In this post we’ll look at how to apply the hedgehog concept to get more meaningful work done using Python and in your career. The other day I posted on Twitter: Don’t get stuck in tutorial paralysis, start building. Yes, it’s uncomfortable but you will learn so much more by deliberately applying what you learn to your specific needs. Then use books, videos, etc in tandem to cement your learning. To which Yerman responded: Any recommendations on what to build? It was a great question and reminded me of the book Good to Great I read a while back. In this book Jim…
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If you’re not using GitHub Actions you’re missing out! This tool is a great way to catch any errors in the central place of the GitHub repo. Catch errors early Of course this is always second best, developers should do their due diligence locally first before pushing code: Some of my favorites in that regard are: Set up syntax checking in your editor or IDE. As I am a Vim addict, I use this one. Make it easy to run your tests, I use a combination of a Makefile (example) and a .vimrc shortcut (nmap <leader>y :w<CR>:!pytest<CR>) – we will…
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This is the first part of a series of articles dealing with the type annotation system in Python, type hints for short. With this opinionated article, I advocate the use of type hints. I want to explain why you should care and why your code will be better, more bug-free, more accessible, and easier to maintain. At the end, I will give you some recommendations on how to get started. Type hints is a really huge topic and a quick look at the official documentation [4] is all it takes to feel a little lost. To be honest, I am…
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We received a reply from one of our community members the other day reminding us of an incredibly powerful technique that we use to maintain motivation and build our confidence: the Brag Doc. A brag doc, wins doc, success wall (whatever you call it), is quite simply a document that you create for yourself detailing all of your wins and accomplishments over time. Why? Quite often your biggest enemy is you. What we say to ourselves matters and when we’re feeling demotivated or are having a hard time, it’s easy to spiral into thinking we’re not good enough or that we’re not worth it. …
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Some time ago I asked on Twitter: I was curious what you use #Python decorators for? And I got quite an amazing / insightful response: The obvious next step for me was to look at some examples / use cases. So below are 5 useful applications of decorators. Study them, then apply similar things to your own work. 1. De-duplicate code The first one was easiest, because @prashanttgs posted a great example: It’s easier for me to do: … for multiple functions than doing this: To me this shows the benefit of abstracting away repeated logic to make your functions (classes) leaner. …
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Tutorial Paralysis, information overload, hoarding and never completing online courses (How large are your Udemy and Coursera libraries?)… This is the pain we’re increasingly hearing about in conversations with developers and it’s more common than you may realise. It’s real, it’s crippling and it can make you feel like you’re going nowhere. Even if you do manage to complete a course, is it what you needed? What next? Another course? Then what? The reality is that nothing beats actual coding and implementation. This is where the real learning and growth happens. It may be easier said than done, but the best time to do…
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Hey, what just happened to the pybites.kinsta.cloud/ site?! After 4.5 years of content updates, products and growth, the site just got outdated, unmanageable and even confusing. The pain was real and we needed a fix! The site was first created using Pelican, a (Python) static site generator + GitHub pages and we were happy with it. It’s great technology and it supported our growth as a blog, team and business. However, it was hard to keep the design professional / responsive and made it difficult to work with multiple authors. A simple refactoring could not do this time. It was…
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Today I wanted to share a little app I built the other day to search emojis from the command line.
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What if you could control a little circuitboard with a bunch of IO’s, integrated WiFi and a camera slot on board?
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Naughts and Crosses (Tic-Tac-Toe to some audiences) is a popular skill game often played by children. It can also be usefully employed to distract dial up computers, at NORAD for example, rather than allowing the ‘playing’ of Global Thermonuclear War. Would you like to play a game?