Planet Firedrop

A frequent question on the IronPython mailing list is "what IDE should I use with IronPython?". For many .NET developers the question is phrased slightly differently, "how do I use IronPython in Visual Studio?". ... [191 words]

Resolver One 1.6 is out! I say this every time but it's a great release with some important new features. ... [316 words]

Kiva is an amazing organisation. They support individuals in developing countries by making loans for them to develop their own businesses. ... [176 words]

mock is a Python mock object library for testing, with additional support for runtime monkey patching. Most mocking libraries follow the 'record -> replay' pattern of mocking. ... [133 words]

I've just pushed out two small releases, both up on PyPI. These are version 0.3.0 of discover for automatic test discovery of unittest tests and version 0.1.0 of rst2xaml for writing WPF / Silverlight XAML from ReStructured Text documents. ... [642 words]

Two podcasts with interviews from me on IronPython have been posted this weekend! The first is an interview with Randal Schwartz and Leo Laporte on FLOSS Weekly: FLOSS Weekly 82: IronPython Direct link to the mp3 download The podcast is a rambling discussion over about 45 minutes. ... [436 words]

Something I've been working on in my 'spare' time: rst2xaml project and repository rst2xaml is a FlowDocument XAML writer for ReStructured Text (docutils) documents. It includes a Pygments formatter for syntax highlighting sourcecode using the code-block directive in the ReST. ... [478 words]

A couple of my colleagues at Resolver Systems have been up to interesting things in their spare time. Jonathan Hartley has been threatening to make progress on his game for months, but in the meantime he has been having fun with pyglet and SVG vector graphics: svgbatch SvgBatch is a pure Python package to load SVG vector graphic files, and convert them into pyglet Batch objects, for OpenGL rendering. ... [239 words]

One of the big new features of .NET / C# 4.0 is the introduction of the dynamic keyword. This is the fruit of Microsoft employing Jim Hugunin as an architect for the Common Language Runtime; charged with making .NET a better platform for multiple languages including dynamic languages. ... [450 words]

After a lot of work, and the usual last minute blind panic, we have got to a beta release of Resolver One version 1.6. As always this release includes a combination of standard spreadsheet features, bug fixes and usability improvements plus features unique to Resolver One. ... [735 words]

A couple of weeks ago the screen of my wife's Macbook broke. Apple refused to quote me a price at all unless I brought the laptop in but an Apple authorised repair centre quoted me 295 pounds to replace it, which uhm... ... [117 words]

Resolver One is the highly programmable spreadsheet, programmed with and in IronPython, created by Resolver Systems where I have been working for the last three years. With the programming model central to the application it is easier to do complex data-modelling with Resolver One than with traditional spreadsheets. ... [314 words]

IronPython in Action went on sale in March this year and I have just received the figures, and royalty cheque, for the first quarter sales. I wrote up my experience of writing IronPython in Action in Writing a Technical Book which included a discussion of the contract and royalties before this arrived. ... [417 words]

I've been playing with Audioboo which is a combination of an iPhone application and website for recording short five minute podcasts: boos. The four episodes I've recorded touch on programming language popularity, the rise of Ruby, Python performance and implementations and some new Python books that have come out recently: A ramble on programming languages, books, implementations and popularity - Python and Ruby. ... [352 words]

September 23-24th I'll be presenting a two day training session in Stockholm (the training is in English) with addskills. It is aimed at .NET developers looking to use IronPython for application development, scripting, embedding, testing or just as another useful tool. ... [280 words]

In several languages, like C# for example, a return inside a finally block is a syntax error. This isn't the case with Python. ... [480 words]

Any day now I will get the first quarter sales figures for IronPython in Action. That will mark the book having been actually in the hands of readers for three months and also be about two and a half years since I first contacted Manning about the possibility of writing an IronPython book for them. ... [296 words]

There have been discussions on the issues of licensing and accepting contributions to open source projects on the Python-dev and the testing in Python mailing lists. This is an area that can be very confusing, and potentially problematic for open source projects. ... [376 words]

Exceptions are one of the great features of high level languages that making coding less tedious. Instead of manually checking for possible errors and returning error codes we can use exceptions. ... [675 words]

