I Think I'm Converting...
...to Python. I used to be so into Perl, but no more.
Those of you who program, or even enjoy comparitive languages as I do, will understand that switching programming languages is a bit of a religious conversion experience. In fact, one fellow recently parsed out which religions fit which languages, and it's quite funny.
Recently, I've been reading both Python and Ruby books, and even toyed with some Rails projects. Obviously there are a lot of similarities between the two—it seems that Matz borrowed (or should I say inherited?) many of the best features from Python. But there's something about Ruby—the overuse of blocks, maybe?—that can make it all a jumble, like when Perl code goes bad. But Python is so orderly... it's so beautiful, it makes my OCD side cry.
Recently, I've helped out with tweaks to a couple Open Source progects written in Python and GTK+, and found it remarkably enjoyable. Amusingly, both are similar programs which do the same thing: monitor a Zenoss server's event status from your systray (see Zapplet and ZenTrayIcon). Heck, Zenoss itself is written in Python and Zope, and has its own little Python shell for direct data access (called 'zendmd').
So now I understand what Randall Monroe (XKCD) was talking about in this cartoon. Simplicity and power go hand-in-hand.
Those of you who program, or even enjoy comparitive languages as I do, will understand that switching programming languages is a bit of a religious conversion experience. In fact, one fellow recently parsed out which religions fit which languages, and it's quite funny.
Recently, I've been reading both Python and Ruby books, and even toyed with some Rails projects. Obviously there are a lot of similarities between the two—it seems that Matz borrowed (or should I say inherited?) many of the best features from Python. But there's something about Ruby—the overuse of blocks, maybe?—that can make it all a jumble, like when Perl code goes bad. But Python is so orderly... it's so beautiful, it makes my OCD side cry.
Recently, I've helped out with tweaks to a couple Open Source progects written in Python and GTK+, and found it remarkably enjoyable. Amusingly, both are similar programs which do the same thing: monitor a Zenoss server's event status from your systray (see Zapplet and ZenTrayIcon). Heck, Zenoss itself is written in Python and Zope, and has its own little Python shell for direct data access (called 'zendmd').
So now I understand what Randall Monroe (XKCD) was talking about in this cartoon. Simplicity and power go hand-in-hand.
