what kind of work do you do

[Erwin S. Andreasen]

>On Sun, 20 Aug 2000 00:58:51 GMT, sp00fD <sp00fD at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>I was just wondering, of the people here that use Python at work, what
>>kind of programming are you doing and what company?

At LASAT Networks (www.lasat.com), part of i-data here in Denmark, we use
Python for the user interface and system logic of an integrated Internet
access device ("Masquerade") running on Linux/MIPS. It can fetch mail, serve
websites, route packets, has ISDN/leased line,etc., and allows the user to
edit every detail of it using a web interface in an extremely user friendly
way.

There are two parts in this -- the components that actually do the work, like
create configuration files for the servers that run on the machine, make sure
they keep running etc., and the user interface which the user interacts with
with a web browser. These two talk together using ILU (a Corba
implementation).

I've written maybe 7-10k lines of Python code at work the last half a year
I've been there (most of it a XML-based new user interface system), there's
something like 100k total. The one thing I'd wish for is better typechecking
-- ILU helps a bit here, forcing use of well-documented interfaces.

At home, I use Python to drive a dynamic (as in: answers by the user change
the way things progress) Internet-based survey system -- see
www.qualifyideas.com. This system used to be written in Perl (and I've done
Perl for 3-4 years before using Python). After just a few months of Python I
was certain never to write another line of Perl (perl -pi -e '...' doesn't
count :) ). I did the Perl->Python in a few weeks -- the new system is more
powerful, much less buggy and much more expandable. Also, somehow it's much
easier to write OO, reusable code in Python than in Perl (or even than in C++
or Java, the former of which I've also written a few hundred thousand lines of
code in).

[It thus saddens me to see the ugly >> syntax appearing in 2.0 -- I'm afraid
more "special" operators will get introduced... =~ for regexp next?]

PS: i-data can always use more Linux/Python/C hackers, should you live in
Denmark near Copenhagen/Bagsvaerd (or even want to move to Denmark :) -- check
the website ;)

-- 
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<erwin at andreasen.com>           Herlev, Denmark       Software Designer
<URL:http://www.andreasen.org/>       <*>                LASAT Networks
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