December 2005
3 posts
2 tags
Why Python?
I first heard about Python from a roommate about 5 or 6 years ago. He was putting together a presentation for some Bio-informatics people, and was going to go over the basics of Python programming as its very popular in the scientific community. I didn’t give it much though as I was mainly using Perl at the time for any programming work, and the white space was of course somewhat of a put-off.
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3 tags
Handling Form data w/Formencode+SQLObject Redux
In a prior post on handling form data I covered how to easily populate a form using FormEncode/SQLObject and validate/save the data.
One of the things I noted was that I had to take the HTML form output first, and use htmlfill with it to populate it with defaults and errors before displaying. This required some extra lines I wasn’t to thrilled with in the controller. After an evening of...
5 tags
Is Rails a DSL? What is a DSL, and is it possible...
I keep seeing blogs and blog comments pop up with some very odd notions. Many of these are summed up in this comment from a recent post by Tim on Ruby books
“It’s doubtful that the Python folks can come up with anything as compelling (or elegant) as Rails. Why? Because Ruby is so good at creating Domain Specific Langauges (DSLs). Ruby’s anonymous code blocks are a big part of what enables DSLs...