In Python, using plus signs to concatenate strings together is one of the first things you learn, i.e. print(“hello” + “world!”), and it should be one of the first things you stop using. Using plus signs to “add” strings together is inherently more error prone, messier and unprofessional. Instead you should be using .format() or … [Read more…]
Truffle is an amazing suite of tools created by Consensys to develop smart contracts for the Ethereum blockchain network. However, it can be a bit jarring to make the leap from local development to the real test network, ropsten. Required Setup For this walk through, I have installed: Node (LTS) Truffle I will be using … [Read more…]
Step Functions, State Machines, and Lambdas oh my! AWS has really been expanding what you can do without needing to actually stand up any servers. I’m going to walk through a very basic example of how to get going with your own Python code to create an ETL (Extract Transform Load) process using Amazon’s services. And … [Read more…]
It can be a real pain to upload huge files. Many services limit their upload sizes to a few megabytes, and you don’t want a single connection open forever either. The super simple way to get around that is simply send the file in lots of small parts, aka chunking. Finished code example can be … [Read more…]
Dealing with communications across programs, processes or even threads can be a real pain in the patella. Each situation usually calls for something slightly different and has to work with a limited set of options. On top of that, a lot of tutorials I see are people simply starting one program from inside the other (for … [Read more…]
Thread and Multiprocessing Pools are an underused feature of Python. In my opinion, they are the easiest way to dip your feet into concurrency, and yet still the method I use most often. They allow you to easily offload CPU or I/O bound tasks to a pre-instantiated group (pool) of threads or processes. One of … [Read more…]
This month is my wife’s, mother’s and my own birthday, all within a span of nine days. What are the odds of that? No idea, I’m no statistician. However, as a developer, I thought it would be fun to prove (or disprove?) the Birthday Paradox with some Python coding. If you haven’t heard of … [Read more…]
Spice up your code with wrappers! In Python, a wrapper, also known as a decorator, is simply encapsulating a function within other functions.
| 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 | @wrapper def my_func(a, b=2): print(b) @meta_decorator(foo="bar") def my_other_func(**kwargs): print(kwargs) |
In Reusables, all the wrappers take arguments, aka meta decorators, so you will at minimum have to end them with parens ()s. Let’s take a look at the one I use … [Read more…]
As I sit here, anxious for the new AMD Vega 64 to be released, I decide to keep myself busy writing some Python code….designed to text me as soon as a new “rx vega 64” search term showed up on Amazon (I have the patience of a child on Christmas Eve, so sue me.) When … [Read more…]
Is Python more suited for EAFP or LBYL coding styles? It has been debated across message boards, email chains, stackoverflow, twitter and workplaces. It’s not as heated as some other battles; like how spaces are better than tabs, or that nano is indisputably the best terminal editor ; but people seem to have their own … [Read more…]