Programming Python, 3rd Edition

24.1. "That's the End of the Book, Now Here's the Meaning of Life" Well, the meaning of Python, anyway. In the introduction to this book, I promised that we'd return to the issue of Python's roles after seeing how it is used in practice. So in clo...

24.2. "Something's Wrong with the Way We Program Computers" This has to be one of the most overused lines in the business. Still, given time to ponder the big picture, most of us would probably agree that we're not quite "there" yet. Over the last...

24.3. The "Gilligan Factor" It has been suggested, tongue in cheek, that if there were a patron saint of software engineers, the honor would fall on none other than Gilligan, the character in the pervasively popular American television show o...

24.4. Doing the Right Thing Of course, the Gilligan factor is an exaggeration, added for comic effect. But few would argue that the bottleneck between ideas and working systems has disappeared completely. Even today, the cost of developing softwar...

24.5. Enter Python If this book has achieved its goals, you should by now have a good understanding of why Python has been called a "next-generation scripting language." Compared with similar tools, it has some critical distinctio...

24.6. But What About That Bottleneck? Back to our original question: how can the act of writing software be made easier? At some level, Python is really "just another computer language." It's certainly true that Python the language doesn't represe...

24.7. On Sinking the Titanic In short, Python is really more than a language; it implies a development philosophy. The concepts of prototyping, rapid development, and hybrid applications certainly aren't new. But while the benefits of s...

24.8. So What's "Python: The Sequel"? As we've seen in this book, Python is a multifaceted tool, useful in a wide variety of domains. What can we say about Python to sum up here? In terms of some of its best attributes, the Python language...

24.9. In the Final Analysis . . . I hope this book has taught you something about Python, both the language and its roles. Beyond this text, there is really no substitute for doing some original Python programming. Be sure to grab a reference sour...

24.10. Postscript to the Second Edition (2000) One of the luxuries of updating a book like this is that you get an opportunity to debate yourself, or at least your opinions, from years past. With the benefit of five years' retrospect, I'd like to ...

24.11. Postscript to the Third Edition (2006) And now here I am in the future again, so I get to add a few more words. 24.11.1. Proof of Concept Some 5 years after writing the second edition of this book, and 10 years after the first, perhaps ...