[Edu-sig] Contagious Fun

[Dethe Elza]

on 01/6/11 10:48 PM, Jason Cunliffe at jasonic@panix.com wrote:

> Thanks burning mad tiger scientist ...

<grin> Yes, my *other* business is called Living Code, so my wife jokes
about Burning Code and Living Tigers.

> Intense deadlines here this week. So nothing new from me only means I am a
> little afraid to connect to the ZWiki. It's contagious and experience
> teahces me that once I get started might not be able to stop ;-)

I hear that.  The whole Contagious Fun thing is sometimes a tempting way to
avoid real work, but I must resist.  Until I figure out how to make it my
real work, that is.  I'm already halfway there -- working in Zope now
instead of Java Servlets!

> Along with the backstory of scripting in multimedia APIs, I note that along
> with Python as best-kept-secrets | secret weapon for the Adobe apps
> [Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects ->+ big thanks to Ludger], there are
> the emerging XML Javascript extension APIs:

I knew JavaScript was in there, and of course XML is everywhere.  It's too
bad everyone's standardizing on JavaScript, it's such a moped (a moped
combines all the problems of a motorcycle and a bicycle, with none of the
benefits of either, see EJB).  Python would have been a much better
solution, of course.  What I'd really like to see is more programs with
XML-RPC interfaces, then we can wire them together from Python easily.  As
far as I know, JavaScript is one of the few languages which doesn't have
XML-RPC yet (probably because it has no native networking, among its many
limitations).

What I find encouraging is how many commercial products are including python
APIs: Poser is one of my top two favorite commercial programs (Bryce is the
other).  Heck, if I'd had a computer with Poser and Bryce when I was a
teenager, I'd have gotten in a lot less trouble %-)

Encouraging stuff, but what to work on first?

--Dethe

-- 

Dethe Elza 
Chief Mad Scientist
Burning Tiger Technologies