de ja vu with Borat

I remember writing about Python scripting in ArcGIS a long time ago in my earlier blogs. Well if you are too lazy to browse my earlier blogs... ArcGIS Geoprocessing tasks can be time and process intensive since they are often performed on a number of different datasets or on huge records. If we were to use Desktop software to automate all these task... its kinda tiresome. Might as well we write scripts to execute them without launching the Desktop software every single time. I mean these tasks can be sequenced in orderly steps and workflows. These scripts are recyclable... it can be used over and over again. Its kinda like programming... but like in the days of BASIC, AVENUE or AML programming... its sequential... or also known as procedural. Even if you have never thought of yourself as a programmer, after reading the scripting documentation in ArcGIS... you will be able to write scripts to perform geoprocessing tasks easily. You can include loops, batch processing or "if' statements for conditional control.

Enuf of this mumbo jumbo... lets talk about the inspiration for Python itself. From what I gather its based on Monty Python, or The Pythons, is the collective name of the creators of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, a British television comedy sketch show that first aired on the BBC on 5 October 1969. A few years back my brother in law got me the DVDs for 2 of their movies... Monty Python and the Holy Grail... and... The Meaning of Life. I mean... if the Americans have Saturday Nite Live and Late Nite Show... the British have Monty Python. Its kinda crude their jokes... but true to British dry and wry humour... it has excellent gaffs and laughs for sure. Watching Borat recently (and Ali-G before that) reminded me about Monty Python and their unique sense of humour. Its slapstick in a way but funny nevertheless.

The Python programming language by Guido van Rossum is named after the troupe, and Monty Python references are often found in sample code created for that language. Additionally, a 2001 April Fool's Day joke by van Rossum and Larry Wall involving the merger of Python with Perl was dubbed "Parrot" after the Dead Parrot Sketch. The name "Parrot" was later used for a project to develop a virtual machine for running bytecode for interpreted languages such as Perl and Python.

The best of all the term SPAM, as used to denote unsolicited email, comes from Monty Python's "Spam" sketch.