Here is a story and some observations I have made as an Open Source developer:

I had a specific need for a tool to test web services a few years ago ('02-'03). I had been rolling my own tools in various languages for quite a while and had some stuff that I thought others might be interested in; so I setup a SourceForge project and released it in Jan'04. The tool is called WebInject. Not many people used it at first. I just kept adding features and releasing. I was scratching my own itches and using my tool internally at a company I was working for. Eventually I got a few bites and some people started to download it and try it out. As of today, the tool has been downloaded over 60,000 times. I've had feedback from all corners of the world.

I've been programming almost exclusively in Python for the past 4 years or so. Occasionally I have to write code in C# or Perl.

After using Python:

• Perl seems *so much* more confusing than I used to think it was.
• C# with its static typing and forced OO feels like programming with a ball & chain on.

I love me some Python... but dammit... you ruined me.

Wow.. talk about programming with a ball and chain on! Some languages just take so much code to do a simple thing.

The following 2 programs each do an HTTP GET and print the contents of the URL.

In Java:

import java.net.*;
import java.io.*;

public class JGet {
    public static void main (String[] args) throws IOException {
        try {
            URL url = new URL("http://www.google.com");
    
            BufferedReader in = 
                new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(url.openStream()));
            String str;

            while ((str = in.readLine()) != null) {
                System.out.println(str);
            }

            in.close();
        } 
        catch (MalformedURLException e) {} 
        catch (IOException e) {}
    }
}

Equivalent in Python:

By Miško Hevery
(the other title: Your Application has a Wiring Problem)

In My main() Method Is Better Than Yours we looked into what a main() method should look like. There we introduced a clear separation between (1) the responsibility of constructing the object graph and (2) the responsibility of running the application. The reason that this separation is important was outlined in How to Think About the “new” Operator. So let us look at where have all of the new operators gone...