With Apple about to announce its latest revolutionary product – the Tablet PC, its share value and earnings is bound to rise several times. But importantly, it will help many freelance programmers earn a fortune by developing apps for it.

iPhone apps are developed in Objective C.  However, there is an python implementation too. According to Wikipedia, Objective C is used only on Apple’s Mac OS x and iPhone OS.

Now with a tablet PC being added to its stable, the developers will have more flexibility and CPU power than the iPhone to develop killer apps. Already it is rumoured that the print media is looking forward to find a way to generate revenue from tablet PC.

So what is objective c? It is an OOP language which adds smalltalk like messaging to C. Here is a Primer on the language from apple and more detailed here.

Do you know the language? How do you find it?

This program makes use Caeser Cipher method for encrypting and decrypting data. From Wikipedia

It is a type of substitution cipher in which each letter in the plaintext is replaced by a letter some fixed number of positions down the alphabet. For example, with a shift of 3, A would be replaced by D, B would becomeE, and so on. The method is named after Julius Caesar, who used it to communicate with his generals.

Here is the program in python.

# Caesar Cipher – Simple Substitution Cipher

MAX_KEY_SIZE = 26

def getMessage():

print ‘Enter your message:’

return raw_input()

def getMode():

while True:

print ‘Do you wish to encrypt or decrypt a message?’

mode = raw_input().lower()

if mode in ‘encrypt e decrypt d’.split():

return mode

else:

print ‘Enter either “encrypt” or “e” or “decrypt” or “d”.’

def getKey():

key = 0

while True:

print ‘Enter the key number (1-%s)’ % (MAX_KEY_SIZE)

key = int(raw_input())

if (key >= 1 and key <= MAX_KEY_SIZE):

return key

def getTranslatedMessage(mode, message, key):

if mode[0] == ‘d’:

key = -key

translated = ”

for symbol in message:

if symbol.isalpha():

num = ord(symbol)

num += key

if symbol.isupper():

if num > ord(‘Z’):

num -= 26

elif num < ord(‘A’):

num += 26

elif symbol.islower():

if num > ord(‘z’):

num -= 26

elif num < ord(‘a’):

num += 26

translated += chr(num)

else:

translated += symbol

return translated

mode = getMode()

message = getMessage()

key = getKey()

print ‘Your translated text is:’

print getTranslatedMessage(mode, message, key)

input()

You can check out the code for finding out root of a number using Newton’s method of iteration in Python. This code cipher code is from the free ebook Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python

I am really beginning to like Python Programming Language. It is quite efficient in doing lot of tasks. Unfortunately, I don’t get to devote much time for learning it. Here is the code that will calculate the square root by newton method of iterations.

import random

a = float(raw_input(“enter a integer”))

x = random.randint(1,a-1)

while True:

print x

y = (x + a/x) / 2

if y == x:

break

x = y

raw_input()

I am a BSc IT student of Mumbai university. We don’t actually have to learn Python Programming language. Also you know that in India the fad is to learn Java, .NET, VB, etc. So why did I chose to learn Python?

Firstly, I was impressed when I came to know that Google’s algorithms are based on Python. NASA also uses it for various purposes.

But what really turned me on was the fact that Python is very easy to learn. I probed further and got to know more about it. Here are the reasons why you must learn Python even though there is not much scope in India as of now.

1. In Python there is no Types and Size like in C/C++. This makes programming whole lot easier.
2. Python programs are easier to undertstand. Making it useful in building large software in a team.
3. Most of the unnecessary coding is not required in Python making the programs shorter and development phase faster than any other old languages.
4. Python is portable. It will run on almost every OS without any issues. You can use Tkinter or WxPython to create GUI and it will work on all platforms. Compare this with VB which will work only in Windows.
5. Python script can call C/C++ libraries, use Java classes, integrate with .NET, etc.

After learning python, I am going to learn WxPython an Jython. You can learn Python from the official documentation you will get when you download Python from Python’s website. However, I found It difficult to understand.  I found this site Byte For Python was better for beginners. I have also purchased O’ Reilly’s Programming Python and Python in a Nutshell.  These books are bit advanced.