Any software development project is always associated with the automation of related routine tasks. Initially, IDE and a pair of manual operations will be enough for you. Then, the number of body movements begins to grow: you need to perform multiple sets of tests, embed various certificates, execute scripts in the database, generate documentation on the code, and so on. You also need to perform these and other operations on the Continuous Integration server. In addition, you may need to deploy applications on production servers (if we’re talking about a client-server solution). To automate such tasks, programmers sometimes create sets of batch or shell scripts, but more often, the team of developers comes to some consolidated decision.

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Python itself is, of course, a programming language. But many people mistakenly believe that Python is the very thing that comes with most of the *nix systems and can be launched by typing “python” in the console. That is, the interpreter (a specific version thereof) is associated with the language as a whole. Just like those guys who write on Delphi. But what does it really mean?

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JavaScript has steadily been among the most popular programming languages in the recent years. Numerous frameworks and development for popular platforms have secured the success and erased the memories of the nasty clichés of the past. The language grows, develops and becomes more logical, which certainly pleases many thousands of its fans.

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For many years, I have been a fan of development for Windows and wrote pretty much about it to this best computer magazine ever. I switched to Mac OS and UNIX with time. Working in Mac OS, I set my mind to selecting a tool for creation of platform-independent programs. What should be preferred? Java? Mono? Too boring. I settled upon… Eiffel. For the following reason.

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Information is currently gradually becoming “new oil” in terms of value. The only problem is that the volumes of data to be processed are growing by leaps and bounds. The sizes of files are sometimes larger than the hard drive, not to mention that RAM can’t cope, and interviewees receive increasingly scary tasks like comparing two petabyte files on the fly. But, fortunately for programmers, there is no need to make the machine choke on such amount of information, as iterators and generators can be used for threading, and there is also Python, a programming language which supports them perfectly. Would you like me to tell you about that?

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In a client-server architecture, Java applications are most often located on the server side, and web interfaces are created by separate groups of front-end developers using JavaScript. Java does not provide any useful tools to develop modern Web interfaces (Do you still remember what Java applets look like?) — neither in terms of design, nor in terms of the client-server interaction. But what if the entire client-server application was developed using Java? Why not to make the client part “native” to the browser in compliance with the most modern usability concepts?

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If I started the article with describing all the advantages of cloud storage of data, you would think that I had been just thawed after twenty years of anabiosis, or that I use overdoses of hypnotics :). Therefore, I will put it briefly, in a programmer-like fashion: when I was faced with the task of making a program that could operate without being bound to the API of a particular service, enabling work with files located in a number of storage spaces (its purpose was backup), it turned out that it was not that simple. I decided to tell you about all the intricacies and pitfalls of that work in this article.

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