snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Rick Grehan provides an in-depth comparison of six Python Web frameworks, including CubicWeb, Django, Pyramid, Web.py, Web2py, and Zope 2. 'No matter what your needs or leanings as a Python developer might be, one of these frameworks promises to be a good fit,' Grehan writes. 'As usual, the choice is highly subjective. You will find zealots for each product, and every zealot is able to present rational reasons why their chosen framework is superior.'"

An anonymous reader writes "New York Times has reported that Internet activist Aaron Swartz has been indicted for stealing more than 4 million documents from JSTOR." The indictment contains an exciting tale featuring trespassing, MAC address forgery, a Python script or two, and even computers hidden under a cardboard box. El Reg has a decent summary. Demand Progress has released an official response claiming the charges are trumped up nonsense.

ndogg writes "The open source Python projects Pantyshot and Upskirt have caused quite a stir within the Python community, and catalyzed the leaving of one of their developers (a woman whose native language is not English.) The original developer, Frank Smit, has renamed Pantyshot to Misaka, but that too has suspect etymology, as Violet Blue points out."

gregg writes "Monty Python members have reunited to voice a 3D animated film based on the memoirs of the late Graham Chapman. A Liar's Autobiography will feature recordings that Chapman made of his book before his death in 1989. From the article: '[Terry] Jones joked he had "no idea" until recently that Chapman was dead and "thought he was just being lazy". "However, I am now delighted to find myself working with him again on this exciting project," he added.'"

MassDosage writes "Software Build Systems by Peter Smith is a well written, albeit rather lengthy book that covers the intricacies of systems used to build software. It tries to do this in a technology-neutral manner where possible but covers existing tools like Ant, Make and Scons as a means of illustrating the various concepts covered instead of just focusing on theory. The real world examples illustrate building Java, C/C++, C# and Python software and cover scaling up from small builds with tens of source files up to massive builds with tens of thousands. All of the technologies used are introduced in some depth which newcomers should find useful but experienced build developers may want to skim over." Read below for the rest of MassDosage's review.

theodp writes "Are you or your kid intrigued by Python, but not quite ready to purchase an in-depth O'Reilly book? Zed A. Shaw's 2nd edition of Learn Python The Hard Way may be a friendlier option. Shaw's path to Python programming is simple: 1. Go through each exercise, 2. Type in each sample exactly, 3. Make it run. If $60 for the hardcover is too much to ask, or $15.99 for paperback, you can spend a measly buck for the PDF/ePub download. Still too steep? OK, there's even a free online HTML edition. After completing the 52 exercises, Shaw's concluding Advice From An Old Programmer says, 'Which programming language you learn and use doesn't matter. Do not get sucked into the religion surrounding programming languages as that will only blind you to their true purpose of being your tool for doing interesting things.'"

ErichTheRed writes "This Computerworld piece actually got me thinking — it basically says that there are few good 'starter languages' to get students interested in programming. I remember hacking away at BASIC incessantly when I was a kid, and it taught me a lot about logic and computers in general. Has the level of abstraction in computer systems reached a point where beginners can't just code something quick without a huge amount of back-story? I find this to be the case now; scripting languages are good, but limited in what you can do... and GUI creation requires students to be familiar with a lot of concepts (event handling, etc.) that aren't intuitive for beginners. What would you show a beginner first — JavaScript? Python? How do you get the instant gratification we oldies got when sitting down in front of the early-80s home computers?"

sdasher writes "Finally, there's a chance to combine your love of version control and parties: Gitionary. The brainchild of two MIT alums, it's a party game where you try to illustrate git commands. A set of gitionary cards (PDF) has been posted as well. Personally, I'm still holding out for the Debugging Python RPG."

KuanH writes "Amazon SimpleDB Developer Guide is billed as a complete guide to using Amazon's SimpleDB database API. It's most detailed for PHP. It's helpful for Python. But the Java code and explanations aren't up to the standard of the others. It includes a primer on using Amazon S3 with SimpleDB: files stored on S3, file metadata stored in SimpleDB — again, less good for Java. It also covers tuning to reduce usage costs, caching using memcached, and ways to batch-update and make serial or parallel requests to SimpleDB. However, it's missing some information that beginners might need, and it's perhaps not quite advanced enough for the more experienced. Downloadable example code is available only for PHP." Keep reading for the rest of Kuan's review.

Esther Schindler writes "Does the computer industry seem just a little too strange? Never fear: Monty Python encapsulated several nuggets of wisdom years ago that summarize exactly what is behind the sometimes-tawdry behavior of vendors, the open source community, and marketing departments."

