>François
>
>What is Python and how do you get it and learn it ?
>
>Ed

Python is a minimalist language that has been developped by Guido Van Rossum and is now a trendsetter in the linux community.

But Python has more to offer than Unix system administration. It is a capable multi-platform tool that you can use for a lot of different activities.

It is not in my opinion a tool to develop graphical front-ends as
it still lacks the tools to develop UI intensive applications.

vb, vfp, pb, Delphi are definitely better at that. I expect this to continue and i do not feel a need for a replacement to those tried existing tools.

We use python as an alternative to foxisapi, west-wind, asp or coldfusion to deliver internet apps. I never bought into ms internet platforms. ASP looks greats as long as you build relatively simple data-bound apps. But when it comes to delivering complex application with COM integration and more, it becomes complex while remaining completely proprietary. Not a nice combination!

We run our current simple python scripting on a W2K+Apache combo. You can do a lot with plain simple python cgi scripting and we can run this on *nix whenever we wish to...

Those tools (including python, *nix, are open source (ie provided with their source code. It might not look very useful but that means that :
- software resource is essentially free (including the costly server OS),
- the editor can not and will not try to lock you up,
- developpers control the software not those disastrous marketing powerpointers.

The way to develop your first python app :
- download and install win32 python from activestate.com
- download a recent copy of mxODBC (an absolute necessity if you are a vfper),

Then read one intro book (my recommendation O'Reilly "Learning Python")
and try to manipulate your data from a small python scripts,

At this stage if you like it ...you might decide to:

1) build, debug and run a cgi application in python on a workstation
or a small server,

2) later you will move up onto more serious production platforms
including in-server python modules such as
mod_python (a multiplatform equiv. of foxisapi that we currently implement)
or servlet managers such as webware.

In this environment the costs are in the costly o'reilly books and
in the the time it takes to get information
(http://groups.google.com has been very helpful to start with).

You will not find anything like UT in the world of open source.

Why? most of the pythonist are still in the *nix area... impressive
at programming, poor at communicating, but their tools are pretty
much better than their newsgroups (comp.lang.python) and mailing
lists.

If you wish some propaganda (called advocacy there) read in
some python sites such as python.org (the official support site).

But be prepared not to like everything there. Despite python
beeing an oecumesistic platform with roots in the mac environments
and an active win32 userbase, it is still dominated by the *nix
techy community and a bit rough in style and talk.

Python still misses a pleasant IDE. But if you feel that a smart language
+ a poor IDE is more useful than a badly devised language with a great IDE,
pay python a visit.

Good luck

François