...Must... Not... Use... PHP.

Had an early start today (well, early considering that I'm on vacation) and started coding a tiny test script for a widget concept that hit me last night (yeah, I know, I still can't find a widget useful enough to be worth running for more than a couple of days, and mine probably won't be an exception...)

I'm writing a snakelet for the server side of things, and am constantly thinking how much "easier" it would be doing this in - even considering that I write like most folk would write C++ - sprawling classes with umpteen methods and an almost paranoid approach at parameter handling.

Turns out that dictionary semantics are the biggest stumbling block - I carried over from Perl the habit of not bothering to initialize them before use, and my penchant for cramming everything into multi-level hash tables demands a bit extra care when manipulating that sort of thing in .

I could use something a bit less funky than PIL, too. I need to generate images on the fly, and I'm slowly browsing through the Google Python modules directory to see if I can find a simple and user-installable GD binding (i.e., something that can be trivially installed without root access).

Ah, the joys of minimalist coding...