December 23, 2004
Python for Series 60 Released
Pointed out by a colleague today Python for Series 60 has now been released. I've spent all of my money on presents for the family so much as I would like to I can't rush out and buy a suitable phone.
It will be interesting to see what types of applications people write to run on their phones. Whilst it's been possible to write your own code in Java it appears that the barrier to entry is quite high, at least according to Ben Last anyway.
With an interactive Python interpreter I would expect more phone users (rather than Java programmers with smart phones) to come up with small but useful scripts. I suspect that these will help them use their phones in ways that the nice people at Nokia never dreamed of.
Here's hoping I'm one of them in the New Year.
Update: Blimey, it didn't take long for the news to filter out. Here are some extensions for anyone interested in trying out the toolkit.
Posted by Andy Todd at December 23, 2004 08:23 AM
You might consider talking to your employer about getting the phone as part of a salary package. Not only might you be able to convince your employer to spread the cost across a few months or a year, phones for employees are FBT free, so it can end up being effectively half-price.
Mmmmm. Series 60. Mmmmm.
Posted by: Alan Green on December 23, 2004 10:09 AMAlan, technically I'm self employed. So my boss is a tight fisted sob who insists on no frivolous expenditure ;-)
Posted by: Andy Todd on December 23, 2004 10:24 AMOne point made at EuroPython 2004 about the symbian python was a comparison of the effort to package (not even develop, simply package for delivery) a C++ app vs a python app, emphasizing how much this was getting in the way of developing for these phones, and that this was a barrier that Nokia wanted to remove - by pushing all of that into the Python interpreter package itself, applications could be much simpler.
Posted by: Mark Eichin on December 26, 2004 03:49 PM