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Yahoo! Launches Python Developer Center

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Wed Aug 09, 2006 11:06 AM
from the snakes-on-a-page dept.
Businesses The Internet Yahoo! Programming IT Technology
SimonW writes "Yahoo! has launched a Python Developer Center as part of their Developer Network. The new site explains how to access Yahoo!'s many web service APIs using Python, and includes tutorials on using Python with REST, JSON, XML and RSS. The site joins Yahoo!'s existing developer centers for PHP and JavaScript."
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  • Javascript (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kevin_conaway (585204) on Wednesday August 09 2006, @11:13AM (#15874501) Homepage

    Python developer, I think this is great. I'm glad that Python is gaining more acceptance.

    If the quality is on par with their Javascript library, we're in for a real treat

      • You're not helping things. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Virak (897071) on Wednesday August 09 2006, @12:36PM (#15875154) Homepage
        If you want people to switch to Scheme, explain why they should and how it would benefit them, don't just say "lol ur language is teh sux, use mine". That's exactly the kind of stupid shit that gives Lisp users a reputation as a bunch of arrogant assholes.

        And yes, Scheme is a great language, and I love it, but it's not the best thing for every situation. If you truly think one language is the best choice for everything, then you're a total idiot.

        Also, no even slightly popular browser supports client side scripting with Scheme, and most web hosts don't offer server-side scripting with it either.
          • And how exactly is this contradictory? I can be a Lisp user without being a stuck up ass who thinks that *their* language is the only one that anyone should ever use for anything.
      • Bah, Smalltalk is better than all of those.

        • I can't say I have specialized in it, but I have used it. If you are going to program with side effects (OO) it doesn't get any simpler. I could live with it. How can anyone explain the madness of Python's fashionability over smalltalk?

          • 1. There is no "Smalltalk". There are different sets of libraries, e.g. Squeak, F-Script, all based around the syntax and paradigm. 2. Smalltalk never became very popular, partly because at the time the speed boost of a lower level language was more noticeable than it is now. Python is also less fast than lower level languages, but that isn't as important now and Python has gotten a lot of momentum.
          • Python reached critical mass, SmallTalk did not. A language is not everything, there is also the tools, libraries, community etc. Python is not best at any one of those. But it is good in every one of those.

            Let's take an example:
            I don't like C++ as a language. But I much rather develop a Win32 database front-end in C++ Builder rather than Python. Why? Because this specific tool was perfected for that specific task with a proper IDE and a great framework. Likewise, there are tasks for which Python is the bes
      • The language is simpler than the others yet for more expressive and powerful. Learn something. Use it!

        Oh is it?

        Scheme with or without macros?

        Scheme without macros is a laughably weak language compared to Python.
        Scheme with macros can not be said to be simpler than Python.

        More expressive? Show me any good expressive Scheme program that can not be expressed with round-the-same-length Python program, that is also easier on the eyes?

        • The language where each programmer uses macros to try to reinvent their very own real object system,

          Some do. I use yasos which is part of slib. You must be a C++ person who doesn't like macros because one of the priests of strong typing told you not to. A pity. Macros are an irreplacable feature being forgotten now in dumbed down languages. Read Paul Graham's On Lisp someday and get clued in.

          real language syntax,

          ???

          real containers,

          Scheme supports Lists, vectors, and alists and iteration natively.

        • if you use the Python IDE it does; however, if you develop for Windows, and use Notepad++ or Notepad, it does not work fine.
          • Wrong, and though I'm redundant, I'll repeat it so it's visible in the thread. You can write Python in DOS edit, notepad, TextPad, anything on windows that saves as plain text, and as long as you are consistent with what you use for indentation (all tabs, or all spaces), it will work.
          • Many of us Pythoneers have been there. Exactly where you are, bitching about the "whitespace".
            Only after using it for a little while we understood that we can never go back.
            The way I resisted whitespace in the beginning now seems so stupid..

            There really is no real claim against significant whitespace except the knee-jerk reaction of ".. but .. but .. its just wrong!"

            If you actually try to use Python, you'll never want to go back to cluttering your visual space with unnecessary noise {}.

            There's always the ob
          • C/C++/Python/Perl/PHP/Javascript/ServersideJS/Jav a

            They're all good, they're all useful, and they're all readable (although Perl comes at the bottom of my list.)

            But your block-ending comment is inane. You can never know *what* block was ending (ie, what control or condition statement started the block) without scrolling up, indentation-dependant or curly-brace dependant. You must use *really* fancy closing brakets; the kind that actually contain meta-data on the block they're closing or something.

            I kinda li

  • Whython (Score:3, Interesting)

    by CopaceticOpus (965603) on Wednesday August 09 2006, @11:21AM (#15874546)
    It's pretty cool of Yahoo to provide so much to the dev community. It's definitely improved my feelings about the company.

