Noel Rappin Writes Here

The second part of my IBM Developerworks series on Google Web Toolkit is now online at http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/library/os-ad-gwt2/. This one focuses mostly on the Derby database, and features a really quick and dirty database-to-Java conversion tool. Enjoy.

This message showed up in the Manning Sandbox forum for wxPython In Action. After saying some nice things about the book, the poster has some suggestions: I would love to see an advanced volume covering topics such as XRC, using XML to define a screen layout; creating custom widgets… internationalization, and a full chapter or more expanding on chapter 5 “Creating your blueprint.” I find that… program organization is most important yet little seems to be written about it, for any programming language….

I’m happy to announce that Part One of my four part series on using Google Web Toolkit is now available at: http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-ad-gwt1/ This part focuses on creating a GUI front-end using GWT. In case you wonder about the lead time on these things, it was originally written in August, and slightly updated right before it was published. I think that the future part of the series will appear monthly. The next one is about using the Derby database as your back-end.

Let me promote this from the comment section – it’s not hard to find, it’s the only comment on the previous post. What is your favorite Python IDE? Your editor choices are interesting and valid but I wondered if you have a preffered IDE for Python and wxPython work? I may have covered this somewhere, either on this site, or in the Python 411 podcast interview. If so, I’m sorry.

Two tools I use all the time. Neither is free, and since my strong bias is to use free tools where possible, these are some really impressive editors. IntelliJ IDEA For all my Java needs. It’s got more features and is more usable than any other Java IDE out there. The only downsides are that it’s not free, and there are about a half-dozen keyboard shortcuts you have to get down before you achieve anything like full Zen mastery (well, and it could be nicer about the way it arranges tabs in the editor).

Hi. Miss me? Thought not. Well, I’ve been feeling increasingly guilty about not posting something here, especially as the comments continue to trickle in – we’re up to eight now that I’ve cleared off some comment spam! I’m going to boldly ignore the three partially written posts and do another round of publishing questions. How’s the wxPython book selling? Not bad. Got my first-ever royalty check a couple of weeks ago (actually, a royalty direct deposit).

Robin Dunn and I were interviewed for Ron Stevens’ excellent Python 411 podcast – you can download and listen to the .mp3 file here. It’s about 45 minutes long, which should mean that Ron used nearly all of the interview. Hope you like it. It was a lot of fun to do. Thanks again to Ron for having us on, and also for the very nice review of the book he wrote on Slashdot.

I’m pleased to be able to link to a new article: Build cross-platform GUIs using wxWidgets available on the IBM developerWorks site. The original title was “wxWorld”, and it’s a quick look at wxPython, the wxWidgets toolkit, and some of the other wxWidgets language bindings. I had some fun digging through the different language tools trying to create short wx programs in each. Hope you like it.

Of all the exciting ideas and revelations that came from Kent Beck’s original XP book, Test-First Programming has been the one that most significantly affected the way I work on a day-to-day basis. I love programming test-first. It’s a great way to take a large, amorphous task and solve it piece by piece. It’s also a nice morale boost – “Hey, I know that my code does nine things. Let’s go for ten…”

We interrupt Python week to bring you the following alternative programming rant. I know, Python week has sort of gone up in smoke. But one of our mottoes here is “Whenever a Hugo Award winning SF novelist writes a hyperbolic screed about BASIC in the public schools, 10 Print Hello will be there”. As a motto, it’s not very catchy. We’re working on it. As soon as I mentioned “Hugo Award winner”, “BASIC” and “hyperbolic screed” many of you were probably able to quickly deduce that the author is David Brin, here on Salon wondering what happened to BASIC (you’ll have to watch an ad to view the article):