Lots of releases
A lot is happening in the Python world right now:
VIFF 0.4 was released two weeks ago. It has the usual number of bug fixes and introduces new asymmetric commands. This means that you can write MPC programs where only a subset of the players give or receive output.
Mercurial 1.0 has been released! I have been a happy Mercurial user for about a year now, and I must say that I’m very impressed with the speed and flexibility it offers. Subversion was simpler and cleaner than CVS, and Mercurial is even simpler, yet more powerfull. I strongly suggest that you consider using Mercurial for your next project, it is already used by large players like Mozilla and Solaris.
Twisted 8.0 is also freshly released. We are using Twisted in VIFF, and I have been very happy with it. The Twisted code has this nice property that when you read it you realize that there is no magic going on and that things are generally written the way you would expect them to be.
Happy hacking!
Mikkel:
The basic concepts behind Mercurial are quite simple, but I have to say it still takes a little while to get used to. But after having seen how well you can work with it (once you get used to it :) ), I would definitely choose it over Subversion for future projects.
As for programming languages, I guess I still like C. I don’t know why, but maybe it’s because you can pretty much do what you want, and you can make the most spectacular bugs. For some reason, these bugs have been both the most frustrating and the most fun experiences I’ve had while programming. Why am I writing this? Shoo! You, yes you, myself, oh no!
26 March 2008, 6:34 pmMartin Geisler:
You’re perfectly right about Mercurial! I always find it hard to remember how I learned something after having done so, but with Mercurial I remember how I for the longest time tried not to use the MQ extension since it seemed awfully complex. But now that I have played around with it I see that it is quite useful, even for the simple stuff I use it for.
I have not yet made the jump to versioned patch queues (where you put the patches themselves under version control), even though people on the Mercurial mailinglist have explained that is very useful too… I guess it will come one day :-)
As for C, then I guess I have a love/hate relationship with it: I really love the idea that you can push the machine all the way and achieve the best performance possible. But on the other hand, then I also love the power I get from a language like Python where I feel I can code much faster. It may be because I have greater experience with Python.
A language like Java falls somewhere in the middle: you get neither optimal performance nor any great coding speed, at least not when I program in it…
26 March 2008, 8:09 pm