I have a personal preference for ivy+ant. I tried maven once and didn't really like it. I don't have any major arguments against maven - I'm pretty sure I'm just more use to ivy+ant.

I was just trying to be insulting and condescending.

At times during the learning curve I found maven to be absurd.

Been a pretty long time since I used anything but Rake or Xcode. I'm out of the loop on what the latest hot tools are. I liked Rake though.

Day One: What is a POM file?

Day Two: Which POM do I use?

Day Two B: Let me read the docs... wtf, the most recent version is 0.51? I'm using version 4.2!

Day Three: Wait, where is that POM file supposed to be?

Day Seven: Oh, it was supposed to go there.

Day Eight: Now how do I edit this thing?

Day Fifteen: Hey, where did this POM file come from? The default location is here?

Day Twenty-Three: What? All I had to do is load the dependencies in a project file and it makes the POM file for me?

Hey gang. Just introducing myself. I'm beginning my CS degree. I'm working on C++ now and start Loops next week for class.

I've messed around with this class from open courseware at Harvard. It's helped me with some of the logic so far. I peruse the discussions in this thread but so far most of it is way over my head since Python is a snake and Ruby is a precious gem. Not too long from now I'm sure I'll have some uber basic questions. Thanks for the forum ya'll.

Maven is closer to pure Apache, so I have no idea why you'd suggest using a highly abstracted language like Ant + Ivy. You need to learn two technologies to get the same results as my one technology.

In not very related news I just drew an ant in inkscape...well only the body outline so far. Why? Because I suck at drawig stuff and want to get better at it. I just googled for an image to use as a background thingy and copied the outline more or less. Pretty pleased with the results and I can see how you can do some pretty sweet stuff with inkscape

I'll use the ant in a pygame project.

I'm actually working on learning the exact same thing and using Inkscape as well.

I had never used Inkscape until a few weeks ago and was very impressed. I don't know why, but even after years of using open source software, it still amazes me by how good it can be.

If you are familiar with poker clients (probably?), There is IIRC a lot of Inkscape info in the (now fairly dead obv) FTP Mods threadzilla in Software. About a year before Black Friday FTP switched to SVG for it's cards so everyone wanting to make something good looking had to learn inkscape fast

I found the Sonatype Maven Books to be one of the best resources when I was getting my head around it. That and repeated attempts at going step by step through different types of small projects.

What's that about the project diles making the POM?

Frameworks, bro...

In certain parts of Clojure-land, you can just place the dependencies in the project file and it takes care of the POM for you. I did take a little time to explore what Maven is. For the most part, I would only be able to copy/paste the requisite pieces of the libraries I would want to use, sort of the same thing I do in the project file. There are people who like to build everything by hand, probably starting with a raw POM file, but I'm just not that person.

Yeah started using this for podcasts (cloudfront) and it worked great. Only cached in a location for 24 hours after request though

The "Order of the Stick" tutorial I found online was pretty good (and I love the comic!) and I have ordered a somewhat pricey book. Will give feedback on said book next week-ish.

for someone really new to programming & sucks at it, tackling a tricky real-world project and finally finishing it really makes me feel like a total badass. esp when it's in a language you're not terribly familiar with.

same boat, but i'm in the next course where you learn pointers and char arrays and similar witchcraft & nonsense. got loops down though, so hit me up if you start beating your face into a wall and i'll probably be like "uh idk dude wtf" but i'll do my best!

also i'm pretty sure python is just straight up cheating at programming. wtf, i refuse to believe it's actually that straightforward...

That's the route I went.

I like donuts... But not dirty floor donuts... I have no idea what this means.

For a beginner in particular, python has to be the best thing ever. It's designed as a teaching language, and it shows. But unlike Logo, you can do real world stuff with it. Best of both worlds.

Wait untill you have to do some multithreaded programming.

So far as I can tell, yes. I haven't mapped out exactly how, but it seems like given a large number of turns it should be possible. M:tG has no upper bound on the number of cards in a deck. It does have an upper bound on number of cards of the same name in a deck, but Magic has a lot of cards that copy another creature (Rite of Replication, Cackling Counterpart) cards that could exile any cards that aren't "supposed" to be in graveyards (Phyrexian Furnace, Deathrite Shaman), and cards that could copy the instants if necessary (Isochron Scepter, Reverberate).

"Because that's how you get ANTS!"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkebxEVP8cw

From a pure growth as a programmer and understanding the Apache ecosystem perspective, I think this is awesome.

Python was created *as* a teaching language or was it just widely adopted as such?

You set a really high bar there. Name one programming language that makes multi-thread programming easy.

Python is like the English language. It takes parts, ideas, and words from many other languages, mashes them together, strips away excess, molests the meaning, and you end up with something highly proficient but not too colorful.

Examples would be the broken lambdas, awkward OO, half-assed list processing, semi-REPL, speed optimizations that don't really exist, almost-cool-as-hell dictionary, etc...

Despite its warts, I still like Python.

I really like how PyQt handles threading.