Monday, June 21, 2004
Waiting for the phone to ring...
I spent the weekend at the North-West Office, sort-of on call. Nothing happened.
So long as you can mentally switch off (or at least, not be disturbed by) the part of your brain which is "waiting for the phone to ring", while leaving the device itself switched on, hanging around can be pretty pleasant. (should cue "The Stranglers" at this point)
I made time to catch up on some reading on the programming language "Python".
I've got to be prejudiced in its favour, simply by being a one-time "Monty Python" fan,
but that aside, I'm quite impressed. I particularly like the way Python allows introspection and the way it can cooperate with Java. Maybe I'm being naive but the Java/Jython mix looks like a marvelous way of combining the best features of compilation and interpretation.
It's ages since I've done any programming, so I've downloaded Jython and, armed with that, the Java SDK, a book and a couple of tutorials we'll see how far I get before I get distracted or manage to confuse myself.
So long as you can mentally switch off (or at least, not be disturbed by) the part of your brain which is "waiting for the phone to ring", while leaving the device itself switched on, hanging around can be pretty pleasant. (should cue "The Stranglers" at this point)
I made time to catch up on some reading on the programming language "Python".
I've got to be prejudiced in its favour, simply by being a one-time "Monty Python" fan,
but that aside, I'm quite impressed. I particularly like the way Python allows introspection and the way it can cooperate with Java. Maybe I'm being naive but the Java/Jython mix looks like a marvelous way of combining the best features of compilation and interpretation.
It's ages since I've done any programming, so I've downloaded Jython and, armed with that, the Java SDK, a book and a couple of tutorials we'll see how far I get before I get distracted or manage to confuse myself.
# posted by tom_gillies @ 12:31 PM 
