The provisional timetable of talks for EuroPython 2010 is now available. I must admit, the tutorials look pretty good too, but I’m going to have to give them a miss. 😦 So, what am I thining of attending? Monday 19th July New and Improved – Michael Foord Development Process of Python – Ezio Melotti Python […]
I bought a second hand Mac Mini G4 off a colleague last year, which I was using as a Fedora workstation. Because I’ve been playing with Arch Linux on VirtualBox recently, I decided to take the plunge and replace the Fedora installation with Arch Linux PPC. The aim was to convert this “lowly” 1.2 GHz, […]
I finally had a chance to try coverage.py, a Python code coverage tool which is maintained by Ned Batchelder. I’m liking it a lot: it’s minimal fuss to set up and use, yet very useful indeed. When you’ve installed coverage, it should be on your path. Taking my work-in-progress PyGame code as an example, I […]
I love books. Proper, paper books. I’m always recommending titles to people, so thought it might be a good idea to pluck ten books from my bookshelves that I regularly recommend to anyone who wants to learn about Agile development, or improve their skills. Now, please note that my background is with XP as that […]
I’ve started working through Dave Thomas’s Code Katas, as previous readers to this blog will be aware. I tackled the previous kata (Code Kata 2: Karate Chop) in Clojure as a way to help learn Clojure. I was planning to attempt the next kata in either Clojure or Erlang, but decided I would implement a […]
I’m not exactly sure when I first heard of Linux. It was either 1993 or 1994, just before I began my first year at university, and I don’t mind admitting it pretty much passed me by. At university I used SunOS/Solaris and Ultrix, and I had friends already using NetBSD/RiscBSD at home. I became converted […]
Lying ill in bed probably isn’t the most conducive environment for programming. I’ll spare you the full medical details, but in a strange way it put me in an evil mood… the kind of mood that seemed fitting to give macros a go. I’ve never really seen the point of macros, but then again my […]
“The programmer builds from pure thought-stuff: concepts and very flexible representations thereof. Because the medium is tractable, we expect few difficulties in implementation; hence our pervasive optimism. Because our ideas are faulty, we have bugs; hence our optimism is unjustified.” – Frederick Brooks, The Mythical Man-Month I was on an evening train home when, re-reading […]
This is my third Clojure-based solution to the Karate Chop kata detailed at http://codekata.pragprog.com/2007/01/kata_two_karate.html The write up is going to be a little shorter than before, because I’m pretty tired as I type this. As always, source code to the solution is available from BitBucket at http://bitbucket.org/metaljoe/metaljoe_codekata/ under the MIT license and feedback is definitely […]
This is the second attempt at a Clojure-based solution to the Karate Chop kata detailed at http://codekata.pragprog.com/2007/01/kata_two_karate.html Source code is available from BitBucket at http://bitbucket.org/metaljoe/metaljoe_codekata/ and is offered under the liberal MIT License. Since the aim of a kata is to learn and become a better programmer, feedback is always welcome. Since the previous solution […]
John's Reflections 