Not using/allowing Python code in HTML templates is a deliberate Django design decision. We created Django in an environment where the designers didn't know Python (or much programming, in general), and it was much simpler to explain a simple template language than to teach them Python.

Aside from that, there are some nice benefits to having a separate template language. One benefit is the extra level of security -- a designer can't bring the entire site down by making a syntax error in the template. And there's the benefit that it encourages you (rather firmly!) to separate logic and presentation. In my Django applications, I'm never tempted to give templates any logic that isn't strictly presentation-related.

Then there's stuff like the template system's automatic HTML-escaping, which we just introduced in the Django development version. Sure, I guess you could do that with a pure-Python-syntax template system, but it seems like you'd end up hacking things substantially to get that to work.

And, finally, if you don't care for Django's template language, you don't have to use it. The whole framework is just Python, after all -- import whatever external libraries you want to import.

Ok, so maybe I'm missing this whole multi-core dilemma. But I don't see that big of a problem. I just think that people are asking the wrong questions. The question isn't how can I write software for mutli-core chips, it should be "what problems are solved best with multiple cores?"

There are categories of "embarrassingly parallel" problems that have been solved for years using multiple cores: video rendering, 3D graphics rendering, etc... In short, anything that does repetitive processing on large datasets.

Now, people are upset, because we're not going to be able to improve the software for the average user with multiple cores, and they are correct if they want word processing and email to get better with multiple cores. The question that we need to be asking, is this: how can embarrassingly parallel problems make user software better?

How can we use multiple streams of video in software? How can 3D rendering improve my software? Or, what sort of very large datasets can I process with multiple cores on the desktop?

The companies that answer those questions (e.g GOOG) are companies that will make a lot of money in the next decade.

Surely Fortran merely copied existing math conventions.

I agree.

At least half of the "dilemma" is pure, unadulterated marketing. In this article, the marketer is Microsoft, which is trying to convince end users that there's some kind of big problem, one which no mere mortal can comprehend, that is somehow preventing our expensive new Vista machines from being any better than the XP boxes they replaced. It certainly has nothing to do with Microsoft's incompetence, nor with their slavish devotion to Hollywood-approved, mind-mangling, box-breaking DRM. And it's certainly not their insistence on foisting incompatible proprietary crap like IE on the industry. No, it must be a Fundamental Problem of Computer Science that is holding us back. Naturally, this problem can only be solved by the big academic brains that work for... Microsoft!

The email example is a dead giveaway... it's laugh-out-loud funny:

"In the future, Mr. Mundie said, parallel software will take on tasks that make the computer increasingly act as an intelligent personal assistant."

Ah, the intelligent personal assistant -- it's the application of the future, and it always will be.

How do we know that intelligent email processing is not being held up by the lack of suitable coding techniques for eight-way parallel processors? Because I have a dual-core processor right now, and it spends the night contemplating its digital navel and counting to 2^64 by fives for fun. If there was something smart it could be doing with my email, why isn't it working on it right now? I am drowning in unused processor cycles.

Here's the standard AI textbook: http://aima.cs.berkeley.edu/

I'm assuming you mean "AI" in the sense of "fancy mathematical tricks to solve domain specific problems", not in the sense of artificial general intelligence.

Those lessons can be useful, though. You might make the same mistakes.

"In talks to launch web start-ups." What an LA way to put it. As if you had to negotiate with some sort of power broker to start a startup.

"Do not deny the classical approach, simply as a reaction, or you will have created another pattern and trapped yourself there." -- Bruce Lee http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Lee#Philosophy

I recommend starting from scratch and ignoring the field. All the field will teach you is very complex ways to NOT have AI.

PR.