How are you using Python?

[Siegfried Gonzi]

Will Stuyvesant wrote:

> <rant>
> linux
> -----
> So why not just use linux?  Well I would be happy with it.
> Except that here in Europe it is almost impossible to buy
> a notebook you like with linux installed.  Installing
> linux, with latex and xfig and python and gcc and vim and
> all those other things I was used to, is still taking too
> much time. 

Sorry but this is just not correct. I once too thought that installing 
Linux on a laptop is tedious but SuSE 8.0 changed my mind a little bit.

Sure, there was a time when you had to compile your Linux kernel 
yourself; admittedly this is insane; though there are a lot of people 
out there, who will not do any better in their spare time.

Honestly speaking I could not install a Windows system. My XP on my 
laptop was pre installed. The last years I was using a Macintosh and 
sometimes a Sun workstation. Believe me or not, I could not install a 
Windows system but a Linux (okay SuSE) system. I had installed SuSE 8.0 
within 20 minutes. My collegues couldn't believe it.

Eventually I found even a driver for my winmodem (this post is a testimony).


Python is responsible for that my main user system is Linux now (even at 
my workplace at my university). But I have also to say that I
only rarely use Python in the meantime (I converted all my code to 
Bigloo; it was easy I have neary the same programming style in Python 
and Bigloo). I am not sure why, but I begun to hate the fixed 
indentation style in Python. Emacs too indents my Scheme (Bigloo) code 
as it wants, but I do not hate it. And another issue which stroke me 
(but I am sure I should have read the manual in more detail): I often 
changed my code and believed that the Python code runs with the new 
values in the variables but after not getting the required calculation 
results, I saw that Python used old ones (no clue where they are 
sitting: in memory or what?).


S. Gonzi