Blog :: Python exploration

I'm headed to the Bay Area Python Interest Group tomorrow for the first time. This is a once monthly gathering at Google in Mountain View and looks like a good time and a good way to pick up some language skills and network a bit with the Bay Area python community.

So far in my more serious exploration of Python I've got through a few syntax issues and into the standard lib. I've learned that optparse is much to be preferred over getopt, that you don't have to try/except or "if dict.has_key" thanks to dict.setdefault (although Python 2.5 more conveniently lets you easily set a default value for an extension of dict). I've also discovered the built in debugger (pdb). This is a revelation after using PHP which does not come with a free debugger (although some free extensions offer debugger support and I have gotten them to work sporadically. Debugging PHP is not that easy unless you want to pay Zend for commercial products.) The official Python docs aren't that newbie helpful but there is a great howto here and a nice video at showmedo.com. Very nice no-hassle debugging.

Tomorrow I learn about Unit testing at the meeting. Any Pythonistas in the Modesto area could hit my email if interested in carpooling...

Posted on June 14th 2007, 12:34 AM