This announcement from the PLplot project, and this report about it from Slashdot tout the ten thousandth commit to PLplot's source repository.  My response?  "Big deal!"  Both the Python and wxWidgets projects are about the same age as PLplot and the wx repository currently has almost 61,000 commits, and the Python repository has over 73,000 commits.  While those numbers are impressive considering that they represent mostly volunteer unpaid time from dozens of developers, they still pale compared to other projects.

On the other hand, the number of commits is really a very poor metric to measure open source projects by.  Much more  impressive is the number of users who would rather be using the software than anything else that could compete with it.

Ever have one of those moments when you see some product or service and you think, "Doh! I should have thought of that!" because it is something that makes so much sense to you that you can't believe that you hadn't invented it yourself long before?  Well I had one of those moments today with Dropbox.  Dropbox is a cool service that integrates versioned shared storage on a centralized server with your Mac, Windows or Linux desktops.  Syncronizing files between your computers, whereever they are located, is as simple as dragging the files into your dropbox.  New or changed files are automatically replicated to your dropbox on the other computers.  If existing files are changed then only the deltas are transported across the wire, in a rsync-like fashion.

Besides the simple file sharing among your own computers, there are some other nice features there too.  Files are private by default, but there is a Public folder where you can put files you want to share with others, and you can easily get a public URL for them to paste into emails or IM messages.  You can also create a shared folder that you share with other Dropbox users.  Any changes you make in your shared folder are instantly updated to the other users' copy of the shared folder, and their changes are replicated back to you. In addition to all of that, you can easily get back to prior versions of changed files, and you can undelete files that have been deleted.  And as if that wasn't enough, there is another special folder type that is an automatic photo gallery, you just need to drag the photos you want to share to a Photos folder and the rest is automatic.

You get 2GB of space for free, and you can get up to 50GB for $10 per month or $99 per year.  If you sign up with this referal link then you and I will both get an extra 250MB.

Finally, here is the real kicker:  The Dropbox user interface (setup wizard, preferences dialog, task bar icon, etc.) is written in wxPython!  If the user ID I saw when I signed up is related in some way to the number of users (it is just a number so that may be possible) then that means that there are about three quarters of a million users running a wxPython application on their computers and they may not even know it.  Good job guys, I'm impressed!

I found out last week at the OSCON conference that my software is being used at the South Pole by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory project currently being constructed about a kilometer from the Pole.  They are using wxPython for the controller user interface of the machine that is drilling holes 2.4 kilometers down into the ice.  There isn't anything on their website about that piece of software, but it's real interesting anyway ;-)  Here is a bit more about the drill.  There are also these pictures, videos and blog from one of the scientists that gave the presentation I attended where he shows a bit about what life at the Pole is like.  (Where a nice warm summer's day might get up to -31F. Brr!!)

This news means that I now have reports of wxPython being used from every continent on this planet. Yay!

Yeah, I know what you're thinking... That headline sounds like something you might read while standing in the checkout line at the supermarket next to photos of aliens from the future rescuing some baby porkers from the path of a Vogon engineered tornado headed for the next trailer park on their list of sites to demolish to make room for a new highway. Well if that's what you're thinking (come on, admit it, you know you were) then you're wrong. Keep reading for some info about another kind of Time Machine, and another kind of Bacon.

Read more…

Since a number of folks have expressed interest and concern I thought I would give a quick update on my working situation. This week I've started a full-time consulting job with a small software group at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. If you attended PyCon a couple years ago then you may have seen their talk about IntúaCare and IntúaDesign. That is the project that I'll be working with. I'll be working with wxPython a lot, and probably also working on wxWidgets and wxPython to some extent as well, although not as much as I did with OSAF.

I'm excited to be working on this project. Not just because of wxPython, but also because I have previous experience with the subject matter. My first major job out of college was working on software products that had a lot of the same goals as the IntúaSolutions products: essentially to be a highly dynamic and flexible solution for collecting and reporting medical patient care data in hospitals. The key here is the "highly dynamic and flexible" part, the intent is to have a set of domain-specific tools where unskilled (a.k.a non-programmers) but knowledgeable people can easily tailor the application to the needs of each hospital, or even each department within the hospital. My former experience with this was back in the dark days of DOS so the products had only a textual user interface, but I think we managed to accomplish a lot with it and it was a very successful product line, and at least as of a few years ago it was still going strong, although they've modernized a bunch of things since I worked there.

Obviously a few things have changed in the computer world since then. I discovered Python a year or so after I left that job and I've always wondered what it would have been like if we had used Python as the internal macro/calculation/filtering/query language instead of our home-grown RDL (for anyone outside of the marketing group and the customers that acronym stands for Robin Dunn's Language, otherwise it is Rule Definition Language.) Since that time we've also gone through the rise of the graphical user interface, the explosion of the World Wide Web, and my current notebook computer has 7.5 times the number of pixels on screen and 8 times more RAM than the hard drive space in the brand new top of the line desktop computer I had when we started that project! It should be fun to be able to apply modern technology and my new skills to similar features and issues that I dealt with 14-18 years ago.

I've linked to this video as a way to let you know how big of an effort this job search seemed to be at times, and also how good it felt when it was finally complete.

:-)

I saw this sentence today on ArsTechnica:

"...Autotools, an intractably arcane and grotesquely anachronistic cesspool of ineffable complexity that makes even seasoned programmers nauseous."

I think that sentence could win an award if there was a most-big-words-used-where-small-words-would-do-fine contest. Good thing that my dictionary is only a Spotlight search away... [type][type][type]... Ah so that's what it means. Yes, I agree. 😉

As they say, all good things must come to an end. However no matter how much you expect the inevitable, it's still a bit of a downer when it does happen.

The Open Source Applications Foundation has been sponsoring my work on wxPython for about 5 years now. I spend about half of my time working on Chandler, supporting the other OSAF engineers with wxPython questions or problems, or in working on specific needs that OSAF has in wxWidgets or wxPython itself. I'm free to spend the other half of my time working on wxWidgets or wxPython in whatever way I want. Typically I use a big chunk of this time supporting the wxPython community, answering questions on the mail lists, tracking down bugs that people report, etc. but I also work on other features or long-term goals for wxPython that may not necessarily line up with some immediate need that Chandler has. It's been a real good deal for everybody involved. I've been able to get paid for working on my favorite hobby, the Chandler project has gotten the support and expertise that they needed, the wxPython community has also had a large block of my time and attention, and wxPython itself has had many improvements and enhancements that I likely would not have had time for otherwise.

This week OSAF announced a restructuring and downsizing of the Chandler team. They want to shift the focus more towards gaining more users and, since it is an Open Source project, the building up of a volunteer developer community. The other goal behind the transition is a desire to stretch out the remaining funding until the project can find a way to become self-sustaining. As you've probably guessed by now, I was not one of the worker bees kept in the hive. I've got a few weeks left on my contract and then I'll be making my own transition to something else. Although I've known this was coming, I didn't expect it until the end of this year, so it's still a bit of a disappointment.

So what does this mean for wxPython? Hopefully nothing, other than some reduction in the time I am able to spend focused on wxPython. It would be great to be able to find someone willing to support my working on wxPython part time like OSAF did, but it's probably pretty unlikely that that particular lightning will strike in the same place twice. On the other hand, I expect that my next gig will be something that at least uses wxPython so there will be some opportunities for some of that work to roll down to wxPython and the community. Of course, on the gripping hand, if you or somebody you know would be interested in sponsoring at least part-time work on wxPython, please do contact me.

Update: This news was noticed by the New York Times.