[Twisted-Python] We have Apple's ear
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Not really . . . but _I_ do, and you have my ear. If you could ask Apple to change stuff which would make your life easier as a Python developer, what would you ask? Sometime in the next 2 weeks I'm going to be talking directly to an Apple sales engineer (or equivalent) about getting my needs met. Apple wants my organization to hurry and port our product to the Mac, and the person I'll be talking to will be taking requests for ways they can help us do that. The product is being built on a foundation of pyopenssl, cog, pybsddb, pycrypto, and twisted. Are any of these less than perfect on a Mac? Are there specific ways Apple can help make this situation better? I'll take the best suggestions and bring them to light when I have my conversation. Thanks for any help! __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com
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On Tuesday, Jan 28, 2003, at 18:15 America/New_York, Cory Dodt wrote:
You shouldn't have any real problems.. If you need help, let me know. SSL support in socket doesn't come with the 2.2 that ships with OS X 10.2, but it can be easily replaced with one that does (http://radio.weblogs.com/0100490/2002/10/16.html) pycrypto and twisted work just fine in my experience, I haven't worked with cog or pybsddb yet, but I would imagine they both work perfectly fine as well.
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/e1554622707bedd9202884900430b838.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On Tue, 28 Jan 2003 15:15:00 -0800 (PST), Cory Dodt <corydodt@yahoo.com> wrote:
Not really . . . but _I_ do, and you have my ear.
This is great. As those who subscribe to my personal list no doubt know, I have some frustration with apple, and some of this is due to the difficulty I've had trying to get in contact with people "on the inside" through traditional channels. Hopefully your sales contact will be a bit more forthcoming than support@apple.com! :-)
If you could ask Apple to change stuff which would make your life easier as a Python developer, what would you ask?
Purely as a Python software developer, Bob Ippolito's comments are spot-on. I don't know why they've been missing this, since it seems the whole python/mac community feels this way. For emphasis, I will repeat the most salient points here: On Tue, 28 Jan 2003 19:05:45 -0500, Bob Ippolito <bob@redivi.com> wrote:
I'd like to add to this that Python support included in Apple's dist of ProjectBuilder, even if it were something as trivial as syntax highlighting, would really be a nice thing. Back to your comments:
Twisted? Less than perfect? Of COURSE not! Unless of course imperfection means I can milk this opportunity for HUGE CASH PAYOFFS, in which case yes, it's full of problems, I'll just, ahem, come up with some. Seriously, the biggest problem with Twisted on the mac is that we're still very much living in a Unix mindset, and we have no platform-idiomatic tools for either development or deploying applications on OS X. I'm upset that I haven't had enough time to work on Twisted as a platform (porting an application to a platform like OS X ought to be a complete no-brainer, but it clearly isn't!), and if Apple were willing to throw some resources my way I might build the Cocoa front-end to COIL before rewriting the web one. I'd sure like to have an excuse, especially a paid excuse, to write apps using IB. This is really more on the level of making my life more fun, and *Apple's* life "easier". I think that an integrated, GUI-friendly Twisted dist on MacOS would be an awesome server-side compliment to Safari, possibly a killer app, but that opinion may not be shared by Apple's higher-ups; this is a pipe dream. (Folks from other platforms: to be clear, I'm not really interested in including *exclusive* functionality for the mac, but I wouldn't mind building it *enhanced* for the mac and building TTW interfaces after the fact.)
I'll take the best suggestions and bring them to light when I have my conversation. Thanks for any help!
I hope that this is relevant :-).
Just a list of things I plan to ask for anyway (in no particular order):
It's expensive to develop apps for the mac, because it's expensive to own and maintain a mac. I think that almost all the Twisted developers could use some support in these areas. The most deserving developers in this regard are Donovan Preston and Bob Ippolito, both Mac users who are already developing Twisted apps on that platform. However, they may be among those requiring the least assistance ;-)
* hardware
I've got a way-too-damn-expensive Power Macintosh that I haven't had the opportunity to use for much MacOS stuff because it's running Linux most of the time (due to aforementioned lacks in the Apple dev. env.). Obviously, more hardware from Apple is better! I would especially like a 14-inch powerbook to replace my x86 laptop. However, even given my existing Apple hardware, I'm unlikely to spend any of my own time volunteering to enhance Apple's operating system with Twisted if I have to keep shelling out $129.95 every few months for the privilege. I would really appreciate a no-cost license to Apple's software offerings, or at least enough of them to do GUI application development with Twisted.
* money
Since I'm not paying rent on a credit card yet :-), either this or hardware might convince me to spend some time on a Mac-specific project to enhance Twisted. Honestly, for your application, I doubt that this is a priority. It is something I've thought Apple might be interested in for a while, but I haven't had the cognitive bandwidth to get enough accomplished to attract Apple's attention about it.
