News

• Van Rossum: Python is not too slow

  Guido van Rossum created the Python language, which is one of a multitude of popular dynamic languages available these days, used by organizations like Google and NASA. Last Sunday, van Rossum, a staff software engineer at Google, presented at the PyCon conference in Silicon Valley, then talked with InfoWorld Editor at Large Paul Krill, elaborating on Python and responding to critics.

• Google programming languages failing to gain traction

  Oracle, Microsoft, and Apple all have a programming language ranked prominently in an industry index that monitors language use, but Google's efforts have yet to yield results, according to an official with Tiobe, which publishes the monthly Tiobe Programming Community Index.

• Heroku, Engine Yard bolster language support on clouds

  Platform-as-a-service cloud vendors Heroku and Engine Yard have been branching out to accommodate more developers by backing more programming languages.

• Objective-C, C#, D language: Winners in programming popularity

  Objective-C, used for developing Apple iOS applications, climbs to No. 6 in the monthly Tiobe Programming Community index for most popular programming languages, after being ranked at number 8 a year ago. Also posting gains, C# rose to No. 4, a jump of two spots a year ago, while PHP dropped from No. 4 at this time last year to No. 5.

• Need open source Django CRM? Cuddle up to Koalix

  CRM is an application with a long history of open source development, with many projects written the PHP language. However, a Swiss developer has released one of the first open source CRM systems developed with the Django Python framework.

• Local students hack up Facebook alternatives

  A group of high school students will today unveil four alternatives to the popular Facebook social networking service as part of a Sydney University summer school projects, in part sponsored by Google.

• Python 3.2 eases concurrent development

  The next version of the widely used Python programming language will offer greater support for writing multithreaded applications, a challenging duty for an increasing number of programmers in this age of multicore processors.

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  7 programming languages on the rise

  In the world of enterprise programming, the mainstream is broad and deep. Code is written predominantly in one of a few major languages. For some shops, this means Java; for others, it's C# or PHP. Sometimes, enterprise coders will dabble in C++ or another common language used for high-performance tasks such as game programming, all of which turn around and speak SQL to the database.

• ActiveState prepares Python for databases

  ActiveState has updated its distributions of the Python programming language so that they provide developers easier access to databases, as well as new ways of creating GUIs (Graphical User Interfaces), the company announced Wednesday.

• Microsoft sponsors first Aussie Python conference

  Local Python programming language professionals and enthusiasts will gather in Sydney next month for the inaugural PyCon Au, including representatives from the event's main sponsor Microsoft.

• Open source StarCluster shines on Amazon cloud

  A new open source project dubbed StarCluster has been released aiming to simplify the management of virtual clusters hosted on Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) service.

• Python 3.0 upgrade incompatible with earlier versions

  Python 3.0, a new version of the language released earlier this week, has incompatibilities with the 2.x line, according to the Python Software Foundation.

• Aptana adds Python to Web 2.0 nest

  Aptana, which has enabled Web 2.0 development via JavaScript, Ruby on Rails, and PHP with the Aptana Studio IDE, has added Python to the mix through its acquisition of Pydev, which was announced this week.