Movable IDLE is a standalone version of the IDLE Python IDE. Movable IDLE is part of the Movable Python project and can be run (Windows only I'm afraid) from a USB memory stick and without installing Python. ... [114 words]

A few weeks ago I demonstrated the complexity of the Python object model by fetching docstrings from objects. A while after posting it I thought of a bug - or at least a way in which it could return the wrong result when looking up an attribute on an object. ... [661 words]

I kind of promised you no more entries on unittest for a while, but oh well. I've backported the test discovery in Python-trunk, what will become Python 2.7 & Python 3.2. ... [586 words]

About two and a half years ago I started writing the book. During the next two years I received a steady trickle of feature requests, bug reports and patches for the various projects and articles I maintain (or pretend to maintain). ... [400 words]

Yet another blog entry on unittest; this is the last one in my list so I'm not planning any more for a while. Something that both nose and py.test provide that unittest (the [1] Python standard library testing framework) doesn't is a builtin mechanism for writing parametrized tests. ... [1227 words]

Over the last few months I've bought a few new gadgets, and they're well overdue a review; so here goes. Samsung PB22 2.5" 256GB SSD (Solid State Drive) As I'm sure you're aware Solid State Drives are hard drives using flash memory instead of mechanical disks; this eliminates the need for spin up, plus makes seek times and data rates potentially much faster and power consumption less. ... [1133 words]

In my last post I mentioned my fuzzywuzzy beard not once but twice. Here's a great picture of me and my fuzzywuzzy beard drawn by Scott Meyer, the creator of the Basic Instructions webcomic. ... [43 words]

There is a general rule that innovation doesn't happen in the standard library. Instead modules or techniques that have already proven themselves in the Python community are adopted into the standard library. ... [1372 words]

A feature that has long been missing from unittest, is automatic test discovery. This alone is a major reason why people move to alternative frameworks like nose and py.test. ... [663 words]

There are a couple of other minor improvements to unittest that I haven't already mentioned. The TestResult class has two new methods: startTestRun and stopTestRun. ... [189 words]

One of the new features in unittest for Python 2.7 / 3.1 is better support for resource deallocation through cleanup functions. This isn't a new idea, it's something that is already in use in the Bazaar, Twisted and Zope test frameworks. ... [308 words]

One of the things I've been working on over the last few weeks is the Python unittest module. By virtue of having been included in the standard library for many years unittest is the most widely used Python testing framework. ... [397 words]

EuroPython is the official community conference for Python Programmers across Europe. This year it is being held in the Birmingham Conservatoire, where previous UK Python events and some recent UKUUG events have been held. ... [227 words]

Aahz, a long standing member of the Python community, is manning a Python booth at the OSCON Conference. With the help of the Python Advocacy mailing list he has come up with a description of Python in fifty words. ... [95 words]

Extraordinarily simple introspection is one of the features that makes dynamic languages like Python such a joy to work with. If you have code dealing with arbitrary objects and you want to discover and present information about those objects it is marvellously simple. ... [1862 words]

Movable Python is a portable distribution of Python for Windows. It is capable of running from a USB stick and includes a mobile development environment. ... [285 words]

Movable Python is a portable distribution of Python for Windows. It is capable of running from a USB stick and includes a mobile development environment. ... [285 words]

In the Resolver One test framework we have a fairly elaborate mock system. It emulates a .NET API from a commercial vendor which we don't have installed on our test / development machines. ... [671 words]

In the Resolver One test framework we have a fairly elaborate mock system. It emulates a .NET API from a commercial vendor which we don't have installed on our test / development machines. ... [671 words]

A common question amongst new IronPython users is Which IDE is best for IronPython? One common suggestion, which .NET developers gravitate towards naturally, is IronPython Studio. ... [183 words]

A common question amongst new IronPython users is Which IDE is best for IronPython? One common suggestion, which .NET developers gravitate towards naturally, is IronPython Studio. ... [183 words]

IronPython has been designed to make it easy to embed in .NET applications. With code evaluated and executed at runtime it opens up all sorts of possibilities for user scripting of applications, storing rules as text that can be created and modified at runtime and so on. ... [136 words]

