Iron Age

The ongoing Python adventure continues.  I’m a little late to the party but I’ve installed IronPython.  I’ve been through the all important tyre-kicking.  The download includes a very useful tutorial that covers quite a bit of ground.  Well worth a look – especially if you need scripting support in your application.

Fun with frameworks

I’ve spent a little time recently revisiting Django. I installed PostgreSQL, pgAdmin and Pida on Ubuntu to follow the excellent tutorial. I’m even more impressed with Django the second time around. Creating the database from the model is an approach that I find more comfortable than the reverse of creating the model from the database (like Rails.) And Pida is a very good tool. The command line (directly available at the bottom of the IDE) really helps you to develop in Python, and therefore Django, very quickly. If you haven’t already looked at Django, you should. Even if it’s just for the built-in admin functionality.

Packaging

With a freshly installed copy of Edgy Eft, Synaptic Package Manager (or apt-get if you prefer the command line) is where I’ve been hanging out. The ability to search for packages and add them (automatically adding dependencies) is excellent. It means I can add the tools I need to my Ubuntu installation and be productive. I’ve got Windows Vista RC1 and Ubuntu installed under Parallels.  I’m spending a lot more time using Ubuntu and it feels more useful.

On the edge

I’ve installed the Edgy Eft release of Ubuntu under Parallels. There’s a couple of useful tips in this article (the article refers to the Dapper Drake release, but I found no issues with using it for Edgy Eft) – particularly to get the screen resolution right.  As expected, the installation was easy and with only 376Mb of memory assigned, it runs well.

Half a million dollars

According to ohloh, that’s what it would cost to develop nspectre from scratch.  Ohloh provides some interesting analysis of opensource projects.  Although I’m not sure quite how it’s figured that 73% of the code is HTML.  I wonder if it’s the XML comments.

Buena vista?

I’ve been running Windows Vista in the excellent Parallels. I don’t have enough virtual power for the Aero interface (maybe in a new release of Parallels), but apart from that it runs well. I’m underwhelmed by Vista. I’m not sure why. There are a couple of possibilities:

• I’ve been waiting and reading about it for such a long time, so nothing seems new or exciting.
• It doesn’t do anything I can’t already do in Tiger or most Linux distros

Or it could be that I’ve not spent enough time with it. In some ways I’d be happier if I’d had a stronger reaction. I don’t love it, but I certainly don’t hate it. The fact that Visual Studio 2003 isn’t supported is a notable negative – but, overall, it’s OK. Right now, it feels like a missed opportunity. I’m not excited.