Python Rocks! and other rants

Why I love Python 5

Wed, 28 Dec 2005 15:49:20 GMT

This example shows off several useful features of Python including introspection, dynamic loading, first-class ... read more

Simple itertools.groupby() example

Wed, 07 Dec 2005 03:37:36 GMT

Suppose you have a (sorted) list of dicts containing the names of cities and states, and you want to print them out with headings by state:

>>> cities = [
...

How I write code

Sat, 03 Dec 2005 12:01:04 GMT

I tend to design from the bottom up - not exclusively, but in general I make small parts and combine them to make larger parts until I have something that does what I want. I refactor constantly as ... read more

What's so great about Ruby?

Tue, 25 Oct 2005 01:14:40 GMT

I'm reading Bruce Tate's latest book, Beyond Java. In it, he argues that Java has become overgrown, unwieldy and vulnerable ... read more

Unit testing is an enabling technology

Sun, 21 Aug 2005 15:28:00 GMT

I'm reading Pragmatic Unit Testing by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas. I'm a big fan of unit testing and I think ... read more

Why I love Python 4

Fri, 10 Jun 2005 13:24:16 GMT

Sometimes Java almost seems to go out of its way to make coding difficult, while Python goes out of its way to make it easy. Here is a case in point.

I needed a Java method that accepts a duration ... read more

Will unit testing slow you down?

Sun, 17 Apr 2005 13:22:08 GMT

I am trying to encourage unit testing and test-driven development at work. As far as I know, only a few developers here are really test-infected.

I have asked several developers, "Do you write ... read more

Never answer the same question twice

Tue, 23 Nov 2004 12:50:08 GMT

When a user comes to me with a question about a program I have written, I like to do two things. First, answer the question. Second, change the program so the question won't come up again.

This ... read more

When should I use classes?

Sat, 23 Oct 2004 00:40:32 GMT

A question beginners sometimes ask is, "Should I use classes in my program?" This article gives some ideas of ... read more

Relief

Tue, 19 Oct 2004 19:18:24 GMT

It's such a relief to be coding in Jython again after working with Java. In Java I feel like I'm fighting the language and the APIs all the time. It's way too hard to get anything done. Python just ... read more

Sticky Widgets

Sun, 17 Oct 2004 18:57:04 GMT

A technique I am using quite a bit is to make sticky widgets - GUI widgets that autonomously remember some part of their state. For example, a text field that remembers its last value; a window that ... read more

Spring Free

Wed, 06 Oct 2004 23:53:36 GMT

For my current project, a distributed application with a database back-end, I tried Hibernate and Spring. I really wanted to like them! They have lots of cool features and make some things incredibly ... read more

Python and Unicode

Wed, 15 Sep 2004 01:29:36 GMT

Python has extensive support for Unicode data. Two issues that are not well documented elsewhere are the handling of non-Ascii characters in the Python interpreter, and use of the default system encoding. ... read more

concat vs join - followup

Sat, 28 Aug 2004 03:39:44 GMT

A couple of people have made good points about my last post comparing string concatenation and join.

Marilyn Davis pointed out that in my data, the crossover point where join beats concatenation ... read more