[Tutor] Born to be free
Alan, Yes, I meant that many things are effectively free these days. Some things are required to be distributed free by CopyLeft. But you can pay a nominal fee for say a CD of the software. You can pay for a bundle like you describe, perhaps including some consulting or warranties to keep you updated or who knows what? I have been using a slew of programs lately in work for someone else who gave me access to software they paid for under some license. I mean statistical tools that are sold or licensed and have been around for ages. But I find I can cobble together my own programs and often find packages for free to do some parts. But as noted, I often have to process data that came from sources like SAS, MPLUS, STATA, SPSS and others. I often have to return the results of the calculations back in those formats. I have not felt the urge to buy the software but the day may come. My goal is to use a variety of tools that include R and Python unless the easiest path is ... I am not in the market for buying or selling such things so I simply admit my lack of encyclopedic memory and experience. I suggested that based on my knowledge, to date, I gather Python is mostly available for free and this might impact companies that wish to bend it to their needs rather than paying someone to give them an expensive tool. Many languages and other shared goods have ISO committees or Standards Bodies that document it or regulate changes. In the past, I often found companies like AT&T and HP attending all kinds of such bodies to influence the direction they take or be informed where they are headed. Some people have a photographic memory while some have a pornographic memory. Anyone with both is beyond dangerous đ -Original Message- From: Tutor On Behalf Of Alan Gauld via Tutor Sent: Thursday, November 22, 2018 7:54 PM To: tutor@python.org Subject: Re: [Tutor] origins bootstrapped. On 22/11/2018 06:05, Steven D'Aprano wrote: > I don't know of any non-free (free as in beer, or free as in speech) > implementations of Python. Can you elaborate? There are several commercial distributions (as opposed to implementations) of Python, that may be what Avi has in mind. Some of these are commercial IDEs that include python as part of an integrated bundle - I think Blackadder is one such - and others are just uber distros like Enthought Entropy(?) which is a "supported" distro for scientific work - rather like Anaconda. Others are in the Movie industry where it is either tied to a particular tool or again to a support arrangement. The implementations are the standard open source code but the distribution is paid for, with the value add either in the toolset, the packaging or the support. But maybe Avi means something different... -- Alan G Author of the Learn to Program web site http://www.alan-g.me.uk/ http://www.amazon.com/author/alan_gauld Follow my photo-blog on Flickr at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/alangauldphotos ___ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor ___ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor
[Tutor] A required question
Just to be different, and perhaps return to the purpose of this group, I have a question. Is there some functionality available in Python that you could put in the beginning of a program so it aborts with a message if the version of R being run is not acceptable? Let me elaborate. There seem to be new features added as you move up. I mean 2.2, 2.3, ⌠3.0 and so on. But there also seem to be features deprecated then removed. To make it crazier, some features are back-ported into later releases of 2.X while some features are activated only in you import the right things from __FUTURE__ . Add to that the fact that various modules may exist or not exist on your machine in your search PATH and they may import yet others, and it gets crazy. Even weirder is that you can probably download a missing file as the program runs and then import it and probably many other scenarios where you own program writes a module and then imports it! What I was thinking was the ability to do something like this: import ReChoir as require require.version(condition, before=True, after=False) require.modules(module list, recursive=True) require.os([âEunuchsâ, âWindblowsâ]) require.functionality(âprint3â) I hope you get the idea. Any one of the statements above might be made anywhere in your program but is best near the top of the main program perhaps after any imports from the dunder FUTURE. I am not designing it. I am giving a very silly example and also suggesting a possible scenario like this: if ! require( <> ): print(âSorry, your system is too primitive to use this snazzy software.â) print(âIn a moment, you will be re-directed to a dumber version writtenâ) print(âstone age tools. Please upgrade son.â print(ârunning program paleo.py for you with same arguments.