Daily Python-URL

Steve Holden: Martin von Löwis Receives 2008 Frank Willison Award ["Martin von Löwis continues to be a tireless worker on behalf of the Python community. He has been a long-term contributor to the Python core, and regularly answers questions on both the python-dev list and the comp.lang.python newsgroup. A PSF director since 2002 he was also the prime mover in transitioning the Python development infrastructure from SourceForge, and has created several Roundup issue trackers for various areas. He chaired the PSF grants committee, which among other achievements kept Jython alive when its future looked uncertain. I could go on, but you get the idea: when something needs doing, he rarely hesitates to step up to the plate."] #

2008-07-22

James Bennett: Django 1.0 alpha released! ["In accordance with the Django 1.0 release roadmap, tonight we've released the first 'alpha' testing version of Django 1.0. This release includes all of the major features due for inclusion in the final Django 1.0, though some lower-priority items are still scheduled to be included before the 1.0 feature freeze, which will occur with the first beta release next month."] #

2008-07-21

Ed Menendez; Launching a High Performance Django Site ["Here's a check list of things you can do to make sure your application can be optimized quickly when you put on your optimization hat. Note, most applications don't need all of this since most applications do not get anywhere near enough traffic to justify even bothering. But if you're lucky enough to need to optimize your Django app, I hope this post can help you."] #

2008-07-20

App Engine Fan: A matter of trust ["... assume that you have built a small tool that you would like to share only with family and friends. How could you prevent other, unauthorized people, to just gain access to your app? One solution to the problem is store a list of permitted users in a list (either hardcoded or in a database). This will work if you know exactly who the selected few are. but is also means that you have to administer the list and keep it up to date. A more generic system would be an invitation based access like gmail originally had, but that would mean one would also need to manage those invitations somehow in the database. The following example shows a middle ground -- a simple technology called HMAC to make sure a particular google account is actually supposed to have access."] #

2008-07-16

Fredrik Johansson: Making division in Python faster ["Python is clever enough to use the Karatsuba algorithm for multiplication of large integers, which gives an O(n1.6) asymptotic time complexity for n-digit multiplication. This is a huge improvement over the O(n2) schoolbook algorithm when multiplying anything larger than a few hundred digits. Unfortunately, division in Python is not so well equipped: Python uses a brute force O(n2) algorithm for quotients of any size. Several algorithms in mpmath perform several multiplications followed by a single large division; at high precision, the final division can take as much time as all the preceding multiplications together. Division is needed much less often than multiplication, but it is needed nonetheless. Newton's method to the rescue."] #

2008-07-15

Frank Wierzbicki: Jython 2.5 Alpha Released! ["On behalf of the Jython development team, I'm pleased to announce that Jython 2.5a0+ is available for download. See the installation instructions. This is the first alpha release of Jython 2.5 and contains many new features. In fact, because we have skipped 2.3 and 2.4, there are too many to even summarize."] #

Fredrik Lundh: Simple Top-Down Parsing in Python ["In the early seventies, Vaughan Pratt published an elegant improvement to recursive-descent in his paper Top-down Operator Precedence. Pratt's algorithm associates semantics with tokens instead of grammar rules, and uses a simple 'binding power' mechanism to handle precedence levels. /.../ In this article, I'll briefly explain how the algorithm works, discuss different ways to implement interpreters and translators with it in Python, and finally use it to implement a parser for Python's expression syntax."] #

2008-07-14

Daniel Ostermeier/Jason Sankey: Using Python Via The New Java 6 Scripting Engine ["Do you ever find yourself writing Java code that interacts with external processes and systems, but wish you could use a scripting language more suited to the task? If you have Java 6 available to you, then you are in luck."] #

2008-07-13

Jacob Kaplan-Moss: Sprinting to the finish ["Django 1.0 is about two months away — time to get cracking! To help get everything done by the deadline, we'll be holding a series of sprints. Over the next six weeks we'll hold sprints in Sausalito, Lawrence, Austin, and Portland, and virtually all over the world."] #

