Steve Holden: Links for 2009-09-29 [del.icio.us]

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Chris McDonough: You’re the Smartest Guy In The Room

You are smart. No one else knows much. In fact, most people are
pretty stupid. Everything except what you’re doing right now is
stupid. Django is stupid. Zope is stupid. Twisted is stupid.
Setuptools is stupid. The GIL is stupid. Pylons is stupid.
TurboGears is stupid. Guido is stupid. PJE is stupid. Ruby on Rails
is a total hack. And oh my god, all these people in IRC are clearly
mentally challenged. Why do they keep arguing with you?

I get it: it’s not easy being a genius. So, if you don’t mind, I have
a request. Given that it would certainly not tax you professionally,
because it’s all so simple and obvious, do you think that you could
contribute something to Python or some Python-related project that
demonstrates your immense base of knowledge and helps other people?

Ah but wait! You have. I’ve seen that one package you keep talking
about that you wrote and released six months ago. It has a couple of
users, even. But look… uh… oh dear.. this is awkward. I don’t
mean to be negative here. But there’s a couple problems. You may be
a genius, but at 33% test coverage, you better be almost omniscient.
I’m personally not a genius, so I need to rely on something so banal
as package test coverage metrics to make decisions about what to use.

Look. Let’s be frank. I know you were the smartest guy in your high
school class. I realize that in your circle of peers, you are the one
who most often actually knows what he’s doing. I get the fact that
you like puzzles, and you’re good at solving them. I realize you
believe you are hot shit, and a few other people might too.

But if I may be so bold, here are some suggestions:

Shut the fuck up. I mean this in the kindest, and gentlest of ways,
as maybe a friendly uncle might tell you to “shut the fuck up”.
Work on your capacity to talk with other people without being a
complete, utter cock. We’ve already adjusted our expectations, with
you being a programmer and all, we realize you’re constitutionally
straightforward. But there’s a difference between being
straightforward and being a dick. Your profession and your history
as “the smartest guy in the room” doesn’t excuse you from displaying
basic courtesy.
You don’t need to prove anything to me or anybody else. I could
care less. It’s not always about you.
Write some code that works all the time, every time that lots of
people find useful. Maintain that code for 5 years. At this point,
you will have something to be proud of.

Thank you.

Pair Programming: Where Teamwork Comes Out – Brandon Savage

The New York Times did a profile on the topic of pair programming, the art of writing software with a partner. They looked at it through the eyes of an individual who does pair programming every day.

The profile is pretty good, and makes a strong case for pair programming. While I’m not fully prepared to surrender my freedom to another person for 100% full-time pair programming, I think that doing pair programming is something that can be very effective.

One thing that the New York Times doesn’t really play up is that pair programming is good for management. This is sometimes lost on management, who wonders why they should use two programmers to do the work of one. They miss the point, though, when they do the math. First, a second programmer provides a second set of eyes, meaning that bugs are reduced. Fixing bugs takes time, and this reduction in bugs actually saves time. Second, management also misses the fact that two people put in eight hours of productivity each day, together, rather than perhaps four hours total, if they were programming separately. This is due to the fact that programmers get bored, get distracted, or generally get off task, but with another person there is a peer pressure to keep working.

At the end of the day, even if the lines of code written are lower, the problems solved, bugs avoided, and logic worked out is of higher quality and improved stability. For those who have never tried pair programming, I highly recommend it.

Kenneth Reitz: Generate a Random MAC Address in Python

If you’d like to learn more about programming, contact me for a one-on-one lesson.

import random
 
def randomMacAddress():
   """Returns a completely random Mac Address"""
   mac = [ 0x00, 0x16, 0x3e, random.randint(0x00, 0x7f), \
      random.randint(0x00, 0xff), random.randint(0x00, 0xff)]
   return ':'.join(map(lambda x: "%02x" % x, mac))
 
if __name__ == '__main__':
   print randomMacAddress()

Brandon Rhodes: Google Earth and Middle-earth

Importing a normal, rectangular map of Middle-earth
as a Google Earth overlay is too narrow toward the north.

I wanted to measure distances in Tolkien’s Middle-earth.
While a flat map distorts such measurements,
it occured to me that Google Earth can correctly measure
both lines and paths across the curved surface of the globe.
I soon found excellent documentation for
using image overlays with Google Earth,
so I downloaded a map of Middle-earth
and tried placing it on the globe.

Imagine my disappointment when I saw the result shown in the above image!
At first I made the mistake
of not holding down the Shift key
when resizing the image in Google Earth;
the Shift key is absolutely critical
for the image to maintain its aspect ratio
as you stretch it to the right dimensions.
But even after learning this habit,
it was painfully clear that the Middle-earth map’s projection
was different from that expected by Google Earth:
the map is far too narrow at the top.

Obviously, it was time to pull out Python,
my favorite programming language,
and see whether the
Python Imaging Library
could help me make short work
of converting a map from one projection to another.

(Read more…)

Microsoft promotes the careers of PHP professionals – PHP Classes

Microsoft promotes the careers of PHP professionals

By Manuel Lemos

Microsoft is launching a new initiative to promote the careers of PHP professionals.

This article presents an interview with a Microsoft manager to explain in more details what is this initiative and how the PHP professionals may take advantage of it.

CodeWorks – Jason E. Sweat

I am winding down my “tour of duty” with the MTA crew for CodeWorks 2009. This is a really ambitious adventure, seven cities in two weeks. I was a member of the A-Team, doing 3 hour long tutorials on the first day of each city, while the B-Team was arriving. The following [...]

Python News: Python 2.6.3rc1 released

A candidate for the third maintenance release of the 2.6 series is available.

Jack Diederich: Your Talk Proposal Here

As it turns out one of the marginal items that gets trimmed in a down economy is conference jaunts [Q: who would have guessed? A: everybody]. PyCon 2010 needs talks, so if you have something interesting to say to a few hundred people this is your chance. I didn’t volunteer for the program committee this year so I don’t know the exact numbers but the acceptance rate is going to be much higher than the 50% for past years.

This is a great opportunity to practice your chops; I got my start when PyCon was 300 people and talks had a 90% acceptance rate. The last few years PyCon has had 1000+ people and even the smallest talk room gets 200 people. If you have anything interesting to say, this is your chance to say it.

NB, hopefully PyCon won’t have to do what other conferences routinely do and say “we’ve extended the deadline, but this time we mean it!” For fuck’s sake the conference is in Atlanta in February – I’ll be happily golfing during the time I’m not speaking.

NB, by “golfing” I also mean “going to the shooting range” and “bowling” as weather dictates.

ENB: Anna Ravenscroft has a tidy short list of bogus reasons why you can’t give a talk. The title is pointed at women but the excuses are universal.

Why is Perl on Mac such a disaster

The Perl technocrati seem to live on the three main desktop OS roughly in the order Linux, Mac, Windows. Linux is first mostly because it serves dual purpose as a server platform.But looking down from the stage at any major Perl conference you are like…

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