Benjamin Ferrari compares Python and Ruby, and decides to go with Ruby.

Yesterday I commented on the release of ActiveState Komodo IDE 4.0 and mentioned that I’m apparently no longer the market for their product due to its price.

Three ActiveState employees were kind enough to take the time to leave some comments on that post attempting to clarify the situation, and to provide some assurance that Komodo Edit will indeed be free for the foreseeable future. Very cool. It’s always a good sign for a company when they take the time to respond to comments about their products.

That said, I’m not sure that releasing Komodo Edit for free really changes things much. Komodo’s editor is nice enough, but there’s no shortage of editors… including some rather nice F/OSS ones. What made Komodo appealing was the easy-to-use debugger that allowed you to quickly run and test Python scripts without switching applications. Without at least some form of debugging, it’s just another editor (albeit a very nice one).

I guess my feeling is that at $35 Komodo Personal was an absolute steal for a top notch Python IDE, and I recommended it to those in #python looking for an easier way to code. In fact, I would have gladly paid almost twice that much for it. But at $245 (or $295!) I find it hard to imagine that anyone other than businesses and/or those who code for a living would pay for it.

ActiveState has always seemed to me to be a good company, and one that has done a lot to promote Python as a language. I truly hope this is a good decision on their part, because I’d like nothing more than to see them succeed…

…but I know at least one person that won’t be upgrading to 4.0.

Related Post: Komodo IDE is really expensive

Elsewhere: Some kind words for Komodo here and here.

I’ve been using Komodo as my IDE of choice from the beginning. I was able to get a copy of the Personal edition for free using a promo code, and was very impressed. It had, in my opinion, a nice clean interface and all of the features someone like me would need. A top quality product that I would have gladly paid for. I even made a point to mention it when I could.

Then today I noticed that Komodo IDE 4.0 and Komodo Edit 4.0 have been released. I figured I would buy the latest version of the IDE, but then I noticed the price… it went from about $35 for the Personal Edition to $245! Yeow!

Even the upgrade price from Komodo Personal is $145.

Now, I realize they are free to set their price as they see fit. That’s cool. I’m sure there’s a market for their product… but I’m just a bit disappointed that I’m apparently not in it. Oh well.

Update: Please see the comments from the ActiveState folks below, and then read my follow-up post.

I loaded Neverwinter Nights on my new desktop tonight and noticed that it wasn’t running quite right. Rather the walking from place to place, the characters seemed to immediately “jump” there, and the video was all jittery. Fortunately Google was able to help me find a solution on the forums. Here’s a summary:

Problem: On systems with dual-core CPUs, characters seem to “teleport” and/or move too fast. Video is jittery and/or stutters.

Solution: Exit NWN. Edit nwnplayer.ini and change the value of Client CPU Affinity from -1 to 0. Save file, and restart NWN.

Fixed!

Update: Here’s the info on NWN’s CPU Affinity setting from the 1.67 Patch Details:

Added a new option to the nwnplayer.ini file under [Game Options] “Client CPU Affinity” (for Windows only). If you have more than one CPU on your PC, then you can use this setting to make the game run on only one of the CPUs by specifying the number of the CPU (0-31). Setting “Client CPU Affinity=-1″ will turn off CPU affinity.

More at Wikipedia under Processor Affinity.

My last attempt to get a new desktop PC didn’t go so well. So this time I did what I knew I should have in the first place… ordered the parts and built my own:

• Shuttle XPC SN27P2
• AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Dual-core 2.2GHz CPU
• Corsair XMS2 2GB DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel RAM
• eVGA Geforce 7950GT KO 512MB PCI-E x16 Video Card
• Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB HDD
• Samsung 18X DVD±RW w/ LightScribe

I ran some of the NVIDIA demos and tried out Far Cry for a bit tonight. It’s awesome.

All the CPU-Z stats are available after the jump…

(more…)

Portable Python allows you to run Python “directly from a portable device, enabling you to have, at any time, portable programming environment.” It’s a single zip file and is based on Python 2.5.

And the cool part is that it includes Django!

Update: So I loaded Portable Python 1.0 to try it out, and so far I’m very impressed. It was a snap to install (just unzip) and it comes with a “script runner” that makes testing applications easy:

I think this has just earned a spot on my portable drives. :)

Looks like WordPress 2.1 will be released tomorrow. Here’s a list of some of the new features that will be included, as well as some things you need to know about (e.g. MySQL versions).

Related: Using nonces in WordPress.

Update: Ella is here!

Jonathan explains why SQLAlchemy impresses him.

If you ever written a multi-threaded app in Python, you probably know that compared to other languages, it’s fairly easy. That said, the PyBackground claims to make it even easier:

This module provides very, very, very, very, very easy multithreading. Did I mention that it is easy? With this module, you will have a hard time resisting creating threads - you’ll have to restrain yourself because it is so easy and so much fun. My friends and I like to call it “adhoc multithreading.”

Easy is good. I need to check this one out.

Django 0.95.1 was released on January 21 and includes some small security fixes and a few bug fixes. It is recommended that everyone upgrade.