4/03/2008

Programming Collective Intelligence

I've started reading Programming Collective Intelligence, and I'm really enjoying it. It's a really well written book that gives you a good introduction to the emerging field of Collective Intelligence. Segaran does a great job of taking the theory and mathematics and applying them in practical ways to real world problems.

The examples in the book are written in Python. I'd love to have the time to play with rebuilding them in Smalltalk or Common Lisp. However, I barely have time to even read the book. So, it's back to Python for me for a while. (Just between you and me, it's making me giddy to get back to Python, Emacs, and the down and dirty hacking that I used to love.)

So, if you're interested in Web 2.0, the modern application of Artificial Intelligence techniques, or doing really cool things with Python then you should grab a copy of this book.

2 comments:

Claudio Acciaresi said...

Hello again!

I'm also reading that book, is really cool!!.

I read that you are going to give a try to Django, I ask yo my self, why not Pylons?

Three friends and I, are making an application, the site is www.sociaflog.com (now is only available in spanish :()

We're using Pylons to develop it, it is really cool, it has an Eclipse plugin called Pydev which make thing really simple :).

Sorry if you knew all this :).

Bye!
Claudio

Tom Pierce said...

Claudio,

I agree - it's a great read. It's funny, a couple of friends of mine and I sat down to write an RSS feed reader a few years ago that automatically filtered feeds - just like in one of the chapters in this book!!! We were a bit ahead of our time, or perhaps just completely misguided.

I chose Django because it's very straightforward in the way that it works. It's not as configurable as Pylons. However, all I wanted was a well thought out, easy to use framework where I could get some stuff done very quickly. (I don't have much time these days.) I would have used Seaside, but I have the rest of the code in Python and no time to worry with it.

I haven't tried the Eclipse plug-in. I've been an Emacs user for years and it's pretty much my editor of choice. It has me covered if I do Python, Ruby, Common Lisp, Java, etc. I fire up Eclipse when I do Java work for its project management and debugging features. However, I prefer to work in Emacs for editing. I may check out the Eclipse plug-ins thought - good to know, thank you!

Unfortunately I don't speak Spanish. However, your social flog website landing page looks very good! I wish you the best with it! I'd love to hear how it goes.