Archive 5. January 2010

FleetDB - small in-memory database with persistence via an append-only transaction log. The protocol consists of simple JSON arrays. Implemented in Clojure, but can be integrated with any language through the JSON interface (you just need a JSON library and socket access).

generator_tools - because you sometimes encounter the situation of wanting to save generators in Python (e.g. when simulating continuations or coroutines using generators and using them as the state of a running web workflow in a web framework), this module (based on a hack on bytecode introspection) works to a limited extent. Already interesting because of the insights it gives into the interpreter.

Introduction to Concurrent Programming with Stackless Python - because sometimes a very large number of microthreads is the appropriate level of abstraction. As can be seen in various Erlang programs. Stackless provides similar abstractions, or rather comparable to the Actor libraries in Clojure and Scala (basically the Erlang Actor Model without distribution across multiple computers). The GIL remains a problem, of course, which is why Manycore is not well supported, at least not without programming for it (via multiprocessing, for example).

Matasano Security LLC - Chargen - If You're Typing The Letters A-E-S Into Your Code, You're Doing It Wrong - interesting article (even if in a somewhat strange presentation form) about typical problems with the use of cryptography for SSO in web systems. Simply "I encrypt the cookie and then everything is fine" just doesn't cut it ...

MetaPython Documentation - one of the things that always bring me from Python to Lisp are the nice Lisp macros, with which one can elegantly build embedded DSLs for various purposes that integrate well with the host language. With MetaPython, you might be able to achieve something similar with Python. At least all the components are there.