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Today we announced that ActivePython now includes NumPy,SciPy, and matplotlib in ActivePython Business, Enterprise, and OEM Editions. What does this mean for you as a developer and as an investor?

With the rise in visibility of the extensive use of Python in Finance driven by the recent SEC proposal (PDF) to require that most asset-backed securities issuers file a python computer program to model and document the flow of funds (or waterfall) provisions of the transaction, we thought it timely to ask the "must-have" Python packag

We are hosting the June VanPyZ meeting at ActiveState this coming Tuesday evening. Details:

What

Andy McKay: Using SMS in the Developing World

RapidSMS is an open source project for messaging, data collection and co-ordination over SMS. It’s used throughout the world for a variety of projects, from fighting child malnutrition and malaria to monitoring elections.

In the previous article we looked at the two most interesting crypto toolkits. What else is out there? A lot.

Last week, we conducted an informal poll amongst 70 IT professionals including a mix of engineers, information architects, lawyers and CIOs. The survey was conducted in a webinar entitled “Safeguarding against the risks of improper open source licensing – valuable lessons for software/hardware vendors” by Greg Olson, a senior partner at Olliance Group and Bart Copeland, President and CEO of ActiveState.

Two things stood out in the poll results:

After the core Python release team released Python 2.6.5 and 3.1.2 this past weekend, the Python team at ActiveState was hard at work to deliver the corresponding ActivePython release as soon as possible.

We are pleased to announce the availability of both ActivePython 2.6.5.12 and ActivePython 3.1.2.3.

Without much further ado, here is what you should know about these two releases:

Comments

Not only does having the right API reduce learning time, it also relieves the development community of the need to have certain debates: design discussions that would have spawned long and contentious mailing list threads simply do not come up. That may not be quite the same thing as pure technical or aesthetic beauty, but in a project with many participants and a constant turnover rate, it's a beauty you can use.

Beautiful Code, Chapter Two, p.28

Let's take a closer look at some of the modules mentioned in the previous article.

M2Crypto: A Python crypto and SSL toolkit

There is a lot of interest in doing cryptography using Python these days which has resulted in quite an impressive number of cryptography related Python modules out there. PyPI package index alone has about 50 'cryptography'-tagged entries.

Unfortunately, the quality and scope of those packages, well, varies. So instead of putting together a list of All The Crypo Stuff Out There, I tried to discover cryptography toolkits an enterprise Python developer could be interested in.