Articles, books, and a Cookbook...

[Ron Stephens]

My busy travel schedule is seriously interupting my Python hobby, but I 
just want to comment on the Python Cookbook, although I am only barely 
started enyoying it.

Knowing the high quality of Alex Martelli's posts on comp.lang.python, I 
eagerly anticipated the cookbook. It more than lives up to my 
expectations. The introductions to each chapter alone are worth more 
than the price of the book. Each introduction is written by a different 
Pythonic luminary, including Fredrik Lundh, Tim Peters, Alex Martelli, 
and Guido van Rossum (and many others). These literary pieces are 
erudite, insightful, and humorous.

The code recipes range from the simplest a newbie can understsand and 
learn from, to advanced concepts.

But the recipes are only half (or less) of the story. The explanations, 
analysis, and expository text accompanying each recipe are enlightenting 
beyond anything pythonic I have yet read.

I will wear out this book's excellent O'Reilly binding over many months 
of heavy use. I doubt that I will ever exhaust its resources.

What more can I say?

Another book I am reading, Python Progamming with the Java Class 
Libraries, is also excellent. This book is perfect for Python 
programmers like me who want to use Jython specifically in order to use 
the Java GUI libraries, in order to create cross platform GUI scripts.

In contrast to Python Programing with the Java Class Libraries, the book 
Jython for Java Programmers is more for Java programmers who want to 
learn Jython for scriptiung Java programs. It is also a good book, but 
too difficult for a non-Java programmer like me.

Finally, I must apoligize for the recent state of the output file for 
new web articles, generated by Hans Nowak's mygale.py web spider. Due to 
my heavy travel schedule and other sundry excuses, I have been very 
negligent in properly maintaining this output from Hans' new version of 
mygale, which is greatly updated.

I am glad to report that, as of today, I finally have the new program 
version's output file up to date, and maintainable daily on an automatic 
basis again.

Mygale is a work in progress, And can be found on Sourceforge now that 
Hans has set up a Sourceforge project for it at 
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mygale/ and I hope some of you will go 
there and download mygale and play around with it.

Hans has made noises about someday, when time permits, making a more 
general version of mygale, one that could be used to scrape the web to 
find new articles on any subject, not just Python. I am hoping that with 
  a little encouragement and feedback, Hans might just create such a 
gem, which I would find very useful.

And now you can see daily output from mygale again at my website at 
http://www.awaretek.com/index.html