It's been a fun weekend. On Friday I went to see Coraline 3D at the cinema (and I didn't even know that you could watch films in 3D in Northampton UK which is officially the middle of nowhere in England). ... [296 words]

We've just announced an invitation to try the beta of Resolver One 1.5. The major new feature in version 1.5 is an interactive Python console that lets you explore and interact with your spreadsheet objects. ... [552 words]

Appendix B of IronPython in Action is a reference on all of the common magic methods in Python. The magic methods are those that start and end with double underscores, and are called 'magic' because instead of calling them directly they are usually called for you by the interpreter when objects that implement them are involved in certain operations. ... [410 words]

PyCon was simply amazing. As with last year I really enjoyed the sprints, and this year I worked with Gregory Smith. ... [734 words]

I received an interesting question by email from Mark Bloodworth, an Architect Evangelist at Microsoft. I've been interested in Dynamic Languages for a while now (I blog about Ruby and Python from time to time). ... [2172 words]

One of the exciting things about PyCon was to discover that Mock was much more widely used than I thought. It's being used in Disney, Sourceforge, VMWare (well - at least one developer at VMWare) and BATS Trading. ... [673 words]

The last videos from PyCon 2009 are going up, which means videos from the tutorials. This includes the three hour IronPython tutorial taken by Jonathan Hartley and me: IronPython Tutorial Part 1 IronPython Tutorial Part 2 IronPython Tutorial Part 3 The tutorial was great fun, exploring different aspects of programming with .NET and IronPython by creating a Windows Forms Twitter client called Stutter. ... [209 words]

Finally a fresh release ConfigObj and Validate. ConfigObj 4.6.0 on PyPI Validate 1.0.0 on PyPI Note ConfigObj and Validate development is now done in Google Code project and subversion repository. ... [552 words]

Python is not always appropriate in every circumstance. As if proof was needed two recent news stories confirm it: Man bites Python (sounds like self-defense though) Real life snakes on a plane (Pythons naturally) ... [34 words]

Sod This is a new podcast by well known .NET MVPs, Devexpress evangelists and all round (figuratively of course) raconteurs: Gary Short and Oliver Sturm. Episode 3 is now up, and it's an interview with me on dynamic languages in general and IronPython in particular. ... [124 words]

On Windows Vista setting registry entries on install is hard. It is likely that Microsoft don't care - the official guidance is to set entries on first run and not on install, but there are perfectly valid reasons to want to do this. ... [410 words]

PyCon 2009 was awesome fun, as many others have charted. The highlights of the conference were, as always, meeting and mixing with such a rich combination of clever and fun people - all of whom I have Python in common with. ... [221 words]

There is quite a discussion going on the Testing in Python mailing list. A lot of it was kicked off by Jesse Noller discussing the new distributed testing framework he wants to build. ... [746 words]

As a programmer there are two basic skills vital to your productivity: how fast you can type and how fast you can read. On typing, Steve Yegge said it best of course in Programming's Dirtiest Little Secret. ... [340 words]

The video of my PyCon talking on testing GUI applications is up. The talk went well, with a surprisingly high number of attendees for what I expected to be a 'niche' subject. ... [178 words]

As I start to write this blog entry I'm one of the last few sprinters left in Chicago in the aftermath of the PyCon 2009 international Python conference. In fact it is only moments before I have to catch the shuttle bus to the airport, so the rest of this entry will have to be composed from home (and quite a long time later after I recover as it happens). ... [738 words]

Nearly two and a half years after I started work on it IronPython in Action is finally available. I can prove it too: IronPython in Action is the first book (in English anyway...) ... [235 words]

I've been to conferences almost non-stop for the last month and haven't really blogged about them yet. I'm currently at my favourite of all - PyCon! ... [71 words]

I've recorded a podcast with the .NET Rocks guys on IronPython. We discuss dynamic languages on the .NET framework (I'm even nice about Ruby!), Python, IronPython and of course Resolver One and IronPython in Action: Michael Foord Talks IronPython Michael Foord works full time with IronPython for Resolver Systems; creating a highly programmable spreadsheet called Resolver One. ... [138 words]

In May 2008 the Python Magazine published my Introduction to ConfigObj article. ConfigObj is an easy to use but powerful configuration file reader library. ... [167 words]

