Compendium of Wondrous Links vol XI

It has been a while since the last time. More food for though! Python Python 3 upgrade strategy. The time has come to take migrating to python 3 seriously. Another addition to Python-to-c++ compilers, in a similar way to Cython: Pythran. I tested it with code from my recent post $7.11 in four prices and the Decimal type, revisited and it worked quite well, though it’s arguably a very simple test. Speed was quite good, better than Cython, actually. Powering the Python PyPI. These people deserve a lot of credit. PyPI is really important… Read More

$7.11 in four prices and the Decimal type, revisited

I happen to take a look to this old post in this blog. The post is 7 years old, but still presents an interesting problem. “A mathematician purchased four items in a grocery store. He noticed that when he added the prices of the four items, the sum came to $7.11, and when he multiplied the prices of the four items, the product came to $7.11.” I wanted to check my old solutions again, with the things that I learn in the last years. At that time, I was still a newbie in… Read More

ffind v1.0.2 released!

The new version of ffind (1.0.2) is available in GitHub and PyPi. This version includes the ability to execute python modules and scripts directly and some other minor improvements. Happy developing!

Happy 25th Anniversary, Python

25 years ago, on 20th February 1991, Python 0.9.0 was released publicly… I absolutely love it and use it everyday, and it seems to be as successful as ever… For another great 25 years! Cheers!  

All you need is cache

What is cache More than a formal definition, I think that the best way of thinking about cache is an result from an operation (data) that gets saved (cached) for future use. The cache value should be identifiable with a key that is reasonably small. This normally is the call name and the parameters, in some sort of hashed way. A proper cache has the following three properties: The result is always replicable. The value can be scrapped without remorse. Obtaining the result from cache is faster than generate it. The same result will be used… Read More

Gorgon: A simple task multiplier analysis tool (e.g. loadtesting)

Load testing is something very important in my job. I spend a decent amount of time checking how performant are some systems. There are some good tools out there (I’ve used Tsung extensively, and ab is brilliant for small checks), but I found that it’s difficult to create flows, where you produce several requests in succession and the input depends on the returned values of previous calls. Also, normally load test tools are focused in HTTP requests, which is fine most of the time, but sometimes is limiting. So, I got the idea… Read More

Leonardo numbers

Because Fibonacci numbers are quite abused in programming, a similar concept. My first impulse is to describe them in recursive way: But this is not very efficient to calculate them, as for each is calculating all the previous ones, recursively. Here memoization works beautifully Taking into account that it uses more memory, and that calculating the Nth element without calculating the previous ones is also costly. I saw this on Programming Praxis, and I like a lot the solution proposed by Graham on the comments, using an iterator. The code is really clean.

ffind v0.8 released

Good news everyone! The new version of find (0.8) is available in GitHub and PyPi. This version includes performance improvements, man page and fuzzy search support. Enjoy!

Optimise Python with closures

This blog post by Dan Crosta is interesting. It talks about how is possible to optimise Python code for operations that get called multiple times avoiding the usage of Object Orientation and using Closures instead. While the “closures” gets the highlight, the main idea is a little more general. Avoid repeating code that is not necessary for the operation. The difference between the first proposed code, in OOP way and the last one The main differences are that both the config dictionary and the methods (which are also implemented as a dictionary) are not… Read More

Some characteristics of the best developers I worked with

I had a conversation last November on the PyConEs, when I was on a conversation stating that I am working with truly brilliant people in DemonWare, and then someone asked me: “Do you have problems agreeing in  what to do? Normally great developers have problems reaching consensus on tech discussions”. My answer something like: “Well, in my experience, truly awesome developers know when to have a strong argument and they usually are ok reaching an agreement in a reasonable time”. So, I wanted to, as sort of follow-up, summarise what are the characteristics… Read More