/upload/jobs/23

and then I could reload that URL if the Ajax updating got stuck or my browser crashed or I was moving to another machine.

Is JQuery doing any error checking or just display handling for the workers UI/UX? We need more inline editing! Not to mention a sweet lime green progress bar. ;)

I’m curious what you think of Python 3′s solution to the Unicode problem. Personally, I think the world would be better off if we just used UTF-8, but whenever I suggest that the Japanese get very mad at me.

Yes you are right, I should have reversed the order of my arguments on Unicode in comment #31. Python 2.x and 3.x are trying its best to deal with Unicode, but out of jealousy, I must mention that Python’s documented (too lazy to google for it, but pretty sure it’s buried somewhere in the i18n-SIG mailing list) unlikelihood of requiring ICU as a compile dependency means there’s very little chance Python will come with good collation support by default now and in the future. You just can’t beat Java’s Unicode support. But then again, it’s a moot point because no sane person will reject Python just because it doesn’t come with a module to do collation by default.

From my limited understanding of Tcl, it doesn’t seem to have the historical burdens that Python and Perl have, and due to the fact that everything in Tcl can be treated as a string, its designer probably took extra care to make sure string support is good. With that said, I wouldn’t know under what circumstance one would choose Tcl over anything.

Due to similar historical reasons, both Perl and Python 2.x’s have come up with similar ways to handle Unicode. But, I would still choose Python over Perl for the following reasons(correct me if there are better ways to do them, I never know what’s the best way to do anything in Perl):

1. I could see if a string is a unicode string by checking if isinstance(u’abc’, unicode), and u’abc’ doesn’t have to be UTF-8 encoded.
2. I don’t have to require Encode or use byte when I want to encode an Unicode string. I just do u’blah’.encode(“utf8″).

These are small ideosyntactic differences, but nonetheless I prefer.

I would only note that the Python dictionary allows for heterogeneous types as values. The burden is always on the programmer to know/test for the right type when using a dictionary. For example, in a more general case, a dictionary may return an object other than a string or list. In your specific example, your expectations didn’t meet the library designer’s choice. I’m not sure that this case by itself is an argument for having non-iterable strings.

Complaining Python cannot have good unicode support because there is no ICU on the system is pretty lame, isn’t it? Tcl’s unicode support isn’t perfect either, but if you compare it with Python or Perls its far nicer AND in a dynamical language.

(Which has some other benefits like a sane threading model with no GIL too.)