Python is fun (useless social thread) ;-)

[Jarek Zgoda]

John Salerno napisał(a):

> So out of curiosity, I'm just wondering how everyone else came to learn
> it. If you feel like responding, I'll ask my questions for easy quoting:
> 
> Did you have to learn it for a job?
> 
> Or did you just like what you saw and decided to learn it for fun?
> 
> Also, how did you go about learning it? (i.e., like I described above, I
> started with the main stuff then moved on to the different available
> frameworks)
> 
> Was there any necessity in the specifics you learned, or did you just
> dabble in something (e.g. wxPython) for fun?
> 
> Are there still some things you feel you need to learn or improve?

The very first encounter was with Red Hat 5.2, back in 1998. RH had an
installer made with Python and NEWT toolkit. It looked great, just about
 as good as any of my Clipper or TurboVision programs. I looked at the
code and it scared me (at this time, I was writing mostly in Clipper).

Then in 2001 I came to work in another company, which has MS Proxy at
its internet border. Being unable to use any of internet tool of my
choice, I quickly found a solution, NTLM Authorization Proxy Server
(NTLMAPS) by Dimitri Rozmanov. Which, to my surprise, is written in pure
Python. This time I was ready to learn Python. I started using it for my
spare-time projects and later I was able to "inject" Python to my
organization. This can be concluded as "learned for fun", but now it
takes part of my paid work.

I started with writing "glue" code for various system tools (i.o.w. as a
"shell scripting"), but now I tend to write standalone client tools,
with GUI in various toolkits (wxPython at work, PyGTK in my spare time).
They are mostly of "smart client" type, using various network interfaces
(ftp, http, xmpp, MQSeries).

And I still don't get this "web application" hype, and all these "web
frameworks" scare me, as I internally don't trust any magic.

-- 
Jarek Zgoda
http://jpa.berlios.de/