Hello World!

This is the first entry in my first blog.
Nota Bene: If you don't know what python is (and I don't mean the snake), you should probably leave now. Otherwise, this Blog could be fun for you :-).

But let's start from the beginning.
I started working at the mathematical research institute of Oberwolfach on the 27th of June. I was advised to read the Chapters one through six of DiveIntoPython before starting to work here.
But learning python wasn't over, when I came here. The other guy in my office (actually it is his office and he is my boss) taught me closures, nested functions and decorators.

Here comes an easy example of what a decorator is (in case you don't already know):

def my_function():
    print "that"

def my_decorator(f):
    print "this"
    f()
    print "the other"

my_function = my_decorator(my_function)

my_function()

this

that

the other

But python has a shortcut for decorators:

@my_decorator
def moo():
    print "moo"

moo()

this

moo

the other

I never had to do with python before. As you can imagine, it was brain-twisting (but even more fun). python's feature, that everything is a first-level-object, is really great, and it makes my work easier and more demanding at the same time.

My boss Michael Brickenstein keeps saying, that he feels guilty for torturing me with nested functions in my first days of python. Therefore, he sometimes brings self-baked cookies to the office.

From Tuesday onwards, a collaborator of this project came from Berlin to visit Michael. We three had a lot of fun discussing and coding together. I was able to take a look at his work (mainly sql). Therefore, I didn't do much python programming for the rest of the week.
But I found out, what my position within this project will be. The project - by the way - is called S-MATH and has to do with citing mathematical software. The project just started and will probably take a long time.
As far as I understood, I should be the one, who gets in touch with the sage community and should try to make an implementation for citing mathematical software into sage.

If you are involved in the sage community, this Blog is exactly right for you, we hope for rich communication.
I hope, that the sage community will accept me and I will always be open for suggestions and comments on my work.