Letters

“Hacking an Industry” by Doc Searls in the November issue is a very well-written and appropriate article—it is the stuff I tend to look for and reference in Linux Journal!

—Russell McOrmond russell@flora.ottawa.on.ca

May I blush? Thank you. —Doc Searls, doc@ssc.com

I just wanted to correct one error in the interview with Guido van Rossum in your December issue. Guido thought the KDE/Qt Python bindings weren't being actively maintained. That's just not the case. Phil Thompson very actively develops the PyKDE/PyQt bindings—the PyQt bindings even work with the Windows Qt. It's a very slick tool kit, very easy to use, and since it's based on an object-oriented tool kit, fits very neatly into the Python way of programming.

The bindings are at http://www.river-bank.demon.co.uk/software/, and you can find a tutorial on my web site: www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt/python/tutorial.html. There's also a mailing list at http://mats.gmd.de/mailman/listinfo/pykde/.

—Boudewijn Rempt boud@rempt.xs4all.nl

Best article (“Millennial Musings”, Peter Salus, December 1999) I've seen so far on the subject—reset that one VCR, and it will be good for another century—that is what a lot of the answers will be; just reset whatever needs it.

There is one more thing: in January 2000, we will start building the Y2.1K problem. Really, it's because two-digit dates cover a man's lifetime.

—Dan Tillmanns tillmanns@earthlink.net

I was just reading Doc Searls' “Linux for Suits” column in the December LJ. That's it; it's over; I can go home now—he is generating ESR-like sound bites better than mine. In particular:

That's so good, it gives me goosebumps. I wish I'd thought of it first.

—Eric S. Raymond esr@thyrsus.com

Thanks so much for the great interview with Guido van Rossum (Dec. '99) which has sparked my interest in Python.

Not only was the article entertaining, but he and writer Phil Hughes confirmed my own first impressions of that other language, Perl: “All the speed of BASIC combined with the readability of FORTH.”

A quick visit to the newsgroup comp.lang.python this morning also proved interesting: there's an attitude of helpfulness there that is a real breath of fresh air after all the smoke and flame in the *perl groups.

I hope LJ will continue to publish articles featuring a wide variety of programming languages. No single language is right for everyone, so when it comes to choosing one, a few examples from actual users with real applications can be far more valuable than any number of man pages written by ace programmers who list their second language as “human”.

—Irv Mullins irv@ellijay.com