RickJWagner writes "Once upon a time, I thought communication was one of my strong suits. Alas, a few years into my programming career I realized I'm more of the head-down codeslinging type, not one of the schmoozing managerial types. So when I have a point to make, I really like to have my data ready to do the talking for me. In that capacity, this book is a very good weapon to have in my arsenal." Read on for the rest of Rick's review.

PybusJ writes "IBM has released an online HTML5 editing tool called Maqetta, hosted by the Dojo Foundation. eWeek calls it an open source answer to Flash and Silverlight. That remains to be seen, but it does look interesting."

Hugh Pickens writes "Ted Dziuba has an interesting and amusing post on how he made a big mistake when he was offered a choice for his company laptop. His options were a Lenovo Thinkpad or a MacBook Pro, and he picked the Mac, thinking it would be closer to what he was used to. So what's wrong with using the Mac as a development machine for Milo, a Python application backed by PostgreSQL and Redis? 'I've only poked around a little, but so far I've found three separate package managers for OS X: Fink, MacPorts & Homebrew,' writes Dziuba, adding that when you are older, you will understand the value of automated version dependency satisfaction. Next is that your development platform should be as close as possible to your production platform, but 'OS X and Linux have different kernels, which means different I/O & process schedulers, different file systems, and a whole host of other implementation details that you'll write off as having been abstracted away until you have your first serious encounter with "It Works On My Machine.'" Finally, he says, Textmate sucks. 'Sooner or later, you have to face facts. Man up and learn Emacs.'"

An anonymous reader writes "Java is performant, widely adopted and eminently portable, however, its syntax is largely inherited from C++ along with some of its esoteric unfriendliness. Mirah aims to place a friendly face on Java through the implementation of a syntax whose primary concern is developer friendliness (think Ruby/Python/Groovy), and route of least surprise. The result is a truly cogent alternative syntax delivering readability, expressiveness and some compelling new language features."

rick446 writes "In late 2009 SourceForge embarked on a plan to 'reboot' our developer tools on an open platform including Python, MongoDB, RabbitMQ, and SOLR. The result was the Allura platform, and was released under the Apache License in February 2011." Note: Slashdot and SourceForge are both part of Geek.net.

digitalderbs writes "Python 3.2 was released on Feb 20th 2011 with many new improvements. New features include many useful updates to the unittest module, a stable ABI for extensions, pyc repository directories, improvements to the email and ssl modules and many others. This also marks the first release in the 3000-series that is no longer backported to the 2.0-series."

Today we are pleased to announce the launch of the third major re-design in our 13.5 year history, and I don't think it looks half bad. The new theme represents a serious gutting of the underlying HTML and CSS, as well as all-new graphics. There will be many design wiggles, bug squashes, and compatibility glitches that survived testing, so bear with us for a bit. Please direct your bug reports and feedback (good and bad!) to Garrett Woodworth who is currently in charge of such things. Thanks to him, Wes, Vlad, Dean, Phil and Tim, who have each worked hard to get this out the door. Juggling the needs of users, editors, and various business functions is a hard job, and you guys did good.

RickJWagner writes "Manning has just released a new Erlang title, called Erlang and OTP in Action. For quite some time now, there's been a definitive guide to Erlang-- Joe Armstrong's excellent book Programming Erlang. Well, it's time to make a little extra room on the bookshelf, because the Erlang book-o-sphere has just shifted. There are now two must-have resources for an Erlang programmer." Keep reading for the rest of Rick's review.

Gibbs-Duhem writes "This awesome video was produced by some MIT engineers recently. They've started a fully open-source, open-hardware high power LED lighting project that they designed to be modular enough to control with the Arduino (or any other control system). Using their open-source firmware, you can set up the Arduino to connect to Wi-Fi and receive Open Sound Control packets. Then, they went further and released open-source software for PureData and Python to do music analysis and make the lights flash brilliantly in time with the music! A full Instructable was also posted in addition to the existing documentation for design and assembly on their website."

LordStormes writes "I've been a Java/C++/PHP developer for about 6 years now. However, I'm seeing the jobs for these languages dry up, and Java in particular is worrisome with all the Oracle nonsense going on. I think it's time to pick up a new language or risk my skills fading into uselessness. I'm looking to do mostly Web-based back-end stuff. I've contemplated Perl, Python, Ruby, Erlang, Go, and several other languages, but I'll put it to you — what language makes the most sense now to get the jobs? I've deliberately omitted .NET — I have no desire to do the Microsoft languages."