Scott Yang's Playground

Phillip Eby wrote an article on his blog titled Python is Not Java, stating the common mistakes Java programmers often made when they tried to write a Python application, due to different idioms used in each language. While I agree that you cannot simply convert something line by line from one language to another, Eby’s [...]

Since I last blogged about Bloglines‘ new REST style web services, I finally had a chance to sit down and code a little application to scratch my itches. What then, is my itch? Bloglines is probably one of the best feed aggregator that I have ever used. And because it is web-based, my subscriptions are [...]

Paul Graham’s new article on how Python programmers are smarter than Java programmers, because they seek to learn a new programming language that they enjoy, rather than learning them as part of work. On the other hand, I found Java programmers more persistant and having higher tolerance. You need that with Java, right? :)

Prothon is an interesting language that looks like Python but classless. Instead, it uses prototype (think Javascript), and it runs on .NET platform. By browsing through the tutorial, it really looks like a weird marriage between Python and Javascript. I think I’ll pick up IronPython for .NET stuff instead.

Dave Kuhlman wrote a how to document on using form2, PTL and other alternatives. Quixote is one of my favourite Python web application library, and I might one day come back to it.

Generator expression in the up-coming Python 2.4 is just so cool, that it combines functional programming aspect of list comprhensions and elegance of generators/iterators when working with potentially large result sets.

Being a Python programmer for the past 3 and half years, today was the first time when I tried Jython, an implementation of Python in Java, which runs inside a JVM. I am porting one part of the project in Java, and I would like to examine some values interactively instead of going through the [...]

Another stupid script that I wrote as my latest attempt in procrastination. This Python script basically queries Bloglines for the number of unread items you have. A bit like notifiers that are already available on Windows and Mac, except on command line, where ever real man works :)

I have no idea why no one has requested, but I have added the feature in release 0.6 of mtsend.py anyway – HTTP proxy server support. I am now sitting on a host behind a squid server, so proxy server support becomes essential to me. With 0.6, mtsend.py should automatically pick up your proxy server [...]

After 6+ months of inactive, I’ve finally made some changes to my mtsend.py script that allows someone to post/edit blog entries on MovableType in the luxury of Un*x/DOS command line. In version 0.5, I have removed all the supports for MovableType 2.5 to keep the code clean, so please use version 0.4 if you are [...]

I’ve finally upgraded myself to MovableType 2.6.3 this morning, and not surprisingly, my command-line MT client script mtsend.py does not work properly anymore. D’oh. It is mainly due to some changes in the XML-RPC API, i.e. boolean is now integer for a particular field, etc. Fixing up is trivial, but at the same time I [...]

I was about to do some GUI programming with Python on Win32 platform. Downloaded PyQt and Qt’s Win32 non-commercial edition – and it is still at 2.3! I know Qt was a fine product, and last time I programmed in it was back in ’97-98 with C++. I would like to start coding with Qt [...]

I’ve spent a bit of time coding and testing during the Christmas break, and here it is – mtsend.py, a command line tool for Movable Type (SY: Works fine in WordPress as well) written in Python. It uses XML-RPC exported by Movable Type to retrieve posts, edit posts, make new post entry, fix up categories [...]

I saw a new Python implementation today – Chinese Python. This is so COOL that you can do all your programming in Chinese – including not just the syntax help and documentations, but also the Python keywords themselves! I guess most people still type English much faster than Chinese, but it is a great teaching [...]