Highly biased highlights from the O'Reilly conference: Tom Christiansen joins Guido and a few other Pythonistas for beer and random trivia (does || or && bind tighter in C?). A jovial time was had by all, and nothing caught on fire. There were more folks looking for Python programmers than Python programmers looking for a job! The future's so bright, we gotta wear shades. eGroups CTO Scott Hassan says that they pump 30 million emails a day with Python without breaking a sweat, and expect to scale up to 200-300 million personalized emails per day. Big numbers for a 'slow' language! When Adam Feuer was asked whether he was having fun, he replied: "I'm having a blast -- I've been using Python for six months, and I feel like I'm having an affair with the language!" http://www.linuxslides.com/ http://www.vwtapes.com/cgi-local/vwcart.pl?page=/oreilly/99/python.html Having the old fogies out of the way spurred activity on the newsgroup: One old fogie remained: Fredrik Lundh "parses arbitrary python expressions" he doesn't trust http://x32.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=506369193 and Bernhard Herzog shows how to sneak in statements http://x29.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=506541895 Arpad Kiss provides one minimal example of how COM can be useful by retrieving document properties into a Py- thon process http://x46.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=508285498 David Niergarth "unmangles" a Win* "long name", but only with difficulty. No better solutions appear http://x27.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=510820469 Colin J Williams describes Hans Nowak's page of "snippets" as "clean and well-organized" http://www.hvision.nl/~ivnowa/snippets/ Karl Putland retrieves a collection through COM http://x24.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=505637404 Charles G Waldman carefully illuminates several alternative ways to shuffle cards http://x38.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=513914923 Nihilist Tim Peters, once again misremembering which is the "dismal science", counters that "even the best possible al- gorithm ... is terrible" http://x37.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=514317775 Other poetry from the same thread: Mersenne Twister, tears- in-the-rain, Chi-squares, /dev/random People seem to argue a lot about nothing, specifically: The necessesity of pass statements in empty blocks, and whether returning None is a trap. Some of the more useful posts: http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=516955938 http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=518128657 More usefully, some etymological truths are laid bare, specifically regarding nautical techniques thanks to Fredrik Henbjork the fisherman http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=515457138 and Tim Peters and Kent Polk argue about who the real mathematical geniuses are http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=518132556 In a blast from the past, what used to be Ted Nelson's Xanadu is bared to all, and some might be surprised to know what languages it's written in: http://www.udanax.com/ ========================================================================= Everything you want is probably one or two clicks away in these pages: Python.org's Python Language Website is the center of Pythonia http://www.python.org Much of Python's real work takes place on Special-Interest Group mailing lists http://www.python.org/sigs/ Python Consortium emerges as an independent nexus of activity http://www.python.org/consortium Python To-Do List anticipates some of Python's future direction http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/todo.py Python Journal is at work on its second issue http://www.pythonjournal.com Links2Go is a new semi-automated link collection; it's impressive what AI can generate http://www.links2go.com/search?search=python Archive probing trick of the trade: http://www.dejanews.com/dnquery.xp?QRY=&DBS=2&ST=PS&defaultOp=AND&LNG=ALL&format=threaded&showsort=date&maxhits=100&groups=comp.lang.python Previous - (U)se the (R)esource, (L)uke! - messages are listed here: http://purl.org/thecliff/python/url.html or http://www.dejanews.com/dnquery.xp?QRY=~g%20comp.lang.python%20Python-URL%21 Suggestions/corrections for next week's posting are always welcome. http://www.egroups.com/list/python-url-leads/ To receive a new issue of this posting in e-mail each Monday morning, ask <claird@neosoft.com> to subscribe. -- The Python-URL! Team-- == Cameron Laird http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html claird@NeoSoft.com +1 281 996 8546 FAX -- ----------- comp.lang.python.announce (moderated) ---------- Article Submission Address: python-announce@python.org Python Language Home Page: http://www.python.org/ Python Quick Help Index: http://www.python.org/Help.html ------------------------------------------------------------