â sleep(5) exit( os.system(<<<âcall to python to run paleo.py with same args using argv âŚâ>>>) ) So in some cases, you quit with a message saying why you quit. In the example at the end, you may call alternate functionality, perhaps a shell-script rather than python, that does something for them. In an extreme case, the script would download a later version of Python as a sort of bootstrap. đ Yes, tons of holes in here and implementation details. For example, some features are only needed if the command line or data lead you down some path. No need to abort most of the time and not easy or even possible to see if you might need it. So is there anything interesting out there already, designed to not so much make python portable, but to prevent things from running and then dying in middle of something important. Yes, I know there is an assert command you can use and there are system variables you can query to see what version of Python you are running on what OS and so on. No doubt there are tools you can use to see if everything imported exists (maybe not the right file) somewhere in the path. The latter alone is a huge issue as there have been changes in how you import including some really odd ones where they broke old functionality. There may come a day when 2.X is as extinct as polio (stubbornly hanging in there as some refuse to vaccinate) but I do not foresee the march of changes slowing in 3.x, let alone 4.x^2 and beyond. Such a tool might make it easier for people to use new features with less fear. One more thought. Such a function set might simply try new features inside a âtryâ and catch the error so they can gracefully annoy the user with a snide remark and even tell them what is missing. For example a line with a := in it should fail everywhere now but might work later. An fâstringâ is not that old. A line using open() in an iterator context would fail somewhere back in 2.x. In theory, you can make a list of testable new features and even give them names you can ask for such as the âprint3â above. Why do I ask? I had a great day today except it followed a horrible day yesterday. I did a bunch of work in R but the main point could just as easily happen in Python. I wanted various packages to do various things. Some had broken for me in the last year or so and been replaced with something that refused to work. In English, it was supposed to take a linear model generated from data and calculate some predicted info from it and make a nice graph with lines showing the impact of another variable at the mean and +/- a standard deviation. The problem is that I had the latest version of R installed but some of the many packages required were not yet available or their dependencies were either not available or of the wrong date. This happens with Python modules too. With lots of research, I loaded some things from alternate places and backed up to older versions and then forward and eventually had a brainstorm of figuring out what to fee
Re: [Tutor] A required question
On 23/11/2018 05:34, Avi Gross wrote: > Just to be different, and perhaps return to the purpose of this group, Actually I think the higher level debate of Python's direction as a teaching language is entirely appropriate for this group. It kind of defines the group and and its current and future role. Whereas... > What I was thinking was the ability to do something like this: > > import ReChoir as require > > require.version(condition, before=True, after=False) > require.modules(module list, recursive=True) > require.os([âEunuchsâ, âWindblowsâ]) > require.functionality(âprint3â) I can see the logic but suspect discussion of new features is probably the preserve of the main Python list. If you can get traction there somebody might actually go ahead and write one! On the tutor list such matters are usually adequately covered by virtual environments etc. -- Alan G Author of the Learn to Program web site http://www.alan-g.me.uk/ http://www.amazon.com/author/alan_gauld Follow my photo-blog on Flickr at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/alangauldphotos ___ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor
Re: [Tutor] A required question
> On Nov 23, 2018, at 09:35, Alan Gauld via Tutor wrote: > > On 23/11/2018 05:34, Avi Gross wrote: >> What I was thinking was the ability to do something like this: >> >> import ReChoir as require >> >> require.version(condition, before=True, after=False) >> require.modules(module list, recursive=True) >> require.os([âEunuchsâ, âWindblowsâ]) >> require.functionality(âprint3â) > > I can see the logic but suspect discussion of new features is > probably the preserve of the main Python list. If you can get > traction there somebody might actually go ahead and write one! discussion of a ârequireâ library probably isnât necessary. Itâs pretty straightforward to include the logic using existing methods. For the version of python, test against sys.version_info For the modules, put your import calls in a try block and handle exceptions For the OS version, test against os.name or sys.platform The last one, âfunctionality,â is a bit vague. Probably another candidate for a try block. â David Rock da...@graniteweb.com ___ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor
