My concerns with Bitcoin as a currency

Today I retweeted this brilliant tweet: 2014 year of the bitcoin desktop — Charles HooperLee (@charleshooper) January 1, 2014 So, to start the year, I’ve decided to share some of my thought on the bit coin issue, and some of the problems I see. As I am not an economist, I’m not going to go into the deflation / long term scenario. For what I know, that’s very bad, but as that can lead to a deep economic conversation, one I don’t really want to get into, as I lack of the… Read More

Python Wizard

Ever since I was a young boy, I typed on keyboards From bash commands to Java I must have code them all but I ain’t seen nothing like him In any Hackathon That nice, nerd and shy kid Sure codes great Python! He stands like a statue, Becomes part of the machine. Lots of comprehensions always writing clean right code indentation dicts used the most That nice, nerd and shy kid Sure codes great Python! He’s a coding wizard There has to be a twist. A coding wizard, S’got such a supple… Read More

Make beautiful Python code (talk at PyCon IE ’13)

Another year, another amazing PyCon. I guess I repeat myself, but I keep being impressed about the quality of the talks and the friendly, vibrant atmosphere. It is always a pleasure to spend some time with people interested in code and technology… There was also an increase in the number attendees, and quite a lot students. I said that on Twitter, but Python Ireland, you guys rock. Of all the talks I attend to, I’d like to comment two that were especially interesting. The first was one of the keynotes, PRISM-as-a-Service: Not… Read More

ffind is now available on PyPI

Remember ffind (A sane replacement for command line file search) module/script ? I’ve just pushed it to PyPI, so anyone interested in giving it a try can install it doing pip install ffind Brilliant! As this was my first submission to PyPI, I’ve follow this guide. It has been quite simple, once it is prepared to use setup.py. And remember, the code is available on Github, so feel free to check it and contribute!

80 chars per line is great

Probably the most controversial part of PEP 8 is the limit of 80 characters per line. Well, is actually 79 chars, but I’ll use 80 chars because is a round number and the way everybody referes to it. There are a lot of companies where the standard seems to be “PEP8, except for the 80 chars line restriction”. On GitHub projects, which in general follow PEP8 (it seems to be a very strong consensus), that’s typically not found. In explicit code guidelines, the restriction could be increased (100, 120) or even removed… Read More

Great female participation on PyCon US 2013

I have read that around 20% of PyCon attendees were women. I’m sure I’ve seen it on more places I can’t find at the moment, but is at least here. This is fantastic news, a great success for the PyCon, the Python community, and specially groups like PyLadies and Lady Coders. The opening statements of Jesse Nollan is a must see. As I have previously expressed some concerns in this blog about whether requiring a Code of Conduct is the best approach, I’d like to say that I was wrong and it seems that… Read More

Narcissistic numbers

Here is a nice mathematical exercise from Programming Praxis. Is about finding the “narcissistic numbers”, n digit numbers numbers where the sum of all the nth power of their digits is equal to the number. To reduce the problem a little, I decided to start by limiting the number of digits. So, the first approach will be just calculate if a number is narcissistic of not. So, after checking it and making a couple of performance adjustments, the code is as follows…

Thoughts on Code of Conducts

I’ve just read this statement from the PSF about requiring a Code of Conduct, and I felt somehow a little down. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that a CoC is something bad, and everything it says (at least the referenced PyCon US one and the example in geekfeminism.com) makes sense. It’s just that needing a CoC feels a little … formal. I don’t like very much formality, as I like to think that PyCon conferences are more a bunch of somehow friends getting together and sharing knowledge. I’ve always felt… Read More

In defense of resting

I have been watching recently some documentaries about software development, including the classic Triumph of the nerds (available in YouTube in three episodes, 1, 2 and 3) and Indie Game: The Movie. They are both very good  and I’d recommend them not only to developers, but to people interested in technology and/or entrepreneurship in general. But they are very good exponents into something very present on the software scene, which is presenting crunch mode, working insane hours, in some sort of glamourised way. It is part of the usual storytelling and, and probably,… Read More

ffind

A sane replacement for command line file search I tend to use the UNIX command line A LOT. I find it very comfortable to work when I am developing and follow the “Unix as IDE” way. The command line is really rich, and you could probably learn a new different command or parameter each day and still be surprised every day for the rest of your life. But there are some things that sticks and gets done, probably not on the most efficient way. In my case, is using the command `find` to… Read More