dll Hell .net

I’m writing this post on a freshly restored HP Pavilion laptop. It’s freshly restored because after a recent auto-update, Vista decided to stop loading. Two of the updates worked just fine, installing in seconds. The third update started, but got stuck in a Ground Hog Day of install attempts and reboots. After digging up my laptop’s restoration DVD (cleverly disguised as a Windows Anytime Upgrade DVD) I was able to restore to an earlier save point. Of course, two restore points failed with some “file already exists” error and another simply led to the same loop out of which I was trying to get… Finally a fourth restore point from a week ago worked. Oddly enough, Vista started even though my battery died mid-restore.

I’ve tried to avoid jumping on the Vista bashing bandwagon, but this is pretty bad. My laptop nearly became a paperweight thanks to a poorly tested update. Had my laptop been some strangely configured off-brand, I’d get it. I mean, we’ve all written code that has choked in the wild. But this is an HP Pavilion CompUSA/Best Buy/Circuit City special. It’s off the shelf and totally OEM. If you don’t run your code in the most common settings…

I’d be in a more forgiving mood if it weren’t for the fact that 1) my system wouldn’t start after the bad bits and 2) the repair option wasn’t so hit or miss (I’m still worried about my next reboot). I’ve tolerated Vista for about ten months now. SlickRun has made the clunky UI livable, but I’ve been too patient with underperforming explorer operations. It’s time to consider Vista alternatives.

The obvious choice is to “upgrade” to XP Pro. Apple has cleverly used this scenario as a marketing tool. But there’s truth to this advertising. OK, so the guy who plays the Mac is the son of one of my favorite philosophy professors. Maybe I have a bias… But breaking the boot is worse than breaking the build.

This post is admittedly for a very small niche of readers. If you are a Windows user - with virtually no Mac experience - and happen to be teaching college students how to program Python with Eclipse then read on…

I recently began my third semester teaching Intro to Business Programming at Fairfield University. Python is the language of choice for this course. For an IDE, we use EasyEclipse, which packages useful plugins together by purpose (LAMP, Java, etc.). One of the LAMP plugins is PyDev, which adds a very nice set of tools for writing Python scripts in Eclipse. However, PyDev needs to be told where to find the Python interpreter. On Windows, this is no problem. Students almost always accept the Python installer’s default install path or change it to Program Files. But the Mac…

I’ve spent very little time on a Mac. I can find my way around to get some things done (basic office work). I’ve never installed or configured software on a Mac. I’m not sure I’ve ever even powered one up… I couldn’t even describe the basic setup of a Mac. Shameful, I know… I like Apple. My iPod Touch is amazing. This is probably the single most impressive gadget I own (and I own many). But I hate Apple’s software. I’ll save that for another post, but for now I’ll ask why the search box has to lose focus when I Alt-Tab out of and back to iTunes?

Anyway… So clearly I’m guessing when I try to help a student find his or her Python interpreter. Fortunately, Mac bundles a Python interpreter into its OS. So no install woes. For those in the niche I described above, here’s the interpreter path to lead your students to:

/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.3/bin/python

As far as I could tell, there were about 3000 other ways to find paths containing Python. Not sure what those were all about.