My colleague Kamil Dworakowski has written a blog entry on using multiple monitors, showing off his desktop setup (the deathstar control centre) at Resolver Systems: Quad Head Traders have long known about the value of using multiple monitors. The reason it is so good for programming is that the activity requires to keep millions of things in the head at once -- names of variables, functions, classes, third party APIs. ... [1255 words]

Diesesmal ein kurzer Beitrag. Bei Wikipedia wird die Korrelation wie folgt definiert. Die Korrelation beschreibt die lineare Beziehung zwischen zwei oder mehr statistischen Variablen. ... [98 words]

A bunch of stuff, almost all of it interesting to someone (usually me). Someone likes ConfigObj, but wanted highlighting for the ConfigObj format ini files in Textmate - so he created a Textmate bundle. ... [444 words]

Psyco is the specialising compiler - basically a JIT - for Python 2.X. It has been in maintenance only mode for a long time, not even optimising generators which were introduced to the language in Python 2.2. ... [528 words]

I've updated a couple of the Silverlight articles on my IronPython and Silverlight Pages: From Silverlight to Javascript and Back Again An article on using the Scriptable attributes to call from IronPython into Javascript and from Javascript into IronPython. The update makes a couple of parts less confusing and corrects a mistake. ... [224 words]

I've created two new spreadsheets for the Resolver Hacks Website (with more in the works). I haven't yet written the articles that accompany them, but I've linked to them here in case it takes me a while to get round to it... ... [568 words]

Meine Güte, der letzte Eintrag ist schon lange her... Ich hätte nicht gedacht, dass ich mein Blog mal so lange Zeit ruhen lasse. ... [506 words]

Resolver One is the Python and .NET programmable spreadsheet created by Resolver Systems After a lot of work, Resolver One 1.4 is now released! Version 1.4 took us a long time; the main feature is that Resolver One is now built on IronPython 2. ... [714 words]

Next week I'll be at QCon in London, speaking on Real World IronPython: IronPython is a port of Python, a popular open source dynamic language, to the .NET framework. .NET has traditionally been programmed with statically typed languages like C# and VB.NET. ... [148 words]

I'm very interested in application usability. I'm aware that for those who aren't computer experts they can be complex and bewildering. ... [540 words]

One of the most impressive things about DLR based languages like IronPython and IronRuby is how easy they are to host in applications to add dynamic features. You can even host IronPython in IronPython, something that Resolver One makes good use of to provide a separate execution context for each spreadsheet. ... [355 words]

One of the most impressive things about DLR based languages like IronPython and IronRuby is how easy they are to host in applications to add dynamic features. You can even host IronPython in IronPython, something that Resolver One makes good use of to provide a separate execution context for each spreadsheet. ... [355 words]

Here's a really good idea that someone should do. Cory Doctorow likes giving electronic versions of his books away free; he believes in it and his publisher doesn’t really mind because there isn’t a lot of money in selling ebooks anyway. ... [271 words]

Here's a really good idea that someone should do. Cory Doctorow likes giving electronic versions of his books away free; he believes in it and his publisher doesn't really mind because there isn't a lot of money in selling ebooks anyway. ... [271 words]

Ironclad 0.8 has just been released. Ironclad is an open source project by Resolver Systems to allow the use of Python C extensions from IronPython. ... [1373 words]

Ironclad 0.8 has just been released. Ironclad is an open source project by Resolver Systems to allow the use of Python C extensions from IronPython. ... [1373 words]

O'Reilly have been kind enough to give me a copy of Van Linderg's book Intellectual Property and Open Source. Of course the term "intellectual property" is itself controversial, but I prefer the more pragmatic approach to copyright reform of people like Lawrence Lessig. ... [1221 words]

O'Reilly have been kind enough to give me a copy of Van Linderg's book Intellectual Property and Open Source. Of course the term "intellectual property" is itself controversial, but I prefer the more pragmatic approach to copyright reform of people like Lawrence Lessig. ... [1221 words]

A while ago I blogged about how to specify the encoding when reading or writing text files with Python 3: Python 3: An end to Unicode Problems?. The full situation is a bit more complex, as you may need to be aware of encodings anywhere you have a text to bytes conversion (or vice-versa). ... [527 words]