    I wonder why they've made this foray into the Python world? I know they decided to focus on PHP a few years back. Did they find some tasks were easier to accomplish in Python? Or are they simply trying to reach out to another developer community?

    • 2004 (Score:2, Funny)

      by booch (4157)
      Python is so 2004. Everyone knows that Ruby is the current language du jour. Yahoo needs to catch up.

    • Re:Whython (Score:3, Informative)

      by carlivar (119811)
      yp.yahoo.com uses Python.

      • Did you honestly just compare giving up the name of a journalist to the attempted genocide of Jewish people? You are one brave... Oh, you posted AC. I take that back.

        No, providing a few dev tools does not make past mistakes 'better'. But it does show they can actually care.

  • Yawn. (Score:2, Funny)

    by JoeyLemur (10451)
    Wake me when they create a Ruby/Rails section.

    Guido! Let my whitespace go!

    • Re:Yawn. (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      > Wake me when they create a Ruby/Rails section.

      Snakes and a Train?

    • Whitespace (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 09 2006, @12:05PM (#15874893)

      I know everybody gets hung up on the whitespace thing when they look at Python. But you know what? Once you start actually coding in it for any significant amount of time, it's not a big deal. When you first start, I know you expect it to be really annoying, but that simply doesn't turn out to be the case. The supposed problem evaporates.

      Every time you hear anybody moan about Python's significant whitespace, ask them how long they've spent actually writing Python. You'll see the same thing as I do - that virtually everybody complaining has never given Python a chance, and that virtually everybody who has given Python a chance has realised that the significant whitespace isn't a big deal.

        • Like what?

          • Re:Whitespace (Score:2, Informative)

            by bhaberman (898289)
            No lambdas, no ternary operator (yes I know, not pythonic), no switch statement (think Ruby, not C++), scoping rules are wrong (for example, list comprehensions leak variables - C++ for loops don't!).

            Underscores! __init__ __new__ __getattr__ __setattr__ __len__ __getitem__ . . . .

            range(1,5) = [1, 2, 3, 4]

            The list goes on and on and on and on and on. Python has an incredible number of infuriating misfeatures for such a useful language.

            Python sort of pretends to be a functional language, and you can do a lot

      • Re:Yawn. (Score:2, Funny)

        by thryllkill (52874)
        I think you might be in for a looooooong sleep there buddy.
          • Pick one of the following:

            Abstraction || Versatility
            That's what I thought too. I was very skeptical until I actually started learning rails. I now see why it is getting very popular, because it takes advantage of some of the unique aspects of Ruby to blur that dividing line. It actually provides both abstraction and versatility. You get a lot of help out of the box or through an increasing number of plugins, but there are also convenient hooks to customize apps in pretty much any way you want.

  • Howto (Score:4, Informative)

    by kevin_conaway (585204) on Wednesday August 09 2006, @11:35AM (#15874651) Homepage

    Furthermore, unlike their previous offerings, they have released little new code here. The only code they have released is an API to their search engine. The rest seem to be HOWTOs on how to python to access their services.

    Still good info though. Thanks

  • Value of their feeds? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by halosfan (691623) on Wednesday August 09 2006, @11:42AM (#15874709) Homepage

    While browsing through this, I noticed the following in ther Weather RSS feed page:

    The feeds are provided free of charge for use by individuals and non-profit organizations for personal, non-commercial uses.

    and then

    Yahoo! also reserves the right to require you to cease distributing these feeds at any time for any reason.

    So, while it's cool and all, is there any value to using their weather RSS feed (and I assume it's similar with other services), beyond my ability to play with them? I mean, even I'm not making any money off it, presumably, if I put the effort in accessing those feeds, I expect them to be available to me in the future? Or do they provide a paid-for version for this?

    • Yahoo! also reserves the right to require you to cease distributing these feeds at any time for any reason.

      So, while it's cool and all, is there any value to using their weather RSS feed (and I assume it's similar with other services), beyond my ability to play with them? I mean, even I'm not making any money off it, presumably, if I put the effort in accessing those feeds, I expect them to be available to me in the future? Or do they provide a paid-for version for this?

      I would imagine that its just

    • Re:Value of their feeds? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by 0racle (667029) on Wednesday August 09 2006, @11:59AM (#15874835)
      I expect them to be available to me in the future
      Why? It's their service, they could stop it or move it to a pay service at any time. Guess what, anyone providing a free service could do that even (gasp) Google. They could make GMail a pay service tomorrow if they felt like it.

      Your expectations seem to be ever so slightly unrealistic.
      • I didn't say anywhere I want them to provide their service to me for free. If it makes it easier to understand, assume I'm willing to pay money to subscribe to this service in exchange to the guarantee that it would be available to me for a year. Can I do that? Or all they provide is the free version that they can discontinue at any time for any reason?

