The May issue of Python Magazine is now online! Obviously things fell a bit behind schedule this month, as I am writing this five days into the month of June. But with all of the excitement surrounding the publisher's flagship annual conference last month — php|tek 2009 in Chicago — it was certainly better that the magazine slip late than that delays interfere with an event which drew a couple of hundred people to learn more about quality software development.

What can you look forward to reading? This issue worked out as a balance between community news and several sophisticated technical articles on using Python better. The technical articles include:

• A tutorial on how to customize sorting under Python 3 if you had been in the habit of using the cmp parameter under previous versions of Python.
• A guide to using repoze.who and repoze.what in your WSGI application stack to secure your web site.
• An introduction to programming graphical user interfaces (GUIs) using the popular PyGTK module, in our regular “Welcome to Python” column.
• And, finally, a guide to how basic Python types are transformed when you use PyObjC to build applications on your Mac.

Balancing these highly technical articles are three features focused on the Python community. Catherine Devlin writes about running the PyOhio conference last year, an event which will happen again this July. Steve Holden offers thoughts on the economic downturn and Python. And, finally, I cap it all off with a rousing editorial urging celebration now that Guido is “tiring”, if not “retiring”, from Python — as he announced at this year's PyCon — since this signals that Python is now complete and can be confidently built upon as a stable platform for permanent application development.

As usual, I hope you will consider a subscription, which will not only give you immediate access to the current issue online, but can also provide you with printed copies of future issues that you can leave on the breakroom table at work or on the coffee table of a friend. Use the magazine to show the skeptical that Python is not a toy, but a professional language that attracts the very best in talent, in software development practices, and in community. Enjoy!