As far as I know, we really do have relatively few of these. As Mr. Ippolito said, the system works fine as is and several people use their Macs to write Twisted code.
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/b932b1e5a3e8299878e579f51f49b84a.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On Wednesday, Jan 29, 2003, at 13:38 America/New_York, Glyph Lefkowitz wrote:
bbum did that last month. I haven't tried it personally (I'm a VIM user), but I imagine it works :) http://radio.weblogs.com/0100490/2002/12/20.html I'd imagine if the Python community had more of an in w/ the Cupertino crowd this could easily make it into the next developer tools update.
FYI, installing pyobjc adds a Python template for developing GUI pyobjc apps. You don't need to do anything special to use nibs with pyobjc, works just like it does with Cocoa or AppleScript. I've played around with outlets and such with no problems, YMMV of course. It may be of some interest that Apple's WebObjects offering does something kinda similar [client-side gui/web app hybrids.. mostly for database apps], but only in java using a very CoreFoundation-like API... so it's like programming in ObjC, only slower. I don't have time to play with WebObjects at all, but I get legitimate copies whenever a new release comes out (two sitting in a drawer, and counting). If anyone wants to borrow the books or something to see if there's any good ideas worth borrowing just let me know.
<evangelism> A few months is more like 18-24.. that's like a pack of manhattan cigarettes a month, at most. It's pretty affordable. If you're an ADC Select ($500/yr) or Premier ($3500/yr) member then license for all of their operating systems is included along with the betas and the ability to report bugs that they'll actually read.. among other things. One of the nice things you get with a Premier subscription is 10 hardware discounts a year, we've saved more than $3500 (6 purchases so far) on our overpriced computer equipment this year.. A hardware discount is usually about 20% off anything they sell (even accessories, like iPods). One hardware discount counts for one desktop or laptop with whatever accessories.. so you can turn out pretty well. </evangelism> In any case, if one wants to deploy a Mac OS X 10.2+ application developed solely in python (using the installed python 2.2 runtime to minimize the distribution size), with or without Twisted, everything is already out there to do it.. you just have to know where to look and/or who to ask for the relevant information. As a side note, I mentioned Twisted and my hackish method for writing the cocoa demo on the pyobjc list a week or two ago in response to a query about asyncore. The whole issue sparked some interest with the core developers and they've been actively working on a better way of doing it than polling. Jack Jansen just recently started working on a module that intelligently manages the Python GIL (Global Interpreter Lock) so that the ObjC and Python threads will play together efficiently... so perhaps in a few weeks, when the dust settles in my world and pyobjc is a bit more stable, I'll be able to develop a Cocoa reactor (which will be rather easy pretty soon) and some more advanced examples. -bob
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/b932b1e5a3e8299878e579f51f49b84a.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On Tuesday, Jan 28, 2003, at 18:15 America/New_York, Cory Dodt wrote:
You shouldn't have any real problems.. If you need help, let me know. SSL support in socket doesn't come with the 2.2 that ships with OS X 10.2, but it can be easily replaced with one that does (http://radio.weblogs.com/0100490/2002/10/16.html) pycrypto and twisted work just fine in my experience, I haven't worked with cog or pybsddb yet, but I would imagine they both work perfectly fine as well.
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/e1554622707bedd9202884900430b838.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On Tue, 28 Jan 2003 15:15:00 -0800 (PST), Cory Dodt <corydodt@yahoo.com> wrote:
Not really . . . but _I_ do, and you have my ear.
This is great. As those who subscribe to my personal list no doubt know, I have some frustration with apple, and some of this is due to the difficulty I've had trying to get in contact with people "on the inside" through traditional channels. Hopefully your sales contact will be a bit more forthcoming than support@apple.com! :-)
If you could ask Apple to change stuff which would make your life easier as a Python developer, what would you ask?
Purely as a Python software developer, Bob Ippolito's comments are spot-on. I don't know why they've been missing this, since it seems the whole python/mac community feels this way. For emphasis, I will repeat the most salient points here: On Tue, 28 Jan 2003 19:05:45 -0500, Bob Ippolito <bob@redivi.com> wrote:
I'd like to add to this that Python support included in Apple's dist of ProjectBuilder, even if it were something as trivial as syntax highlighting, would really be a nice thing. Back to your comments:
Twisted? Less than perfect? Of COURSE not! Unless of course imperfection means I can milk this opportunity for HUGE CASH PAYOFFS, in which case yes, it's full of problems, I'll just, ahem, come up with some. Seriously, the biggest problem with Twisted on the mac is that we're still very much living in a Unix mindset, and we have no platform-idiomatic tools for either development or deploying applications on OS X. I'm upset that I haven't had enough time to work on Twisted as a platform (porting an application to a platform like OS X ought to be a complete no-brainer, but it clearly isn't!), and if Apple were willing to throw some resources my way I might build the Cocoa front-end to COIL before rewriting the web one. I'd sure like to have an excuse, especially a paid excuse, to write apps using IB. This is really more on the level of making my life more fun, and *Apple's* life "easier". I think that an integrated, GUI-friendly Twisted dist on MacOS would be an awesome server-side compliment to Safari, possibly a killer app, but that opinion may not be shared by Apple's higher-ups; this is a pipe dream. (Folks from other platforms: to be clear, I'm not really interested in including *exclusive* functionality for the mac, but I wouldn't mind building it *enhanced* for the mac and building TTW interfaces after the fact.)
