Getting involved

[Sophie Sperner]

Dear community,

Let me ask here please. I'm a first-year PhD student in Ireland. My
background is in mathematics, though I'm going to stream my career
into programming with Python, Java and C++ languages. I have some good
experience with C++ what allowed me to have a presentation in Europe
quite recently - I participated in an open-source cloud computing
project. I used Python a little bit in that project, though mainly it
was in C++.

I was reading a beautiful "Thinking in Java" book this summer while
looking for a PhD. I have no experience in Java. I learned some Python
while writing a website based on Django. I know some other auxiliary
tools like Git, SVN, SQL, XML and javascript.

Now...

I really want to find a job, but there is no interesting job on the
market or my skills are not enough to get one. So I really want to
learn Python and Java in parallel by reading books (have already
chosen proper ones), searching google (got used to it) and most
important writing code and thus I think to participate in an open-
source project again.

Could you please list me 2 or 3 projects in Python and/or Java which
are currently active (vivid) and useful?

Thank you.

 

[Chris Angelico]

Could you please list me 2 or 3 projects in Python and/or Java which
are currently active (vivid) and useful?

Easiest way to find a project to join would be to go to SourceForge,
Google Code, GitHub, BitBucket, or any other large hosting facility,
and browse the project list. Soon as you find one that makes you go
"That is SO COOL!", start reading their bugtracker. There's always
something to play with!

ChrisA

 

[Andrew Berg]

Could you please list me 2 or 3 projects in Python and/or Java which
are currently active (vivid) and useful?

If you really want to mix Python and Java, you could help the Jython
project update to 3.x. One thing the Python community as a whole could
really use is help transitioning to 3.x. If helping the alternate
implementations (Jython, IronPython, PyPy) get to 3.x isn't quite what
you're looking to do, look for a major project that needs to be ported
to 3.x. I can't think of any off the top of my head since I haven't paid
much attention to projects that don't support 3.x, but I'm sure there
are many.

 

[Sophie Sperner]

Easiest way to find a project to join would be to go to SourceForge,
Google Code, GitHub, BitBucket, or any other large hosting facility,
and browse the project list. Soon as you find one that makes you go
"That is SO COOL!", start reading their bugtracker. There's always
something to play with!

ChrisA

I tried github, but the description of the every project is so small
that I can't understand it.. I browsed several pages of github and
closed my browser - I have not found anything. I hope someone with a
project in mind can write me here. Thanks.

 

[Sophie Sperner]

Jython, don't want to migrate something.

Then Django is very boring project.

 

[Stefan Behnel]

Andrew Berg, 07.01.2012 12:16:

Could you please list me 2 or 3 projects in Python and/or Java which
are currently active (vivid) and useful?

If you really want to mix Python and Java, you could help the Jython
project [...]

A big issue that I have with Jython is that its ElementTree XML parser
support is so increadibly slow. It could seriously benefit from a better
integration between the Java XML support it uses and the Python ElementTree
module that it inherits from CPython. Considering that XML is a requirement
in many real world applications, especially in the Java world, you (Sophie)
might be interested in adding all three of Python, Java and XML to your
toolbox at the same time, while also learning how to benchmark and optimise
Java and Python code. I think that would pretty quickly get you up to speed
with real world software development.

Stefan

 

[Sophie Sperner]

Andrew Berg, 07.01.2012 12:16:

If you really want to mix Python and Java, you could help the Jython
project [...]

A big issue that I have with Jython is that its ElementTree XML parser
support is so increadibly slow. It could seriously benefit from a better
integration between the Java XML support it uses and the Python ElementTree
module that it inherits from CPython. Considering that XML is a requirement
in many real world applications, especially in the Java world, you (Sophie)
might be interested in adding all three of Python, Java and XML to your
toolbox at the same time, while also learning how to benchmark and optimise
Java and Python code. I think that would pretty quickly get you up to speed
with real world software development.

Stefan

Sounds interesting. Are you a developer or user of Jython? Can you
tell me
more about this particular issue? Or it is easier to check jython.org?

 

[Stefan Behnel]

Sophie Sperner, 07.01.2012 13:01:

Sounds interesting. Are you a developer or user of Jython?

More of a user. I'm actually developing lxml, a fast XML library for
CPython that reimplements ElementTree. When working with Java, I try to
keep using ElementTree in Jython because it gives me a simple to use XML
interface, but it's sometimes hard to defend its use because the parser
part is so slow - several times slower than lxml would run here.

Can you tell me more about this particular issue? Or it is easier to
check jython.org?

Here's a bit of a discussion:

http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=24946690

The current integration is more at a "make it work" than a "make it fast"
level. Specifically, the "expat" replacement module has several problems,
also at an algorithmic level, that make it slow.

I did some benchmarking, actually not on Jython, but at least comparing
CPython and PyPy:

http://blog.behnel.de/index.php?p=210

I posted the benchmarking code here:

http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2011-December/115111.html

You can use the attached script to see for yourself. It should also run on
Jython, so you can use it to compare the performance of ElementTree in
CPython and Jython on your own machine.

That being said, yes, I'd suggest discussing this on a Jython related list.
I cross-posted it to the jython-devel mailing list, please discuss anything
related to Jython development over there.

Stefan

 

[Antoine Pitrou]

Hello,

Let me ask here please. I'm a first-year PhD student in Ireland. My
background is in mathematics, though I'm going to stream my career
into programming with Python, Java and C++ languages. I have some good
experience with C++ what allowed me to have a presentation in Europe
quite recently - I participated in an open-source cloud computing
project. I used Python a little bit in that project, though mainly it
was in C++.

[...]

Could you please list me 2 or 3 projects in Python and/or Java which
are currently active (vivid) and useful?

CPython itself - the reference and most used implementation - is written partly
in Python (most of the stdlib is) and partly in C. It is easy to find things to
do even without touching C. You could take a look:
http://docs.python.org/devguide/

Regards

Antoine.

 

[Eric Snow]

Hello,

Let me ask here please. I'm a first-year PhD student in Ireland. My
background is in mathematics, though I'm going to stream my career
into programming with Python, Java and C++ languages. I have some good
experience with C++ what allowed me to have a presentation in Europe
quite recently - I participated in an open-source cloud computing
project. I used Python a little bit in that project, though mainly it
was in C++.

[...]

Could you please list me 2 or 3 projects in Python and/or Java which
are currently active (vivid) and useful?

CPython itself - the reference and most used implementation - is written partly
in Python (most of the stdlib is) and partly in C. It is easy to find things to
do even without touching C. You could take a look:
http://docs.python.org/devguide/
+1


Regards

Antoine.

 

[moijes12]

Easiest way to find a project to join would be to go to SourceForge,
Google Code, GitHub, BitBucket, or any other large hosting facility,
and browse the project list. Soon as you find one that makes you go
"That is SO COOL!", start reading their bugtracker. There's always
something to play with!

ChrisA

Try out at TwistedMatrix. You can start by fixing some easy tickets.