Python Developer Zones?
Now I’m more a Shameless Plug: The SAP Developer’s Guide to PHP person than a Python person but I think it’s great to see more an more exposure for langauges like Python in the world. Now here on SDN we are also building up our Scripting Languages areas. The PHP “getting started” corner is already up and the Ruby one I think will be next in line. We even have RadRails joins SDN Day and the SDN Clubhouse in Amsterdam! coming to the Amsterdam SDN Day and SAP TechEd! SDN is of course looking for those of you in the community interested in helping us build up the other “getting started” areas. Remember we are not limited to any one, or set of languages we are quite open as long as you can connect it to an SAP system via RFC or Web Services then it has a home here. There are also of course exceptions, such as JavaScript a language that can’t – at the moment – be directly connected to an SAP system but is used together with many others. JavaScript posts are starting to pop up thanks to Valery but where are all the Python and Perl folks? What other languages do you use?
Greetings,
Blag.
If you mentioned several scripting languages (or languages with dynamic typing to be exact), I'd like to repeat my suggestion posted to SDN Suggestions forum again.
Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, JavaScript whatever-else-scripting-language have different developer communities. Ok, there are probably Perl+PHP camp, and Python+Ruby or Python-vs-Ruby camp. But...
Exposing _all_ of them under one "Scripting Languages" tag to outside RSS aggregators seriously limits target audince of SDN blog writers.
Seriously, try to use Technorati or Google BlogSearch to find posts by "Ruby" or "PHP" or "JavaScript" keyword. How many references lead to SDN?
In my opinion, to maximize visibility of SDN blogs it's necessary to seriuosly update SDN blogging software with customized per-author/post tags, RSS aggregators ping-backs etc.
Any other SDN topics like XI, ABAP, WebDynpro lead blog readers (sooner or later) back to SDN Rome, but this is not the case with the "Scripting Languages".
Probably, this is yet another reason why SDN bloggers prefer to publish blogs on "scripting" in their own blogs rather then on SDN...
Valery
It's the chicken and the egg, if it was a better system. To get a better system more people have to use it.
As for visibility in places like Technorati - well our 70+ blogs are competing with 1000s daily - this blog for example has already had 27 linking blogs (just checked it in Technorati - http://technorati.com/ajax/post-details.php?b=2370963&p=722996831), I might be able to work something with the topics without too much trouble but not much more until I get more activity around the topics.
Now a bit of "on-topic" – why I’m neither Python nor Perl guy.
Personally, I've never used stand-alone Python for anything practical, only its Jython version for JVM. However, it was enough to get overall impression (as I guess) about Python language and its evolution. I'm not good at writing (especially writing in English 😉 but you may read my almost complete opinion at excellent Steve Yegge rant "A little anti-anti-hype" (http://www.cabochon.com/~stevey/blog-rants/anti-anti-hype.html). Btw, if you like his style of writing here is the blog: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/
Python is like a secret science. Is it fun or not is just half of problem. It's hard to know how and to what direction this language evolves. There are number of scientists sitting somewhere and mediating over Python feature. If you miss some feature, you may fill in PEP and wait year or more to see it in a new version. If you are lucky enough, you may google and in several months find on some mailing list an implicit notion that something that looks like your requested feature was declined. These scientific mascots never tell you what they are planning. However, when you have enough of Python, it's just a problem slayer. Really, it's very expressive, and I liked it very-very much, but...
As I said, I used Python for JVM (Jython) mainly. Now you may visit SourceForge and take a look where this project is. Certainly, there is some activity in CVS, but who knows what be rolled out? Are there any plans published? Now compare Jython project with JRuby. Later has clear goals for every release, project is dynamic, schedule for new releases is predictable. Clear, that after movement of main Jython developer to IronPython project (and to .NET from Java), Jython is half-dead. What manager ever takes the risk to let me use half-dead project?
If Python is a secret science, Perl is a bazaar or some programming anarchy (perverted democracy, when every request to change language gets into language, again refer to Setevy's post). I had to port number of Perl applications to Java -- there are less ways to skin a cat then to program deep-first tree traversal in Perl. Actually, up to version 5 they managed to create 2-3 parallel languages inside one. And their move to Perl 6 is surrounded with (inevitable) breaking changes that distract developers. If someone plan to blame me for not loving Perl, go ahead – you succeed always while I’m a Perl applications' "reader" rather then Perl applications' "writer" so my understanding of Perl is limited. Btw, reading Perl code is a twisted form of mid-ages punishment; Giordano Bruno was lucky enough – inquisition didn't use Perl.
Not surprising that "Scripting Languages" on SDN are represented by PHP (simple and popular), Ruby (Rails hip) and JavaScript (Ajax hip).
Valery
This is an unfair critic on Python. With the PEP system, python is recognized by many as one of the best community driven open source development projects (I don't mean the product, I mean the team work). Besides, python is a language, users usually don't need features, they extend the language by writing a library. Take for instance C, when was the last feature added to the language?
More related to SAP, there are at least two python modules to connect to SAP (http://pysaprfc.sourceforge.net/ and http://cheeseshop.python.org/pypi/saprfc/) so I suppose there is some interest in python on SAPland. I personally have been using jython with jCO for a long time, and I consider it one of the most important tools I have for SAP related work (data extraction, consistency checks with legacy systems, automated testing, etc). It's true, it's kind of dead, maybe it will pick up again now that Java is open-source.
I'm quite interested in a section python on SDN (is there anything I can do to help it?)
Regards,
Pedro Lima
http://apolemia.blogspot.com
Craig