As a Siemens intern in summer ‘96, my task was to process megabytes and megabytes of log files from network testing equipment, using the not-so-formidable text parsing capabilities of Visual C++ 1.5. After this rather grueling experience, I was on the lookout for an easier way to do string processing and stumbled on scripting languages. This was my first encounter with Python. I’m sad to say I was among those turned off by whitespace-as-indentation. Nevertheless, I was electrified by scripting, and Perl became my tool of choice for text processing (and soon for everything).
Two years later, increasingly frustrated with Perls inscrutable syntax and somewhat cumbersome OOP syntax, I started to tinker with Python again. This got a kickstart when I was introduced to Zope. Zope impressed me from the start — finally a structured approach to the chaotic world of CGI and HTML generation. I proposed to port the online edition of the newspaper I worked for to Zope, and much to my own surprise, got a green light.
I’ve been working with Python since then, often with Zope, but also with Twisted, a bit of Plone and the ZCA.
Although other languages have kept me busy lately, I still consider Python my main language.
