Software

This Python programming cookbook lives up to the standard set by the excellent Perl Cookbook. In addition, this book is associated with a website where the programming recipes were originally collected from Python users. The website continues to grow and collect new recipes and thus represents a great resource for Python programmers.

A good reference to the fast-changing programming language Python. My one complaint is that the type is too small.

This is a fairly good introduction to the Python programming language. Its organization, however, makes it hard to use when you just want to refresh your memory about a particular detail you have forgotten.

This is a nice introduction to the Zope web publishing system, the system used to create this website. The currently published edition is a bit out of date, however, so you might try the the online version.

Zope is a python-based object system with a web-based interface. It’s a lot of fun to work in, though I’m only beginning to scratch the surface of all its features.

A summary of the UNIX design philosophy, this book is a bit out of date and needs a more abstract and less dogmatic second edition.

I was rather disapointed by ‘The UNIX Philosophy’ (TUP). First of all, the book feels out of date. This feeling is partly due to the fact that TUP was published in 1995 and thus many of the examples are anachronistic. However, the datedness of TUP also stems from a second flaw – some of the tenets of the UNIX philosophy outlined in the book are too concrete and thus appear to conflict with some present-day practices which many ‘UNIX people’ would not, I think, consider improper. Finally, the book sometimes presents practical (and thus adaptable) design principles as unshakeable articles of faith in the UNIX Religion.