Quickly and Easily Harness a World of Open Source Innovation with Rocket MultiValue Python
March 9, 2017
PYTHON HAS BECOME VERY POPULAR
The TIOBE Index for February 2017 currently ranks Python as the 5th most popular programming language, based on lines of code written world-wide, and it’s easy to see why. Python has numerous benefits but is often first noted as being very user-friendly and approachable. With an abundance of information and tutorials easily found online, free development resources and tools, worldwide user conferences, numerous IRC channels, local meet-up groups and endless online communities to join, Python has become one of the most common programming languages in the world. In fact, International Business Times stated in 2015 that Python overtook French as the most popular language taught in primary schools in the UK. Python is now a fundamental part of most software curriculums taught at the university level and is even extending to the high school level. As such, Python.org states that Python application development spans several areas of software development including: web and Internet development, database access, graphical user interfaces (GUIs), scientific & numeric programs, education, networking, and video game development.
PYTHON IS POWERFUL BECAUSE IT’S OPEN SOURCE
The Python language itself is developed and maintained under an approved open source license, making it freely usable and distributable, even for commercial use. This means that there are no licensing restrictions, which legally opens it up for anyone to utilize or distribute Python releases free of charge. For distributing applications and components written in Python, the Python Software Foundation supports a platform for open-source sharing and community innovation called the Python Package Index (PyPI). The Python Package Index (PyPI) contains nearly 100,000 Python Packages that can be freely used to enhance your application or to build something totally new from scratch. This platform for sharing Python applications and libraries empowers developers to self-organize around the projects that they are most passionate about without any need for getting approval first.
Open Source Software (OSS) allows for “permission-less innovation” where developers can experiment with adding new functionality, test, share, copy, or augment any part of an OSS. This decentralized movement within the software world is making it easier for innovation to happen and for businesses that leverage OSS to evolve faster with newer features. In its purest sense, OSS represents a democratization of technology, which has given more and more people access to OSS technologies such as Python. Widespread access to the Python platform has unleashed a wave of innovation that is limited only by the worldwide Python community’s collective imagination.
The power of OSS and its ability to disrupt entire industries with faster innovation can be felt when we simply look at the primary technologies that have propelled us into the Internet Age over the last 30 years. Apache Web Servers, UNIX & Linux operating systems, and the PHP scripting language all dominate the World Wide Web. Each of these Internet building blocks are born and raised OSS projects, and many experts believe that if they were not open-source, then the Internet would have never grown to dominate the world’s telecommunication industry. Each of these OSS examples demonstrates that when enough followers support an OSS, it can produce a very strong network effect, causing the majority to move to the new standard or miss out on the benefits that their peers are experiencing. Software maintained by everyone, made available to anyone, where only the best and brightest ideas rise to the top, continues to change the world by challenging incumbent closed-source solutions.
OSS not only benefits from the collective wisdom that produces new features, but it also benefits from something equally important to creating great software, and that is to produce a software product with high quality. The reuse of a popular OSS comes with the satisfaction of knowing that there is no better testing that can be done than exposing every line of code to the rest of the world to inspect it and try to break it. When an enterprise open-sources one of its components or applications, it’s often done solely for the purpose of allowing the world to continuously test the application and prove its integrity (and to help fix its vulnerabilities in the process). Python volunteers and enthusiasts know and appreciate this and therefore often spend their free time helping others with their Python projects, reviewing code, contributing ideas, and learning from each other. Now just imagine what you could do by connecting new, high-quality Python innovations to your business’s existing back-end MultiValue (MV) data structures…
PYTHON NOW WORKS NATIVELY WITH MULTIVALUE!
For years, customers have asked Rocket MV for a new modern development language. The BASIC syntax was born over 30 years ago and has served our customers well, but the world is changing and software is evolving to be more object-oriented and open-source, allowing users to experiment, integrate existing pieces, and prototype applications with a faster time-to-market based on shared code. Whereas BASIC once allowed business folks to solve problems with their MV data by using BASIC to create a green-screen application, Python now empowers the next generation of MV developers to develop UI-rich Python applications by easily integrating to an existing MV data structure. Python is the language that this generation already knows and now they can easily work with flexible MV data structures, all without learning any new development language! This ability for MV to connect with the OSS world of Python unlocks a world of opportunity by embedding native Python objects into your existing MultiValue application, or by exposing your MultiValue application to a Python application. Rocket is pleased to announce that UniVerse 11.3 (released in Oct. 2016), UniData 8.2 (release in Q2 2017), and D3 10.3 (release in Q4 2017) all include native Python Support. Read all about “How to Attract and Hire Millennials to Reinvigorate your Business with MV Python” in my next blog post. You can also find all the resources you need to get started today with MV Python at: http://info.rocketsoftware.com/u2Python.html
