Learning another language beginning with P

I arrived early at the SPA2008 conference so that I could attend a fast-paced (not my words!) workshop given by Nick Efford on Python and how it could be used to develop web applications. Having experience in using the other two P languages for the web (Perl and PHP), I was keen to see what made Python a better choice than the other two.

Nick started by covering the fundamentals of the language, explaining some of specific features of the language that were different to other languages including dynamic typing and the importance of layout as a way of implying structure (e.g. no } brackets for if statements, just ensure that the if body is indented). Clearly one of the strengths of Python is the ability to efficiently handle and operate on sets of data as tuples or lists.

After a explanation of OO-Python, a demonstration of the neat way that documentation can be created for classes and methods (embedding a method/class description in """) and a quick overview of the Standard Python libraries provided; Nick moved on to the various implementations of Python that are available including Jython (a Java version which currently lags behind the 'native' Python), IronPython (for .NET), CherryPy and Django.

Nick is obviously a fan of Django and demonstrated very quickly how a web-based application could be created quickly using the Django toolkit although I couldn't get it working on my Vista Laptop. One neat feature of Django that particularly impressed me, was the Admin interface which is automatically generated when you create a project. I also like the approach to documenting Django through the publication of both a paper and web-based book. Clearly I need a project to try and experience the power and efficiency of developing web-based applications using Django for real.

In summary, I felt that Nick had done a very good job at highlighting the advantages of Python and left me keen to try and experiment further, particularly with Django. At the end of the session, I left knowing a lot more about Python than before and I feel I will soon be able to add another language beginning with P to my kitbag knowing that there will be some applications where Python will make an excellent implementation language. It is also clear that within the SPA community, Python is a must-know language as there where many sessions in the conference were Python was cited as the language of choice to implement certain tasks.