Python conquors the BBC [was Re: IDLE has suddenly become FAWLTY - so should I be hitting it with a big stick, or what?]

[Twirlip2]

On Wednesday, 27 August 2014 05:55:28 UTC+1, Chris Angelico  wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 27, 2014 at 1:13 PM, Rustom Mody <rus... at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Wednesday, August 27, 2014 8:06:24 AM UTC+5:30, Chris Angelico wrote:
> >> On Wed, Aug 27, 2014 at 10:58 AM, Twirlip2  wrote:
> >> >
> >> > So, please give me a few weeks to improve my code, before posting it. (I
> >> > recently came across somewhere on the Web where you can post code, but I
> >> > forget where.)
> 
> >> If you're looking for hosting, I recommend one of the source control
> >> hosting sites - github.com (for git), bitbucket.org (for hg), etc.
> 
> > Bitbucket has both git and hg with git the default (nowadays). And it
> > has free private repos (shareable by upto 5); with github you have to
> > pay through your nose.
> 
> "etc". :)
> Also, why bother with private repos, if you're using this as a means
> of posting code? Just post public repos. I have a lot of them:
> 
> https://github.com/Rosuav
>
> Quite a few aren't of great interest to most people, but there's
> nothing secret there.

I'm only writing the code to please myself (primarily so that I can listen
to Web radio without a clunky Web interface, but secondarily so that I can
learn to write half-decent programs - which I have never done); so I'm free
to experiment with a style of user interface which is logical (to my mind,
at any rate!) but extremely quirky (possibly downright perverse), and would
probably annoy the hell out of anyone else who tried to use it!  So, I feel
quite deeply inhibited by the idea of posting all of the code publicly (as
opposed to whichever piece of it I'm having a problem with).  But people
did keep asking what I was 'using'. I don't /mind/ posting the code (when
I've rewritten it - which I've only just started doing); and then, anyone
else can use it, if they want - but very much at their own risk (to their
sanity and blood pressure, I mean!). One of my long-term aims is to learn
something about GUI programming, and then I'll probably try to develop a
saner interface to the same kernel functions.  Indeed, the project seems
to be large enough to help me to learn about many aspects of programming
- and I also have the idea of reading a book with a title something like
'Seven Languages in Seven Weeks' (yes - by Bruce A. Tate), and trying to
re-implement the project in as many languages as possible (possibly even
including C++, which gives me the willies); but Python appeals to me the
most to start with, and there's plenty for me to learn about it before I
start thinking of being ... er ... unfaithful to it with other languages.

I'll only learn if I'm willing to expose my code to criticism - even
ridicule and contempt, on occasion - but trying to do /all/ my work in
public would almost certainly inhibit my creativity just as much as my
perversity, so I'm not exactly eager to do it!  My natural inclination
is to be silent and secretive, but that's probably part of why I've
never learned to program well (or indeed to do anything else well).

I probably rambled on too much there (on the Net I've often tended to
overcompensate for my silence), but the gist of it is that if people
/want/ to try out my peculiar code for themselves, they're welcome to
- in a way, I'd be sort of flattered by the interest (no-one at the
Beebotron seemed interested in trying it, but then, it's not a forum
for programmers, although there are some there, who maintain it) - but
I'm not actually writing it with public acceptability in mind, and it
would inhibit me quite severely to have to do so (at this early stage,
anyway).

I found last night that I'd written more about it at the Beebotron in
May than I remembered.  There are some examples of user interaction,
timings and screenshots, particularly ...

here <http://beebotron.org/phorum/read.php?17,57317,57833#msg-57833>
(22 May) and ...

here <http://beebotron.org/phorum/read.php?17,57317,57935#msg-57935>
(26 May) ...

in a thread that I started on 8 May:

<http://beebotron.org/phorum/read.php?17,57317>
"Thoughts about designing scripts for radio listening"

But I'm changing the command-line user interface a LOT - in order to
experiment freely with some still-vague notions about what 'objects'
are - so the newer version might not actually be 'improved' in some
ways!