My first issue of Python Magazine is out!
After two months of being tutored in the arts of magazine publishing
by retiring editor Doug Hellmann,
March has been my first month in the Editor-in-Chief chair
of Python Magazine.
It is exciting to have my first issue come out
while I am here at PyCon 2009
in Chicago.
I am talking with other programmers,
meeting new friends,
and, of course, eyeing everyone I meet
with the question of whether they might be suitable
author or technical editor material.
I am especially excited about our cover issue this month!
“Commanding Robots with LEGO Mindstorms” shows how simple it is
for a Python program to manipulate
both a binary on-the-wire protocol
and binary calls into a Windows DLL,
all without ever having to leave the Python standard library!
For me, this is the real magic of Python:
that it not only introduced an incomparably clean syntax
and tidy language feature set,
but that developers of both the standard library
and of third-party Python modules
are committed to creating vastly simple interfaces
for what in other languages can be very difficult problems.
The article is a great guide
to using best practices and powerful tools
when linking Python to other protocols and libraries.
Other articles include
“Getting Started with Message Queues”
which talks about how to arrange your application
around a central queue so that you can distribute expensive work
across dozens of machines;
“Statically Analyzing Python Code”
by the author of PySmell
about how Python's built-in code parsing tools
can be used to start investigating powerful ideas
like type inferencing;
and “Using Python for Pedigree Analysis”
that is yet another success story from the world of science,
about how Python —
which began to be adopted very early in its history
by working scientists —
continues to move into new areas
wherever science needs a clean and powerful language
to replace the tangle of low-level code and temporary scripts
that traditionally characterize systems
written by those whose first expertise is not software design.
Throw in our several regular columns
and my own monthly editorial,
and you have a complete issue.
(I think it was while writing the editorial
that it really sank in that I am now an Editor-in-Chief!)
I hope you will consider subscribing,
and I especially hope you will subscribe to the print edition —
for only an extra dollar a month,
you will receive an actual, physical artifact
that you can leave in the breakroom at work,
share with a friend who wants to explore Python,
or leave at a client's site to expose their own employees
to the world of Python and its community.
And, say hello to me here at PyCon!
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