I have the opportunity to spread Python to some junior/newbie programmers. In doing so, I wanted to compile a concise list of reccomended learning materials. The intended audience is someone who has a basic familiarity with programming but no specific Python experience.

There are a ton of books and online materials available, but where should you start? Here is my very brief list:

First Book:

• Learning Python (O'Reilly - by Mark Lutz, David Ascher)

Python Tutorials Online:

• Official Python Tutuorial (by Guido van Rossum)
• Dive Into Python (by Mark Pilgrim)
• Instant Python (by Magnus Lie Hetland)

Most of network programming I do is Web/HTTP oriented. So it has been a while since I had to work with TCP and Socket programming directly. Yesterday I needed to write a quick TCP Server. C# and .NET made this really easy to do:

using System;
using System.Text;
using System.Net;
using System.Net.Sockets;

public class TCPServer
{
    private static int port = 8001;

    public static void Main()
    {
        IPAddress ipAddress = IPAddress.Any;
        TcpListener listener = new TcpListener(ipAddress, port);
        listener.Start();
        Console.WriteLine("Server is running");
        Console.WriteLine("Listening on port " + port);
        Console.WriteLine("Waiting for connections...");
        while (true)
        {
            Socket s = listener.AcceptSocket();
            Console.WriteLine("Connection accepted from " + s.RemoteEndPoint);
            byte[] b = new byte[65535];
            int k = s.Receive(b);
            Console.WriteLine("Received:");
            for (int i = 0; i < k; i++)
                Console.Write(Convert.ToChar(b[i]));
            ASCIIEncoding enc = new ASCIIEncoding();
            s.Send(enc.GetBytes("Server responded"));
            Console.WriteLine("\nSent Response");
            s.Close();
    }
}

Microsoft launched a new site which is intended to be the "gateway for information about open source engagements and activities across Microsoft."

From the FAQ:

"What is the Microsoft position on intellectual property (IP) and open source?

Intellectual property (IP) serves a vital role in maintaining a healthy cycle of innovation in the IT industry. IP concepts—including copyright, trademark, patent, or public domain—are useful for developers to define terms of use that enable their project or business to thrive, regardless of what development model they choose."

Sorry, but patents do *not* "serve a vital role in maintaining a healthy cycle of innovation in the IT industry".  Restricting ideas actually does the exact opposite.

So... I'm glad to see Microsoft taking steps towards Free software, but as of now they still don't really "get it".

I stumbled across this site yesterday:  highscalability.com

"We started High Scalability to help you build successful scalable websites. This site tries to bring together all the lore, art, science, practice, and experience of building scalable websites into one place so you can learn how to build your system with confidence. Hopefully this site will move you further and faster along the learning curve of success."

This is really cool site/blog about building scalable architectures.  It contains lots of good info and overviews of some of the larger distributed systems on the net.  Definitely a regular stop for me.

Awesome technical overview of Google's inner workings:

Google Architecture

"Google is the King of scalability. Everyone knows Google for their large, sophisticated, and fast searching, but they don't just shine in search. Their platform approach to building scalable applications allows them to roll out internet scale applications at an alarmingly high competition crushing rate. Their goal is always to build a higher performing higher scaling infrastructure to support their products. How do they do that?"

... a breakdown of Google's massive highly scalable architecture.
This is modern distributed computing at its finest.

PyLT has been renamed to Pylot (some sort of abbreviation for "Python Load Test")

I realized that having a pronounceable name for a piece of software is pretty important :)

So...
As I develop my load test tool, I need a way to define test cases.  Here is my first attempt:

What Is A Pylot Test Case?

You must declare your test cases in an XML file. This is the format that the test engine understands. Editing XML may seem natural to some people, but awkward to others. The nice thing about this structure is that it will be very easy to create a more friendly user interface [sometime in the future] for defining test cases.

A test case is defined using the following syntax. Only the URL element is required.

<case>
  <url>URL</url>
  <method>HTTP METHOD</method>
  <body>REQUEST BODY CONTENT</body>
  <add_header>ADDITIONAL HTTP HEADER</add_header>
  <verify>STRING OR REGULAR EXPRESSION</verify>
  <verify_negative>STRING OR REGULAR EXPRESSION</verify_negative>
</case>

Below is an example of the simplest possible test case file. It contains a single test case which will be executed continuously during the test run. The test case contains a URL for the service under test. Since no method or body defined, it will default to sending an HTTP GET to this resource. Since no verifications are defined, it will pass/fail the test case based on the HTTP status code it receives (pass if status is < 400).

<testcases>
  <case>
    <url>http://www.example.com/foo</url>
  </case>
</testcases>

Related:

• PyLT - Scratching My Itch - New Web Performance/Load Test Tool (Open Source)
• PyLT - Dev Update #1 - Web Performance/Load Test Tool
• PyLT - Dev Update #2 - Web Performance/Load Test Tool
• PyLT - Dev Update #3 - Web Performance/Load Test Tool