or in the early days of 'new' commercial products (I hope the OP is listening). Its either all at the data tier or all in the application. I still see apps that have been written by a bunch of SQL developers who do everything on the data tier which then don't scale, not to mention many other annoyances.

[VectraMan]

Nothing crazy about the indentation. Python uses indentation to delimit blocks. This is no stranger than using some arbitrary set of brackets that happened to be unused for any other purpose and were available on the keyboard of a terminal in common use in the early 1970s to delimit blocks.

If Kernighan and Ritchie were creating C (whose syntax Java and many other languages that copy it, such as C#, use) today, they might well use any of the many characters available in Unicode to delimit blocks. I quite like the idea of 🚀 and 🐔, or - if arbitrarily chosen delimiters must have some cultural association - ☞ and ☜.

I always think you can divide developers in two: those that could do algebra at school and so are comfortable with brackets and symbols, and those that couldn't and were probably better at English Lit. The former end up doing C++/Java/C#/Javascript and the latter end up using abominable languages with lots of redundant space and silly things like End If as two words, whilst insisting that they're "easier" and "faster to develop with".

The particular problem with python is when you mix tabs and spaces. Which means you need a special editor, or set up your editor properly, which partly defeats the object of a scripting language: being able to easily edit it.

[eek]

Too often I find the developers have used noddy app tier routines that pull 'all' rows out of a number of DB tables or a web service and then manipulate it locally. That's fine on their dev environment where they have a small amount of sample data, but not with real volumes of data.

Are you saying the old days when your multi-tier application called stored procedures which returned only the data you wanted was better than the current approach.

Perish the thought......