Twisted book opinions?

[Jay Parlar]

I was hoping to get some c.l.p. opinions on O'Reilly's new Twisted book.

I'm coming at Twisted as someone who's been programming mainly in
Python for almost 6 years now, but who's never done any Twisted
development. I've used some of its prepackaged libraries before (and
did some custom tweaks to TwistedSNMP), but I don't really know much at
all about Twisted fundamentals.

The few reviews on Amazon seem to imply that it's more of a cookbook.
Would I be better off, for now, trying to get what I can from the
twistedmatrix.com docs, and then move to the book when I'm comfortable
with the basics? Or would the fact that I'm already pretty strong in
Python be enough that I could start with the book?

I considered posting this to the Twisted list instead, but thought I'd
try somewhere a little more impartial

Thanks in advance,
JayP.

 

[Eddie Corns]

I was hoping to get some c.l.p. opinions on O'Reilly's new Twisted book.

Well I certainly felt that I understood it better after reading the book.
OTOH I haven't tried to put that knowledge into practice yet.

I think calling it a cookbook is misleading, it shows how to do essential
tasks using fairly complete examples.

Eddie

 

[Tim Parkin]

Well I certainly felt that I understood it better after reading the book.
OTOH I haven't tried to put that knowledge into practice yet.

I think calling it a cookbook is misleading, it shows how to do essential
tasks using fairly complete examples.

It's really more of an example based tutorial book than cookbook.
What it does do really well is 'networking programming essentials'. I
found it quite a good book and managed to write a distributed ssh cron
tool in an evening after reading the sections on SSH.

What I'd really like now is a 'Web Application Development with
Twisted/Nevow' book that takes off where this 'network protocol'
oriented book leaves off.

Tim Parkin

 

[Andrew Gwozdziewycz]

It's really more of an example based tutorial book than cookbook.

What it does do really well is 'networking programming essentials'. I
found it quite a good book and managed to write a distributed ssh cron
tool in an evening after reading the sections on SSH.

I would second that. The examples are very good, and it breaks down
the code and explains the new concepts.

What I'd really like now is a 'Web Application Development with
Twisted/Nevow' book that takes off where this 'network protocol'
oriented book leaves off.

I thought the O'Reilly book was pretty decent at describing how to
setup a web application. It's not entirely complete, but I was able to
piece together an application with a somewhat complex web application
on top of it. Twisted made it quite easy.

 

[Tim Parkin]

I thought the O'Reilly book was pretty decent at describing how to
setup a web application. It's not entirely complete, but I was able to
piece together an application with a somewhat complex web application
on top of it. Twisted made it quite easy.

OK perhaps I wasn't as clear as I could have been. It discusses the use
of Twisted with web protocols but doesn't really go into the current,
recommended way to build web applications (because at the time of
writing the possibility of api changes for nevow/twistedweb2 was quite
high?). In fact it does say in the book that "..if you are really
interested in building a web application you should be using nevow.. "
(paraphrased).

Tim Parkin

 

[Jacob Hallen]

I would second that. The examples are very good, and it breaks down
the code and explains the new concepts.


I thought the O'Reilly book was pretty decent at describing how to
setup a web application. It's not entirely complete, but I was able to
piece together an application with a somewhat complex web application
on top of it. Twisted made it quite easy.

The book does Twisted basics very well. The examples are many and they are
just the right size for grasping how to do things.

My only gripe is that the way it produces HTML code in the web examples
is very primitive. You should be using Stan (a very Pythonic DOM) instead
of the explicit strings that are used throughout the book. Fortunately
there is an on-line tutorial for Stan, which is very good.

http://www.kieranholland.com/code/documentation/nevow-stan/

Jacob Hallén

--