Like music and movies, video games are rapidly becoming an integral part of our lives. Over the years, you've yearned for every new gaming console, mastered each blockbuster within weeks after its release, and have even won a local gaming competition or two. But lately you've been spending a lot of time thinking about a game idea of your own, or are exploring the possibility of making a career of this vibrant and growing industry. But where should you begin?

Beginning Game Development with Python and Pygame is written with the budding game developer in mind, introducing games development through the Python programming language and the popular Pygame games development library. Authored by industry veteran and Python expert Will McGugan, who most recently worked on the MotorStorm game for Play Station 3, you'll be privy to insights that will not only help you to exploit PyGame to its maximum potential, but also make you a more creative and knowledgeable games developer all round.

• Create advanced games by taking advantage of the popular open source Python programming language and Pygame games development library.
• Learn step-by-step through the creation of a real-world game (tank warfare), involving gaming preferences, sound, visual effects, and joystick/keyboard interaction.
• Discover the concepts that are crucial to success in today's gaming industry, such as support for multiple platforms, and granting users the ability to extend and customize your games.

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This tutorial offers readers a thorough introduction to programming in Python 2.4, the portable, interpreted, object-oriented programming language that combines power with clear syntax

Beginning programmers will quickly learn to develop robust, reliable, and reusable Python applications for Web development, scientific applications, and system tasks for users or administrators

Discusses the basics of installing Python as well as the new features of Python release 2.4, which make it easier for users to create scientific and Web applications

Features examples of various operating systems throughout the book, including Linux, Mac OS X/BSD, and Windows XP

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Hi! You’re holding the Zope Bible, a book we suspect will change how you look at building Web sites and Web applications. If you’re like most Web developers and designers, you’re probably always looking for ways to improve your process, both for building and for maintaining Web sites. Whether the sites you’re building are consumer-oriented Web applications, content-centric publishing sites,
intranets, or even vanity sites, you want to build them faster, maintain them easier, and integrate other people into your workflow with a minimum of hassle and fuss.

Zope is a tool that is hard to describe, as in many ways it’s in a category all its own.
So, rather than describe what it is, it’s better to describe what Zope can do for you:

- Zope contains a templating language for creating dynamic pages, making it easier to create and maintain a common look and feel for your site.
- Zope uses a powerful scripting language (Python) for creating business logic, making it easy to create powerful Web applications.
- Zope has a built-in Web management interface so you can create and maintain entire sites with nothing more than a standard browser and an Internet
connection.
- Zope has a built-in object database, making it easy to store content, logic, and presentation in a single place.
- Zope has a built-in security framework, making it easy and safe to delegate maintenance of sections or subsections of the site to other people.
- Zope sites are also accessible via FTP and WebDAV, making it easier to leverage the desktop site creation tools you already use.
- Zope is written in Python, making it easy to extend and enhance with your own customizations.
- Zope has built-in content management tools such as Version objects and Undo, which make it easier to safely modify and update a site while it’s “live.”

In other words, if you build Web sites, Zope is the tool for you. (more…)

Zope is one of the leading open-source Web application servers and content management systems. Designed specifically to publish dynamic content, it is a Web-based publishing system built around a 100% object framework for rapidly deploying enterprise-class content management solutions.

Zope Web Application Construction Kit provides Web developers with both the software and the guidance needed to create content-rich, dynamic Web applications using Zope.

Written by developers at beehive GmbH, one of the world's leading Zope consulting firms, this book is a practical, straightforward guide that clearly shows how to create everything from Web-based polls and surveys to fully developed membership-based portal systems. (more…)

This handy little book offers programmers a complete overview of the syntax and semantics of regular expressions that are at the heart of every text-processing application. Ideal as a quick reference, Regular Expression Pocket Reference covers the regular expression APIs for Perl 5.8, Ruby (including some upcoming 1.9 features), Java, PHP, .NET and C#, Python, vi, JavaScript, and the PCRE regular expression libraries.