A while ago I blogged about how to specify the encoding when reading or writing text files with Python 3: Python 3: An end to Unicode Problems?. The full situation is a bit more complex, as you may need to be aware of encodings anywhere you have a text to bytes conversion (or vice-versa). ... [527 words]

Programming the browser with Python is fun, and is easy with Silverlight but suffers the deficiency of only being available on the Mac and Windows. The Mono team have been working on the Linux port of Silverlight called Moonlight. ... [160 words]

Programming the browser with Python is fun, and is easy with Silverlight but suffers the deficiency of only being available on the Mac and Windows. The Mono team have been working on the Linux port of Silverlight called Moonlight. ... [160 words]

I've finally updated my IronPython & Silverlight articles and examples for the latest (and final) release of Silverlight 2. All the examples are online and available for download: IronPython & Silverlight Articles and Examples There are five articles and 6 different projects online and to download - plus a couple of C# projects that are download only. ... [194 words]

I've finally updated my IronPython & Silverlight articles and examples for the latest (and final) release of Silverlight 2. All the examples are online and available for download: IronPython & Silverlight Articles and Examples There are five articles and 6 different projects online and to download - plus a couple of C# projects that are download only. ... [194 words]

The list of PyCon 2009 Talks is now up. Mine is first, one of the advantages of submitting early [1]. ... [755 words]

The list of PyCon 2009 Talks is now up. Mine is first, one of the advantages of submitting early [1]. ... [755 words]

Resolver Systems is running a competition (The Spreadsheet Challenge), for the most innovative use of Resolver One. Each month up until May the best spreadsheet application created with Resolver One will win its creator $2000. ... [296 words]

Resolver Systems is running a competition (The Spreadsheet Challenge), for the most innovative use of Resolver One. Each month up until May the best spreadsheet application created with Resolver One will win its creator $2000. ... [296 words]

This issue was raised by Dino Veihland (core developer of IronPython) when asking whether IronPython should implement a particular behavior of CPython that seemed a bit odd. This in turn was triggered by an IronPython bug report. ... [232 words]

This issue was raised by Dino Veihland (core developer of IronPython) when asking whether IronPython should implement a particular behavior of CPython that seemed a bit odd. This in turn was triggered by an IronPython bug report. ... [232 words]

Resolver Systems is currently being featured on the front page of The Daily WTF. Thankfully not for the quality of our code, but because Resolver One is advertised there. ... [35 words]

Resolver Systems is currently being featured on the front page of The Daily WTF. Thankfully not for the quality of our code, but because Resolver One is advertised there. ... [35 words]

As I type this, it is already old news - but still good news. For a long time the blog engine of choice for hosting your own blog has been Wordpress. ... [899 words]

As I type this, it is already old news - but still good news. For a long time the blog engine of choice for hosting your own blog has been Wordpress. ... [899 words]

For me 2008 is inevitably the year in which I didn't get IronPython in Action finished. I actually started writing in the tail end of the 2006 Christmas break, making it two years and counting since I started. ... [793 words]

For me 2008 is inevitably the year in which I didn't get IronPython in Action finished. I actually started writing in the tail end of the 2006 Christmas break, making it two years and counting since I started. ... [793 words]

The decisions are in from the hardworking, much loved and generally good looking program committee for PyCon 2009. Actually, we're not all that hard working: this year I helped with the talk reviews. ... [712 words]

The decisions are in from the hardworking, much loved and generally good looking program committee for PyCon 2009. Actually, we're not all that hard working: this year I helped with the talk reviews. ... [712 words]

I am on the committee for organising PyCon UK again this year (yes - I was very bad in a past life), but it will be a bit different this time (and 2010 as well). We are hosting EuroPython, so PyCon UK has morphed into something a bit bigger... ... [220 words]

I am on the committee for organising PyCon UK again this year (yes - I was very bad in a past life), but it will be a bit different this time (and 2010 as well). We are hosting EuroPython, so PyCon UK has morphed into something a bit bigger... ... [220 words]

Resolver One is the Python powered spreadsheet created by Resolver Systems, and the project I've been working on for nearly three years now. Resolver One is a highly programmable spreadsheet program built with IronPython. ... [560 words]