I'll take the best suggestions and bring them to light when I have my conversation. Thanks for any help!
I hope that this is relevant :-).
Just a list of things I plan to ask for anyway (in no particular order):
It's expensive to develop apps for the mac, because it's expensive to own and maintain a mac. I think that almost all the Twisted developers could use some support in these areas. The most deserving developers in this regard are Donovan Preston and Bob Ippolito, both Mac users who are already developing Twisted apps on that platform. However, they may be among those requiring the least assistance ;-)
* hardware
I've got a way-too-damn-expensive Power Macintosh that I haven't had the opportunity to use for much MacOS stuff because it's running Linux most of the time (due to aforementioned lacks in the Apple dev. env.). Obviously, more hardware from Apple is better! I would especially like a 14-inch powerbook to replace my x86 laptop. However, even given my existing Apple hardware, I'm unlikely to spend any of my own time volunteering to enhance Apple's operating system with Twisted if I have to keep shelling out $129.95 every few months for the privilege. I would really appreciate a no-cost license to Apple's software offerings, or at least enough of them to do GUI application development with Twisted.
* money
Since I'm not paying rent on a credit card yet :-), either this or hardware might convince me to spend some time on a Mac-specific project to enhance Twisted. Honestly, for your application, I doubt that this is a priority. It is something I've thought Apple might be interested in for a while, but I haven't had the cognitive bandwidth to get enough accomplished to attract Apple's attention about it.
As far as I know, we really do have relatively few of these. As Mr. Ippolito said, the system works fine as is and several people use their Macs to write Twisted code.
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/b932b1e5a3e8299878e579f51f49b84a.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On Wednesday, Jan 29, 2003, at 13:38 America/New_York, Glyph Lefkowitz wrote:
bbum did that last month. I haven't tried it personally (I'm a VIM user), but I imagine it works :) http://radio.weblogs.com/0100490/2002/12/20.html I'd imagine if the Python community had more of an in w/ the Cupertino crowd this could easily make it into the next developer tools update.
FYI, installing pyobjc adds a Python template for developing GUI pyobjc apps. You don't need to do anything special to use nibs with pyobjc, works just like it does with Cocoa or AppleScript. I've played around with outlets and such with no problems, YMMV of course. It may be of some interest that Apple's WebObjects offering does something kinda similar [client-side gui/web app hybrids.. mostly for database apps], but only in java using a very CoreFoundation-like API... so it's like programming in ObjC, only slower. I don't have time to play with WebObjects at all, but I get legitimate copies whenever a new release comes out (two sitting in a drawer, and counting). If anyone wants to borrow the books or something to see if there's any good ideas worth borrowing just let me know.
<evangelism> A few months is more like 18-24.. that's like a pack of manhattan cigarettes a month, at most. It's pretty affordable. If you're an ADC Select ($500/yr) or Premier ($3500/yr) member then license for all of their operating systems is included along with the betas and the ability to report bugs that they'll actually read.. among other things. One of the nice things you get with a Premier subscription is 10 hardware discounts a year, we've saved more than $3500 (6 purchases so far) on our overpriced computer equipment this year.. A hardware discount is usually about 20% off anything they sell (even accessories, like iPods). One hardware discount counts for one desktop or laptop with whatever accessories.. so you can turn out pretty well. </evangelism> In any case, if one wants to deploy a Mac OS X 10.2+ application developed solely in python (using the installed python 2.2 runtime to minimize the distribution size), with or without Twisted, everything is already out there to do it.. you just have to know where to look and/or who to ask for the relevant information. As a side note, I mentioned Twisted and my hackish method for writing the cocoa demo on the pyobjc list a week or two ago in response to a query about asyncore. The whole issue sparked some interest with the core developers and they've been actively working on a better way of doing it than polling. Jack Jansen just recently started working on a module that intelligently manages the Python GIL (Global Interpreter Lock) so that the ObjC and Python threads will play together efficiently... so perhaps in a few weeks, when the dust settles in my world and pyobjc is a bit more stable, I'll be able to develop a Cocoa reactor (which will be rather easy pretty soon) and some more advanced examples. -bob
participants (3)
-
Bob Ippolito
-
Cory Dodt
-
Glyph Lefkowitz