Published in
Apple, Programming, Python, Ruby
Leopard will officially support Ruby & Python bindings in Cocoa which is terrific news. I’m a big fan of interpreted languages when appropriate.
Of course, there are about a dozen other very cool technologies for developers in Leopard that should really make application development, faster, better, and more fun. I’ve gotten a chance to play some with Leopard previews, and the actual User-facing improvements are minimal. But what users will eventually get will be lots of better third-party applications. (via Theocacoa and Michael McCracken)
It’s great to see how much effort is going into not just creating slicker UI’s, but better supporting the people that really make or break an operating environment - developers. Microsoft has had a lot of developer support for quite awhile, and I constantly hear about various .NET meetings/presentations/technologies etc. Apple really kicked it off by releasing XCode for free (no ‘professional versions’ need apply) and then having terrific Developer Documentation and examples.
The Leopard developer page makes some odd claims:
Mac users love to exchange quick messages, have video conferences, and collaborate on each other’s desktops across the network.
um… right, ok. I just love collaborating on your desktop. Anyways, I can’t wait to dive in and start developing on Leopard.
Published in
Gadgets, Mobile, Nokia, Open-Source, Python
porting wxPython and wxWidgets to the Maemo platform. This is very awesome news. Back in the days, I’ve done my fair share of C++ programming. But I have just gotten increasingly tired of dealing with development environments, preprocessing, linking, and portability. I spend half of my development time staring a link lines for missing function references from unknown or incompatible libraries.
Rapid development of tools and applications with interpreted languages like Python or Ruby allows developers to get ideas and useful programs out instead of just giving up halfway. Furthermore, it’s much easier to develop in a non-embedded environment or even on the device itself. This is why the Python for Series 60 phones and other devices has been widely embraced.
Published in
Gadgets, Linux, Mobile, Programming, Python, Technology
There is the old question: “Yeah, but does it run Linux?” which has been applied to many devices over the years (XBox, iPod, iPaq, Juicebox, XBox360, and best of all, a dead badger). It’s so common that I would think device manufacturers can have betting pools on how long it will take for their device to be sporting the Penguin.
The new black of installing linux appears to be: “Yeah, but does it run Python?”
To see a small offering of devices that now offer a Python interpreter, check out
Python for mobile devices. These include:
The most suprising, to me, was the fact that apparently Microsoft Windows not supports scripting via Python! The Microsoft Python Script Repository offers instructions, scripts, and resources. O’Reilly’s Python Cookbook also has a number of scripts for setting the startup items, starting and stopping services, and controlling Outlook.
Published in
Applescript, Programming, Python
Sometimes people put together some useful, if perhaps odd, guides.
Applescript for Python Programmers is a set of tables mapping Python syntax, functions, and interfaces to the equivalent Applescript. Actually pretty nice for understanding both languages.
Are there others out there like this? Particularly I would think the following would be particularly useful:
- C++ < -> Obj-C
- Javascript < -> PHP < -> Perl
- HTML < -> XML/XSLT
My name is 
