I’ve heard Python is “wrist-friendly”. It is! So, basically I needed to create a quick application to merge some text files into an HTML template to update a web site with new content easily. (Yes, I’ve heard of dynamic web sites… but didn’t need anything but relatively static pages.) So, I tried to do it in Excel, and I figured that would be pretty straightforward, but Excel 2007 is WAY too good at “reformatting” HTML text, and so it always “corrected” what I wanted to do. So, I figured, why not give Python a shot. Granted, it took me longer to write than if I’d done it in C# or Ruby, but how else does one learn…
After a few minutes of downloading ActiveState’s Python, I fired it up, and had a tool to read through a directory, picking out all the .content files and merging them with my HTML template. It took me a while to get familiar with the feeling of the language, but a few minutes later, I had it up and running. It only takes about a quarter second to create the 15 web pages. As far as wrist friendly goes, it took about 8 lines of code. Not bad. So, I figured I’d go the next step, and FTP the files to the web site. At another 6 lines of code, I had it uploading to the site via FTP. Total time in: less than 2 hours. Maybe I could have done it in C# faster, but this was quite the ride.
But I’m addicted to the .NET Framework, so… next stop: IronPython!
UPDATE: Those who know me, know I’m a big fan of the Ruby language. But IronRuby has taken so long to “bake” and IronPython is nearly hitting their 2.0 release. So… off to Python, for a try!
