[Edu-sig] Python in the news...

[kirby urner]

On Sun, Dec 12, 2010 at 11:24 AM, Vern Ceder <vceder at gmail.com> wrote:

> Thanks for both versions, Kirby! I'll take the applause wherever/however I
> can get it. ;)
>
>
That's cool.  You've been a good Giles, a role I can also relate too.


> I'm not into COM/Windows much, but the basic example is a neat way to
> illustrate threading... I'll have to remember to steal it, maybe for the
> classes I teach to our 8th graders. ;)
>
>
Yeah, me either until recently.  Good example of a host environment wrapping
an alien "egg" (in this case a Python COM object) and continuing to run its
own process, even while triggering running code in this other language.

I'm beholden to the Medusa metaphor of asynchronous event handling.  A
thread is a lot like a Python generator in that it time shares through next
iterations.  Twisted is what became of her, outside of Zope.



> Speaking of 8th graders, these days I'm also teaching online Python courses
> for middle school kids through Northwestern's Gifted Learrning Links program
> - an intro to Python using Hello World! and (starting in January) an
> intermediate Python class, which will do more with OOP concepts and GUI's.
> The link  is here (the intermediate course isn't up yet, but should be soon)
> -
> http://www.ctd.northwestern.edu/gll/courses/enrichment/winter2011/#Technology
>
>
This is all good.  I've been back in touch with the VPython principal, Bruce
Sherwood, to compare notes.  He used to get guff from Arthur on this list,
yet they found a symbiotic pattern around Numpy.

For those more recently joining us:  Arthur was our friend in the NYC
financial sector who jumped onto Python + VPython in a big way, to develop
his Pygeo projective geometry toolkit.

I'd hoped to see him at a GWU / Pycon, one of Steve Holden's events, but
that's the year my wife needed me home pronto (I was already in DC for a
Bucky Fuller symposium, also at GWU).

As it was, we had a good dinner with David Lansky and his kids, in New York
City itself.  Some kind of ethnic pancake place, upper east side.

Anyway, just reminiscing about some of our players.  The Python community is
pretty stellar, although I'm also blown away by Perl's.

I just haven't met that many Ruby people yet.  I should probably go to some
Rubicons, if that's what they're called.

One of my favorite Java programmers is Gerald de Jong, who pretty much
invented the field of Elastic Interval Geometry.  Here's one of his
Youtubes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6I3utbJ1M8

See springie.com by Tim Tyler for another excellent example of an EIG
application.

These days Gerald is the solo programmer on a multi-user game called
Tetragotchi.  He's amazing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xis6QxneccM (someone filming beta
tetragotchi)

Kirby


PS:  I need to stick a Queue object on the head of my jellyfish (Medusa COM
object).  As FoxPro calls in, yelling "route me a truck", I'll queue the
request, not unlike an httprequest.  Indeed, some might ask "why not use
XML-RPC"?  Well, you'd still have the same dynamic of needing to return a
"job ticket" right away, then have the caller come back for the dry cleaning
another time.  So asynchronous thinking would be involved.




> Cheers,
> Vern
>
>
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