Re: [Jython-users] Jython resources

[Mats W. <ma...@la...>]

 >Tnx for pointing out the wiki Frank. I do hope it becomes useful to folks.
 >
 >Just to clarify, the wiki is not for the book. The book is done, even
 >though it is not in print until December. There will be a website
 >associated with the book that should have additional ramblings that I
 >also hope are helpful. The wiki itself, however, is for my continued
 >work, which is future versions of Jython's online documentation.
 >
 >My previous mail (to Frank) was very unclear (that's a bad sign for a
 >supposed author! <wink> ).
 >
 >This is also a great time to invite people to add to the wiki. It's
 >in it's infancy, so there's lots of room for additions.


The Wiki rather pointedly refers to having been set up in response
to a burst of enthusiasm which seems to have dwindled to nothing
for producing more thorough documentation.

In my own case: guilty (on appearances) as charged.  I've been
wanting to write up several things, and ran into a period where
I've had zero time.

Now that I've been hovering around Jython for a while, mostly
silently, I've noticed that new users crop up all the time
and seem to follow this pattern:

The first experiences with Jython are very easy (classpath
problems notwithstanding...) - and the demos, various examples,
Bruce Eckels' chapter, etc. all make it look great.  Then you
get into serious implementation and there's something that's
unclear, or exposes something that "isn't CPython" or...
My own experiences with converting/extending some Java code ran
into confusion about inner classes, interfaces, etc. all of which
in some sense are the Java designers' efforts to work around
deficiencies in the language (note: that's an /opinion/, if
it's not clear) and don't map perfectly onto Python semantics.

This phase brings a burst of questions.  After those are resolved,
everything's rosy again.  My hope would be that somehow we
can get help for that set of second-level problems, but that's
hard since very many of them seem to be "boundary conditons".
I never found a place where the problems I ran into were described,
but the lists were helpful in helping me understand the issues.
My partial recoding, incidentally, turned into a redesign into
"pure" Python over time...

This is where pointing at the CPython docs doesn't help, and
the existing Jython docs don't help much either.  You  can
always ask on the lists and get a more interactive response,
so perhaps that's okay - for now.  If Jython grows much in
popularity it may not be enough, esp. if people don't find
their way to the lists.

Hopefully, Robert's book will be able to do a lot of filling
the need in this area!

Mats