Python Development with Eclipse

As reported here earlier, Eclipse 3.0 was recently released to the computing public. While Eclipse is viewed primarilly as an integrated development environment for the Java programming language, it is actually far more flexible. The Eclipse Foundation has positioned Eclipse as a general purpose IDE, where plugins for each supported language are needed to cater to the language's specific needs. Therefore, the Java IDE is a separate package from Eclipse, etc.

To develop in Python with Eclipse, read through this article, from the folks at IBM developerworks. It discusses how to download and install the Python IDE plugin, and then goes over some of its features. Very cool!

PyBabble v0.1 Released

A few people have requested the source code for the chat server I mentioned about a week ago, so I bit the bullet and cleaned up the code a bit, wrote a README file for it, and here it is.

In the not too distant future, I plan on adding several features to it, such as multiple rooms, user lists, etc. Any comments and/or suggestions are always welcome! Furthermore, my chat server on port 2500 of www.shermanloan.com is still up.

Python Chat Server Beta

Well, I have finished the beta version of the chat program I mentioned yesterday. If you would like to give it a whirl, either use telnet or a MUD client and connect to www.shermanloan.com on port 2500. It is fairly rough around the edges, and sports a modest feature set:

• Allows the user to enter a login name upon connection.
• One wonderful room for that 'cozy' conversational feel.
• It works. Most of the time.

I will be adding some more features to the chat server in the very near future, such as multiple chat rooms and private messages. Eventually, I will be expanding this into some sort of MUD.

If anyone is interested in the code to the server, drop me an email and I'll be happy to put it up for your downloading pleasure.

Playing Around in Python

Python is a programming language which is interpreted, object-oriented and interactive. It is considered a high level language, most often compared to Perl, Tcl and Java. There are many excellent introductions to Python (both free and non-free), but I would recommend How to Think Like a Computer Scientist - Learning with Python as a great starting place. The Python for Beginners area of python.org contains many other on-line tutorials to sink your teeth into, if you so desire.

When learning a new language, I find it helpful to try and target a project and then dive into the language, trying to implement the project in the new language. Seeing as how python has a vast library of routines, I have decided to target a project involving non-trivial networking(a first for me). The first stage of the project will be a chat server, which will allow numerous connections from client machines (via telnet) and that will take the text sent by each client to the server and echo it to all connected clients (think IRC with one room, I guess).

In order to implement the chat server, I am using the asyncore and asynchat modules of the Python 2.2.3 library. Both of these modules originated in the Medusa project, which "is an architecture for building long-running, high-performance network servers in Python."

I should have the chat server completed in the next few days, and when I do, I'll post the information (and source code) here for all to browse.