Resolver One is the Python powered spreadsheet created by Resolver Systems, and the project I've been working on for nearly three years now. Resolver One is a highly programmable spreadsheet program built with IronPython. ... [560 words]

One of the major changes in Python 3 is that there are now only Unicode strings. There is a bytes type for when you are dealing with binary data, but when you are dealing with text it is always Unicode. ... [559 words]

One of the major changes in Python 3 is that there are now only Unicode strings. There is a bytes type for when you are dealing with binary data, but when you are dealing with text it is always Unicode. ... [559 words]

A while ago I wrote a mildly controversial blog entry about the way the Python community responds to certain questions: You Don't Really Need It One of the issues I talked about was the fact that Python has no concept of private members. It does provide name mangling when your member names start with a double underscore. ... [593 words]

A while ago I wrote a mildly controversial blog entry about the way the Python community responds to certain questions: You Don't Really Need It One of the issues I talked about was the fact that Python has no concept of private members. It does provide name mangling when your member names start with a double underscore. ... [593 words]

This surprised Glenn and me at work the other day: {+coloring} Python 2.6 (trunk:66714:66715M, Oct 1 2008, 18:36:04) [GCC 4.0.1 (Apple Computer, Inc. build 5370)] on darwin Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. ... [288 words]

This surprised Glenn and me at work the other day: {+coloring} Python 2.6 (trunk:66714:66715M, Oct 1 2008, 18:36:04) [GCC 4.0.1 (Apple Computer, Inc. build 5370)] on darwin Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. ... [288 words]

A new feature that was quietly sneaked into Python 2.6, without the fanfare it deserves, is the ability to distribute Python applications as executable zipfiles. Python has long had support for importing modules and packages from zipfiles - through the oh-so-badly-needed-in-IronPython [1] zipimport. ... [358 words]

A new feature that was quietly sneaked into Python 2.6, without the fanfare it deserves, is the ability to distribute Python applications as executable zipfiles. Python has long had support for importing modules and packages from zipfiles - through the oh-so-badly-needed-in-IronPython [1] zipimport. ... [358 words]

Ars Technica has a new article on learning Python: Getting a grip on Python, 6 ways to learn online The article itself is kind of meh, merely linking to six of the most well known online Python tutorials, but what is interesting is their rationale for promoting Python: "Recently, Google has stepped up its presence in the cloud computing arena. Google's new App Engine (aka "AppSpot") lets you design and run web applications using Google's existing infrastructure." "At this time, App Engine uses Python as its primary programming language. ... [411 words]

Ars Technica has a new article on learning Python: Getting a grip on Python, 6 ways to learn online The article itself is kind of meh, merely linking to six of the most well known online Python tutorials, but what is interesting is their rationale for promoting Python: "Recently, Google has stepped up its presence in the cloud computing arena. Google's new App Engine (aka "AppSpot") lets you design and run web applications using Google's existing infrastructure." "At this time, App Engine uses Python as its primary programming language. ... [411 words]

Sphinx 0.5 (half a Sphinx) has just been released. This is timely as one of the most valuable things that I learned at PyWorks (in the hallway track) was how to use Sphinx. ... [844 words]

Sphinx 0.5 (half a Sphinx) has just been released. This is timely as one of the most valuable things that I learned at PyWorks (in the hallway track) was how to use Sphinx. ... [848 words]

Sphinx 0.5 (half a Sphinx) has just been released. This is timely as one of the most valuable things that I learned at PyWorks (in the hallway track) was how to use Sphinx. ... [844 words]

Last week I returned from a fun time at the PyWorks Conference in Atlanta. PyWorks was a conference organised by the folks behind the Python Magazine (happy birthday by the way!), and was bolted alongside the already established PHP Works conference. ... [747 words]

Last week I returned from a fun time at the PyWorks Conference in Atlanta. PyWorks was a conference organised by the folks behind the Python Magazine (happy birthday by the way!), and was bolted alongside the already established PHP Works conference. ... [747 words]

Last week I returned from a fun time at the PyWorks Conference in Atlanta. PyWorks was a conference organised by the folks behind the Python Magazine (happy birthday by the way!), and was bolted alongside the already established PHP Works conference. ... [747 words]