This concise and easy-to-use reference puts a very powerful tool for manipulating text and data right at your fingertips. Composed of a mixture of symbols and text, regular expressions can be an outlet for creativity, for brilliant programming, and for the elegant solution. Regular Expression Pocket Reference offers an introduction to regular expressions, pattern matching, metacharacters, modes and constructs, and then provides separate sections for each of the language APIs, with complete regex listings.

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Portable, powerful, and a breeze to use, Python is the popular open source object-oriented programming language used for both standalone programs and scripting applications. It is now being used by an increasing number of major organizations, including NASA and Google. Updated for Python 2.4, The Python Cookbook, 2nd Edition offers a wealth of useful code for all Python programmers, not just advanced practitioners. Like its predecessor, the new edition provides solutions to problems that Python programmers face everyday. It now includes over 200 recipes that range from simple tasks, such as working with dictionaries and list comprehensions, to complex tasks, such as monitoring a network and building a templating system. This revised version also includes new chapters on topics such as time, money, and metaprogramming. Here's a list of additional topics covered:

• Manipulating text
• Searching and sorting
• Working with files and the filesystem
• Object-oriented programming
• Dealing with threads and processes
• System administration
• Interacting with databases
• Creating user interfaces
• Network and web programming
• Processing XML
• Distributed programming
• Debugging and testing

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This book will help Java developers to increase application development and deployment, thus optimizing their overall efficiency.

A brief introduction is provided that shows the differences between Java and Jython, important to include so that the reader will have a better understanding of why their union is beneficial.

The remainder of the book teaches, through examples, how to use Jython. Intended for an experienced Java developer, this book assumes you understand the fundamentals to programming (i.e. loop statements, if.then, etc.). So, page space is focused on utilizing Jython with Java by covering the following: extending Python with java classes, modules, compiling, interpreters, design integration, etc.

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Numerical Methods in Engineering with Python is a text for engineering students and a reference for practicing engineers, especially those who wish to explore the power and efficiency of Python. Examples and applications were chosen for their relevance to real world problems, and where numerical solutions are most efficient. Numerical methods are discussed thoroughly and illustrated with problems involving both hand computation and programming. Computer code accompanies each method and is available on the book web site. This code is made simple and easy to understand by avoiding complex bookkeeping schemes, while maintaining the essential features of the method. Python was chosen as the example language because it is elegant, easy to learn and debug, and its facilities for handling arrays are unsurpassed. Moreover, it is an open-source software package; free and available to all students and engineers. Explore numerical methods with Python, a great language for teaching scientific computation. (more…)

This book puts the "Web" back into web services. It shows how you can connect to the programmable web with the technologies you already use every day. The key is REST, the architectural style that drives the Web. This book:

• Emphasizes the power of basic Web technologies — the HTTP application protocol, the URI naming standard, and the XML markup language
• Introduces the Resource-Oriented Architecture (ROA), a common-sense set of rules for designing RESTful web services
• Shows how a RESTful design is simpler, more versatile, and more scalable than a design based on Remote Procedure Calls (RPC)
• Includes real-world examples of RESTful web services, like Amazon's Simple Storage Service and the Atom Publishing Protocol
• Discusses web service clients for popular programming languages
• Shows how to implement RESTful services in three popular frameworks — Ruby on Rails, Restlet (for Java), and Django (for Python)
• Focuses on practical issues: how to design and implement RESTful web services and clients

This is the first book that applies the REST design philosophy to real web services. It sets down the best practices you need to make your design a success, and the techniques you need to turn your design into working code. You can harness the power of the Web for programmable applications: you just have to work with the Web instead of against it. This book shows you how.

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Though Python is a relatively new programming language, it has quite a significant audience owing to its sensible syntax. An active user of Python since 1996, Beazley provides ample information on the fundamentals of versions 2.0 and 2.1, including syntax, functions, operators, classes, and libraries. This is first and foremost a reference, so he avoids lengthy discussions of Python's superiority. Peppered with good code samples and featuring a companion web site with more extensive pieces, this title should be on hand in larger libraries. (more…)