Erik Johnson

I am a member of the Albuquerque Python Meetup: http://wiki.python.org/moin/AbqPython/ http://www.meetup.com/AbqPython/

My email: Spam is largely out of control on the internet. Sometimes I check email at HedgesFan at G mail dot com. If you want my regular email address that is checked almost daily, ask me for it.

Neat Python Tricks

#37: Actually check that download checksum: Most people I know, even most programmer, have never actually checked that checksum that is published with a download (for example: https://code.google.com/p/pyodbc/downloads/detail?name=pyodbc-3.0.7.win-amd64-py2.7.exe). That's perhaps understandable, as its not immediately apparent how you would do this. Most programmers can find a way if they want to (like Google some tool), but have you ever actually done it? If you have Python installed, you've got a major power tool at your disposal.

Assuming I have the file pyodbc-3.0.7.win-amd64-py2.7.exe sitting in the local directory, start the interactive python interpreter in that directory:

>>> import hashlib
>>> hashlib.sha1(open('pyodbc-3.0.7.win-amd64-py2.7.exe', 'rb').read()).hexdigest()

Should print out: cc409b505428091e446316d87701d423eb984e8f, same as the link above!

Python Ramblings

I am currently doing a course on Coursera titled An introduction to Interactive Programming In Python. (The link is to the actual instance of the class I am in - you may need to go in through the Coursera front page and search class listings to get to the next offering of the class.)

I don't really expect to learn a lot about the Python language itself, but some neat things are starting to happen with programming languages in general. In this case, they are using a wholly in-browser environment to run Python. It's not quite the same Python, but almost (one shortcoming I noticed is iteritems() on dict is missing.) This is based on http://www.skulpt.org/.

Programming Contest Sites

• The Python Challenge

• Sphere Online Judge (SPOJ) http://www.spoj.com

• CodeEval http://codeeval.com

• CodinGame http://codingame.com

• ProjectEuler http://projecteuler.net

Other Programming-Related Sites

• CodingGround http://www.tutorialspoint.com/codingground.htm In-browser console windows to code simple things in many different languages.

• PythonAnywhere https://www.pythonanywhere.com/ Hosted python you access via an in-browser console window.

• http://www.skulpt.org/

• CodeSkulptor www.codeskulptor.org Coursera & Rice University's wholly in-browser Python dev environment (based on Skulpt)

Vim stuff / Python indentation

Significant whitespace (i.e., indentation) is one of the biggest complaints I hear about Python. I have to admit I was not a big of it at first, and had some issues with spaces and tabs getting mixed up and causing my program to not run correctly. I have since come to see Python's significant white space as one of its best features. Python executes just like it looks, and looks just like it executes! They've been defined to be the same thing! Code reads just like it is actually structured. This was a conscious decision to try to address one of C's problems. You can't be lazy and not indent your code properly. You get the structure right to get the program to run right and resolve the readability problem at the same time - not put it off as a nicety to be skipped over. This is an aid to readability and *understandability*! IMO: It definitely is NOT a design flaw! On the contrary, it was a wise decision that ultimately saves typing and makes code more readable, letting you focus on the important parts rather than a page full of curly braces.

I did have a colleague come to me once (I guess as some sort of perceived representative for Python) and bitterly complain: "I remember now why I don't like Python! When you store your source code in PDF format, all the indentation gets stripped! That's such a pain in the -bleep-! No other modern languages have this problem!" Yes, well... some people will "get" this design decision, others may not. I just laughed and told him:

"I've used Python for over 10 years, and have yet to run into this problem."

It's not a convincing argument that something is wrong with Python. Python wasn't designed for that nor did it ever advertise or suggest that you could store Python source as PDF. (To be fair, this wasn't the primary mode my colleague was using, of course, but he had lost some code and recovered a script embedded in a PDF document from somewhere else.)

It is a fairly compelling argument not to store your Python source in PDF format, though. (If you want to display Python source in HTML, wrap it in a <pre> tag. I'm no PDF expert, but I would be surprised if there isn't some similar feature in PDF.) If you've lost all your source formatting, that's a problem. Even if it still compiles. Don't do that.

Using this .vimrc (or _vimrc on Windows), I've hardly thought about this indentation issue for over a decade:

set tabstop:4
set shiftwidth:4
set et
set autoindent
set wrap
set textwidth=72
syn on

Some other vim tricks/settings I don't want to lose track of:

• cd %:p:h Make it so you can edit files in cwd w/ :e filename

• /pattern\c Case insensitve search

  • see also :set smartcase http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2287440/how-to-do-case-insensitive-search-in-vim

• http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Count_number_of_matches_of_a_pattern

• http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Search_patterns

• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3997078/how-to-paste-yanked-text-into-vim-command-line

Other Stuff

I recently had an opportunity to see Joel Spolsky speak, live in Albuquerque. I had heard the name. He's the CEO of Stack Exchange (Stack Overflow), as well as some other things, most notably http://www.joelonsoftware.com/. So, I went to have a look at his blog, and here is the first thing I pulled up: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html

OMG! I can hardly express how appropriate and applicable this is to the project I am currently involved with. The rewrite wasn't my idea, nor even within my company. I am tempted to relay this to the people that are in the early stages of a great big rewrite project, but something tells me they are just not going to take this reference kindly. And it is not likely to endear me to the people I have to work with, nor it is likely to alter their plans: the project is already funded and underway. I'm still thinking it over.

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