Visual Programming and Mental Constructs
I saw yesterday live the Apple keynote on the WWDC. I am far from an Apple developer, but I use OS X and iOS everyday, and I’m interested on new stuff. There was a full section devoted to developers, which is great (well, it’s supposed to be a developer’s conference, after all), and, arguably, the most interesting stuff on that part (for a developer’s perspective) was the release of a new programming language, Swift. It was announced with an (irrelevant) comparison with Python in terms of speed (I actually have plans to write… Read More
Compendium of Wondrous Links vol V
Seven habits of effective text editing. A great essay by Bram Moolenaar (of Vim fame). It is applicable to any editor, but, of course, shows why Vim can be such a good choice (once you know how to use it, obviously) A useful collection of recipes in Python. Thirty python language features and tricks you may not know How to be a sane programmer. Basically, do other stuff not related to programming. The related Business Insider article is also worth the read. The Evolution of a Software Engineer D/A and A/D Digital… Read More
Compendium of Wondrous Links vol III
Good tech lead, bad tech lead. Can we please please stop telling people that coding is easy? Confessions of an Intermediate Programmer. The perception and psychology of competence. The Science of Making your Story Memorable Some interesting advice about presentations. The presentation itself used as example is interesting as well. Thirty percent feedback to iterate faster. The classic “your problem with Vim is that you don’t grok vi” response in Stack Overflow. A very nice list of Python articles. Best Python 2013 Companies and startups are different. Not only in size, but qualitatively. An… 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
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
Rockstar programmer and Rockstar teams
There has been some discussion about the so-called Rockstar Programmer. You know, that awesome engineer (also called 10x engineer) that can produce what 10 other, average engineers can. This post by Scott Hanselman[1] fueled some discussion on Hacker News. What has been overseen about the original post is that he advocates about 10x teams. That resonates a lot, because I think that we should agree that, while there is people with potential to be ninja programmers, that’s not something that can be achieved without the proper care on the environment. A good… Read More
Vim as IDE. Are you getting the wrong parts?
There are a lot of discussion about how to make Vim “an IDE”. Vim is a great text editor, but when we are developing, there are lots of extra tools that are very useful. Code completion. Easy navigation through files and classes. Source control integration. Syntax checking. Navigation that understand the semantics. Integrated debugger. My problem with IDEs (and I have used a few over the years) is that they give you a lot of support, but at the cost of increasing the complexity. They are slow for a lot of common… Read More
These are the times of miracle and wonder
My first computer was a second hand ZX Spectrum+ This says a lot about my age, I guess. I got it from my uncle, who bought himself a more powerful computer. I really loved that computer, and used it for quite a long time. It seemed so magical that you could play a tape, which sounded weird, and load a game. There was also the possibility of program from the command line, which I tried, but I never “got” exactly how to get from very basic stuff to anywhere. A few years… 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!
Wrong Side of Memphis 