2008-07-06

Jared Kuolt: StaticGenerator for Django Updated (1.3.1) ["Now StaticGenerator leverages Django’s awesome Middleware system to more efficiently create the static files. Just add the Middleware class to settings.py and add a STATIC_GENERATOR_URLS setting /.../"] #

2008-07-04

Atul Varma: Running C and Python Code on The Web ["Last week, Scott Petersen from Adobe gave a talk at Mozilla on a toolchain he’s been creating—soon to be open-sourced—that allows C code to be targeted to the Tamarin virtual machine. /.../ Petersen demonstrated a version of Quake running in a Flash app, as well as a C-based Nintendo emulator running Zelda; both were eminently playable, and included sound effects and music. /.../ Even more impressive, though, is the sheer volume of existing code that can be made to run inside the browser: Petersen showed us the C-compiled versions of Lua, Ruby, Perl, and Python all running on the web in secure Flash sandboxes."] #

2008-07-01

Craig Balding: Guido van Rossum: Google App Engine, Python and Security ["In this interview, cloudsecurity.org talks to Guido van Rossum about Python, Google App Engine and security. Guido is the creator of the Python programming language and more recently, Google App Engine team member. His involvement with the App Engine project was pretty late - the code 'was almost ready for release' when he get involved. The security architect of App Engine was primarily project lead, Kevin Gibbs, supported by the rest of the App Engine crew and the Google Security Team."] #

2008-06-28

Chris Davis: Graphite - Enterprise Scalable Realtime Graphing ["Graphite is a highly scalable real-time graphing system. As a user, you write an application that collects numeric time-series data that you are interested in graphing, and send it to Graphite's processing backend, carbon, which stores the data in Graphite's specialized database. The data can then be visualized through graphite's web interfaces. /.../ ... if you need to graph a lot of different things (like dozens of performance metrics from thousands of servers) and you don't necessarily know the names of those things in advance (who wants to maintain such huge configuration?) then Graphite is for you."] #

2008-06-27

Nick Blundell: Wikidbase 1.0.b1 released. ["After nearly 3 years of development, wikidbase has now reached its first beta release. /.../ The wikidbase concept is based on the view that non-technical users of a database system (i.e. those who are the experts of the nature of the data they handle) should be able to create and evolve their database model over time (i.e. without paying a database expert over and over again to do it). This is particularly relevant to non-profit and charity organisations."] #

2008-06-24

Maurice Ling: The Python Papers: Call for papers, Volume 3 Issue 2 ["We would like to call for papers, articles, opinion pieces and feedback to include in Volume 3, Issue 2 of The Python Papers. We would love to receive articles on Python for beginners and discussions about Python performance. Any article will be gratefully received, of course, so do not let the above list of suggestions deter you from considering an article on another topic."] #

2008-06-22

Alex Holkner: Annotate observed types in a Python program ["Neat script I wrote for a friend to annotate a Python script with the types observed during a run of the program."] #

Jim Baker: Realizing Jython 2.5 ["Jython 2.5 is really, finally, unbelievably coming together. This is the next release of Jython, after last summer's 2.2. In a nutshell, we have completed all new language features using an Antlr parser, except for absolute imports. All bytecode generation work, now using an ASM backend, is done. Of course, there are many outstanding bugs. And Python is not just a core language; we need to support fully the fact that "batteries are included". But let's look at where we are."] #

2008-06-16

Jacob Kaplan-Moss: Save the date ["Mark your calendars: Django 1.0 is coming in early September! We're nearing the home stretch on releasing Django 1.0. We've just published a roadmap and schedule that brings us to a 1.0 release on September 2nd, 2008."] #

Michael Ogawa: Code Swarm ["Visualizing the commit history of the Python scripting language project."] #

David Goodger: PyCon: Plans for PyCon 2009: Dates & Venue ["PyCon 2009 will take place at the Hyatt Regency O'Hare hotel, which has much more meeting space than the Crowne Plaza: a larger main ballroom, and additional ballrooms (for a larger expo hall and a dining hall). There's room in the main ballroom for over 1500 people, all in classroom layout."] #

The Daily Python-URL

2008-07-23