Python-based software & Services #2

Hello Py People!

In a continuation of our recent blog posts, we present to you our newest article dedicated to well known software and services based on Python. In this roundup we've written about some popular services the community commented on in the previous article.

Let's start with a tech rockstar: Dropbox!

Dropbox

Dropbox is a file hosting service, that offers cloud storage, file synchronization, personal cloud, and client software. Dropbox allows users to create a special folder on their computer which Dropbox synchronizes with their servers so the folder is accessible and up to date across multiple computers and via their web site and mobile app.

Originally, both the Dropbox server and desktop client software were primarily written in Python. From mid-2013 Dropbox began migrating its backend infrastructure to Go. The desktop client continues to use Python GUI toolkits such as wxWidgets and Cocoa along with a few notable Python libraries including Twisted, ctypes, and pywin32. While it uses Python to run some of its services, Dropbox also depends on the librsync binary-delta library, which is written in C.

Pinterest

Pinterest is a web and mobile application company, which operates an eponymous photo sharing website. Users can upload, save, sort, and manage images and other media content, known as pins, through collections known as pinboards. Pinterest uses Python with a heavily modified version of Django at the application layer. Tornado and node.js are used as web-servers. Memcached and membase / redis for object- and logical-caching, respectively. RabbitMQ as a message queue and so much more. You can find a breakdown of the internal structure for Pinterest here if you're curious: here's an article.

The Washington Times

The Washington Times is a daily newspaper which was was founded in 1982 by News World Communications, an international media conglomerate which also owns newspapers in South Korea, Japan, and South America. The Washington Times uses Django heavily along with a few opensource projects that you can find on their GitHub. They even have specific subdomain that features opensource themed articles.

Disqus

Disqus is a blog comment hosting service for web sites and online communities, which uses a networked platform. The company’s platform includes various features such as: social integration, social networking, user profiles, spam and moderation tools, analytics, email notifications, and mobile commenting. By now, their use of Python has mainly been replaced with Go. You can get more info on internal structure of Disqus in this article.

Bitbucket

Bitbucket is a web-based hosting service for projects that use either the Mercurial or Git revision control systems. Bitbucket offers both commercial plans and free accounts. It offers free accounts with an unlimited number of private repositories. Bitbucket is completely written in Python using the Django web framework.

Have a favorite website, game or program that you use all the time and want to learn more about it's use of Python? Drop us an email, or leave us a comment and join in on the discussion!. Have an idea for an article, or wish to share your own article with the CheckiO community? Get in touch with us at contact@checkio.org to become a contributor!

Until next time, happy coding!