  • Great, and good packages (Score:5, Informative)

    by masklinn (823351) <[ten.nnilksam] [ta] [gro.todhsals]> on Wednesday August 09 2006, @12:20PM (#15875030)

    Not only did they release a nice guide, but the guide is actually good: while the first XML library they talk about in XML parsing is xml.dom.minidom, they also explain how to use the XML API with effbot's ElementTree (and link to both ElementTree and cElementTree), which is more than likely the best Python XML library. And the recommend UFP (Universal Feed Parser) for RSS parsing.

    The worst thing you can say about them is that they did their homework, kudos to the Yahoo guys.

  • I'm just glad they did this ahead of any Ruby foray. Online, all I hear anymore is loud rowdy Ruby peope and anti-Python people, some of whom are the same. At the bookstore, I easily see two times more Python books than Ruby. This tells me that despite the online hype, there's still a lot of quiet interest in Python and it isn't that Ruby or anything else is pushing us aside, it's that we're not very vociferous.

    Which is fine with me. As long as Yahoo and other outlets keep that in mind that is. Python is no
    • Ruby on Rails is only at v1.1. Thus the lack of books. When browsing Amazon however it seems like there are several scheduled to be released this fall.
    • Python is used commercially all over the place. My friend bought Civilization IV, and I was astounded to see it supports game modifications via Python. Meanwhile, I read an interview with the guy behind PyQt, the Python bindings for Trolltech's Qt library, and he said he has over 200 commercial users - including Disney, Pixar, and Industrial Light and Magic. All of these companies use Python and Qt, an extremely powerful app development environment if I've ever seen one. It seems like a natural match.

      So the
    • No doubt there's still a lot of room for Python, but since you brought up the bookstore metric: http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2005/12/ruby_boo k_sales_surpass_python.html [oreilly.com]
      • In the interest of being fair, Ruby is the current hype language and hasn't had much in the way of books until recently, of course book sales are going to be way up. I would expect them to die down a bit as the language reaches whatever natural saturation level it is going to hit.

        I also am having a hard time recalling any good OReilly Python books that came out recently. That may have something to do with this as well.

  • Its sort of ironic that Guido van Rossum, the creator of Python, now works at Yahoo's competitor (Google) [slashdot.org].

    • Re:How refreshing! (Score:4, Funny)

      by Daytona955i (448665) <flynnguy24 AT yahoo DOT com> on Wednesday August 09 2006, @11:30AM (#15874613)
      Yes, because it's not like google [google.com] has anything like this [google.com] available. [google.com]

    • Re:How refreshing! (Score:3, Insightful)

      by LnxAddct (679316)
      Because Google's Summer of Code, or code.google.com or, more importantly, code.google.com/hosting weren't enough? The hundred patches that Google gave back to Wine after getting Wine to work with Picasa, or the many other libraries and APIs that Google provides. What Yahoo is doing is great, but you're not giving Google nearly enough credit.
      Regards,
      Steve

      • Re:How refreshing! (Score:5, Interesting)

        by y5 (993724) on Wednesday August 09 2006, @11:46AM (#15874733) Homepage

        What Yahoo is doing is great, but you're not giving Google nearly enough credit.

        You might be right. But I've had the chance to use the Web API's for Yahoo, Google, and MSN. Yahoo's Web Search API has been much easier to use than Google's or MSN's. I know there are many other API's to use than just web search, but I've been impressed with what I've seen from Yahoo, more so than from the others.

        Direction is everything, and you have to admit Yahoo has been moving in the right direction lately. Here's to hoping they don't lose focus of what's giving them such good publicity! =)

    • While their competitors are saying "do no evil", Yahoo seems to be living it.

      Need I remind you about the X10 popups? That caused me to switch my home page over to Google and have never, ever looked back.

      Perhaps Yahoo is just playing catchup to google with crap like search.yahoo.com and now this. Seems like they are no longer innovating but they are just copying.

      Seen their new Mail client? Fully Ajax driven. Hmmm. Gmail anyone?

      • While their competitors are saying "do no evil", Yahoo seems to be handing dissidents over to the authorities without hesitation.

        Uhh.. Not to nit-pick... ok, yes, to nit-pick (sorry!), I think Yahoo's competitors are saying "Don't be evil" [google.com] not "Do no evil".

        You're not the only one making this mistake [googlefight.com].

    • The great and mighty Anonymous wrote:
      Launch...?
      Python....?
      Snakes on a Plane!!!

      Yep, it's another Product Placement deal. Pretty shameless -- all the searches shown in the movie start at yahoo.com, and yahoo.com plugs the movie right down to the programmer level. Pitiful.

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