The emergence of Python for S60 offers a crucial turning point, as it brings the Python programming language to the mobile space. This makes mobile development approachable for many new developers that were previously excluded. Python for S60 can drastically reduce development time; it allows development with completely free and open tools and reuse of open source code modules. This can potentially lower costs and other barriers to entry for first-time developers of mobile applications. With Python running on Symbian OS, the short development cycle gives a shortcut from the inspiration of an idea to its implementation.
It makes rapid prototyping on the mobile platform easy and efficient by wrapping complex, low-level technical details in simple interfaces. In recent years, the processing power and memory capacity of smartphones have drastically advanced which have made it possible to run an interpreted language such as Python on such devices. Modern smartphones offer a rich set of features, including WiFi, camera, sound recording and networking that could easily be combined and used for new types of applications. As this book shows, Python for S60 makes accessing these features extremely convenient, letting you focus on your own application idea instead of on the intricacies of the platform.
The mobile space and the Internet are rapidly converging. Client–server solutions can be developed quickly in Python for S60 in combination with a web services back end, such as Django or Ruby on Rails, or using a custom server, which could also be implemented in Python. Being able to use a single agile language, and even some of the same code, on both the client and the server is a great benefit. Chapter 8 deals with advanced topics in networking, such as peer-to-peer communication and turning
your mobile phone into a web server. Chapter 9 is dedicated to combining web services, such as Yahoo! Maps and Flickr, with Python for S60.
If you are an enthusiastic mobile...