The World Through the Eyes of John Brennan
Zero to 60 with Pylons… in just minutes (Part 1)
6 Apr 2008 Author: John Brennan In: Code, Pylons, PythonWhat’s Pylons?
I’ll assume you’ve heard the buzz about Ruby on Rails. Pylons, like Rails, is an MVC framework, but written in the Python language.
This isn’t meant to be an intro to MVC frameworks, but for those just getting started… MVC frameworks let you keep the presentation, business logic, and data separate. They also take care of the majority of setup work involved with building a new web app. I could write another post just on this topic alone, but many people already have. BetterExplained as a great tutorial entitled, Understanding Models, Views and Controllers.
The Real Intro
I’ve been using Pylons for about 9 months now. I have picked up some nice conventions, and created some of my own along the way. I had initially developed a web app with Pylons 0.9.5, and it was quite impressive. When learning all new frameworks there is a bit of a learning curve, especially when slapping together several pieces of middleware and other various tools.
Last week I upgraded to Pylons 0.9.6 — and things broke. Although it didn’t take nearly as much time to get moving again, there were definitely some hiccups.
In the hopes of alleviating your pain, I will show you how to get Pylons working with an authentication system (AuthKit), the database model (SQLAlchemy 0.4), and some conventions I established with the Mako templating engine.
This will be a short post. I just installed Ryan McGeary’s WP-syntax plugin for Wordpress. Let’s see a few examples…
<body> <?php echo $javascript->link('prototype_1.6.0'); echo $javascript->link('scriptaculous_1.8.0/scriptaculous'); echo $javascript->link('home'); echo $scripts_for_layout; ?> </body>
1 2 3 4 5 | class Example def example(arg1) return "Hello: " + arg1.to_s end end |
That looks pretty good. I did find a bug when using this plugin with WP 2.3.3. When I go back to edit the post some of the code tags are converted to html entities. The format is also not preserved (spacing and newlines). I should note that the WP-syntax plugin only says it is compatible with WP up to 2.2.2, so my version (which WP has actually released another update for) isn’t technically supported yet. Ryan got back to me (see comment below) that the plugin does in fact work with WP 2.3.3 (as well as 2.5 too).
I also noticed a funky bug that occurs when I toggle between visual and code view in the WP editor. It seems as though the javascript is tinkering with it. I’ll try to investigate and do a follow post on that another time.
Update: I really wanted to avoid modifying the core WP files because it would be a pain when I wanted to upgrade again. I decided to upgrade to WP 2.5 and see what I can do. As it turns out, ver 2.5 remembers the last editor you were using. In my case it happens to be HTML, so it brings that up initially. The code text isn’t modified and everything is great! Note: I could’ve also turned off the visual editor, but then I wouldn’t have that editor for other posts and I didn’t want to impose that limit on myself.
Hindsight is 20/20
30 Mar 2008 Author: John Brennan In: EntrepreneurshipCarleen Hawn, an author of F|R, suggests that startups succeed only by adapting to change. I couldn’t agree more!
She cites Paul Graham in his essay, Ideas for Startups, as saying:
“…[people] assume ideas are like miracles: they either pop into your head or they don’t. I also have a theory about why people think this. They overvalue ideas. They think creating a startup is just a matter of implementing some fabulous initial idea. And since a successful startup is worth millions of dollars, a good idea is therefore a million dollar idea… The fact is, most startups end up nothing like the initial idea. It would be closer to the truth to say the main value of your initial idea is that, in the process of discovering it’s broken, you’ll come up with your real idea.”
I’ve thought about this quite a bit, especially whenever I’m about to get started with a new venture, as is the case again. I’ve never deemed any of my projects or ventures as “unsuccessful.” They may have never reached the tipping point and some never made it past the alpha stage, but unsuccessful is the wrong word. I’ve learned from every single one of those projects.
They say hindsight is 20/20. I agree. It can be the stock market or a new market. As an entrepreneur it is sometimes interesting to reflect on the current market situation and observe how just a few minor changes to that business strategy could have better positioned your startup for success.
I’ll let you all have a peak into my past for a second to see how “close,” relatively speaking, I was if I just adapted to change…
Bandindex.com
The first web site dedicated to the underground music scene. Started in 1997, BandIndex.com included interviews, reviews, and music samples from over 1000 artists, both mainstream and underground. If only I decided to give artists’ control of their own pages I would have something a bit like… MySpace.
Menuocity.com
A restaurant portal where students can order food online. I built this in college and started by targeting students at the University of Maryland. Once the company got some traction around campus, and through the local newspapers, we were able to sign deals with the local restaurants to provide this service for a small monthly fee. However, CampusFood was the dominant player in the college market. We saw this and tried to tap into the residential market. We hired a few people in the Northern New Jersey/New York area to meet with restaurant owners. It was quite the tedious process and our conversion rate was quite low. Instead, if we took the direction of targeting large corporations in New York City, like Seamless Web, and focused on delivering a solution that kept track of all the accounting with a simple end of month print out we might have competed in this space.
RSS Reader
I started playing around with RSS in 2003. This was before iGoogle, Bloglines, Google Reader, and probably the reader you are using to consume this blog. When I was working on a strategy for Microsoft I saw how much time I could save if the content came to me. I thought this technology, once better adopted, would change user habits surfing the web. I was right. I spend at least an hour or two every morning reading blogs and groups of posts based on keywords through Google Reader.
99circles
More social than LinkedIn and more professional than Facebook, 99circles uses trust, instead of degrees of separation, to determine relationship strength. When I started this project back in 2005 social networks had little traction. A year of development had past and I still didn’t think the app was “ready” for the public. I received great feedback during the beta with 1000+ users, but was no match for the already well established social networks–regardless of the new angle I was trying to take. I folded my cards on this one in 2007. Now you have new players on the scene that are platforms to build your own social network like Ning, or aggregate items from existing social networks like FriendFeed or SocialThing.
Conclusion
Of course there is more to adapting than a few minor tweaks. Sometimes it’s a strategic partner with industry contacts, current environment (bandwidth), or just plain know-how. Still, it is important for the startup founders to forage ahead despite minor setbacks and obstacles. The road may change, fork, or pick up 1000 feet to the right (yes, that actually occurs in Mexico just South of the border) on your way to the end goal.
As long as the end goal is still feasible, please… don’t stop driving!
About Me
Code. Design. Explore. is the blog of John Brennan, a web developer/designer, entrepreneur, and avid world traveler. I currently live in Brooklyn, NY.
I am the Co-Founder of OpenAction and lead Product Development. We are a open platform social enterprise that helps organizations engage with donors, share knowledge with other non profits and empower the community to get involved to create positive impact on our planet.
This blog will mostly be around building cool things, although I will surely include my travel experiences when I am abroad. Feel free to subscribe to a specific category if that is only what interests you. And please connect with me. I always enjoy meeting new, interesting people!
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