@dabeaz@mastodon.social avatar

dabeaz

@dabeaz@mastodon.social

Free-range computer scientist living in Evanston, Illinois. Former academic. I teach computer science courses, but you'll probably find me yapping on about bikes, dogs, and other random stuff here. I wrote the Python Cookbook, 3rd Ed (O'Reilly) and Python Distilled (Addison-Wesley). Teaching CSCI 1730, Design and Implementation of Programming Languages at Brown.edu in Fall 2023!

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dabeaz, to random
@dabeaz@mastodon.social avatar

A bit sad about missing yet another PyCon (coming up soon), but mid-May is peak parenting season with all of the end-of-school events. And given the choice, gotta go with the kids.

dabeaz,
@dabeaz@mastodon.social avatar

@chrisjrn June is summer band season though. Hmmm.

dabeaz,
@dabeaz@mastodon.social avatar

@webology I thought that it would be harder with younger kids, but the older kids are so much more challenging on scheduling. Especially with all of the extracurricular activities in high school.

dabeaz, to random
@dabeaz@mastodon.social avatar

Current dilemma: Work on code? Or break out the pressure washer and go outside?

sanityinc, to cycling
@sanityinc@hachyderm.io avatar

Mulling getting back into after many years away from it, but the idea of throwing several thousand euros at a decent bike is harshing the buzz. Still have a 1998 racer with Dura-Ace that got a dinged frame when a car knocked me off and broke my foot in 2015, the last time I rode.

dabeaz,
@dabeaz@mastodon.social avatar

@sanityinc Saw a guy I know on the side of the road fiddling with something on the drive train of his expensive new road bike. I called out "you okay?" as I neared. He yelled back, "yeah, just some software thing." I'd say good call on keeping the old bike.

dabeaz,
@dabeaz@mastodon.social avatar

@sanityinc @oook I'm still sad about cracking the frame on my steel bike back in 2019. Don't know if anything cracked on the deer.

dabeaz,
@dabeaz@mastodon.social avatar

@sanityinc @oook Oh, I didn't say that ;-). Multiple cracks on me too.

AlSweigart, to random
@AlSweigart@mastodon.social avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    dabeaz,
    @dabeaz@mastodon.social avatar

    @AlSweigart Yes.

    dabeaz, to random
    @dabeaz@mastodon.social avatar

    I know I've been a bit checked out lately, but I saw some diagram about Python packaging the other day and I literally recognized none of the words written down on it.

    dabeaz,
    @dabeaz@mastodon.social avatar

    @brohrer Not really, but I was perhaps a bit taken back. I mean, I still casually follow a fair bit of Python stuff, but this was more like WTF?!?!

    In any event, I've only got a limited number of brain cells. I'd say that about 75% of them are devoted to keeping track of the high-school kid's schedule. The other 25% aren't interested in packaging.

    dabeaz,
    @dabeaz@mastodon.social avatar

    @christmastree I no longer know either of those words...

    slampoud, to random
    @slampoud@mastodon.cloud avatar

    So I was gonna tell you about how I finally extricated myself from my job and i’m going to take a couple months to decompress and then start looking for something new … except I’ve had my chill utterly fucked by the experience of trying to buy health insurance on covered California, which decided it can’t verify my citizenship and I need a state hearing if I want to proceed.

    dabeaz,
    @dabeaz@mastodon.social avatar

    @slampoud WTAF?!?

    deech, to random
    @deech@mastodon.social avatar

    Lex Luthor implies the existence of a far greater super villain Parse Luthor.

    dabeaz,
    @dabeaz@mastodon.social avatar

    @deech And their quirky sidekick Regex.

    nedbat, to random
    @nedbat@hachyderm.io avatar

    My test suite has just one dot on the last line. What would you do?

    • Delete one test
    • Change the width of the terminal
    • Keep it as a visceral reminder of the uncomfortably chaotic nature of the universe
    • Write more tests
    dabeaz,
    @dabeaz@mastodon.social avatar

    @nedbat Put a time.sleep(30) in that one test to just let it hang there for an uncomfortably long time.

    dabeaz,
    @dabeaz@mastodon.social avatar

    @billseitz @CodenameTim @nedbat Upon reflection, this would be a pretty interesting feature to add to a terminal program (random delay for an orphaned "."). Just imagine how angry people would be when they finally figured out that the delay wasn't the test at all.

    chrism, to random
    @chrism@chattingdarkly.org avatar

    Apathy is underrated.

    dabeaz,
    @dabeaz@mastodon.social avatar

    @chrism Meh.

    mariatta, to random
    @mariatta@fosstodon.org avatar

    Last year while I was still employed, my employer said they couldn't fund my travel to PyCon US, so I ended up requesting travel grant from PSF and took PTO.

    Decided to walk out of my job shortly after (while still at the sprints).

    I was initially scared about it TBH, but day one of my funemployment, I actually felt the happiest in years.

    Now they just laid off their Python team (except for one person) few weeks before PyCon US, where they're also a sponsor.

    It's gonna be... "Interesting" 🧐

    dabeaz,
    @dabeaz@mastodon.social avatar

    @mariatta Apropos of nothing, the worst experience (hands down and by a wide margin) I ever had teaching a Python training course was at a certain employer.

    dabeaz, to random
    @dabeaz@mastodon.social avatar

    A few weeks back, I showed kid the insides of an Apple 2 and then a box of similarly looking electronic components. He picks out a 7-segment LED and says I want to do something with this.

    I'm not sure he knew what he was getting into because all I've got are NAND gates. Figuring out how to represent decimal numbers in binary and displaying a corresponding decimal digit from scratch has proven to be much more involved than it looks. It's actually been a pretty awesome project.

    dabeaz,
    @dabeaz@mastodon.social avatar

    I've been treating it as a kind extended improvisational "live coding" project. After a bit of fooling around with LEDs, switches, and transistors I printed out the data sheets for the 7-segment LED and the 7400 quad NAND gate. Everything else from that point has been been a lot of experimentation, pen-paper exercises, and working "the problem." Not following any particular pre-set plan or even looking up anything online to tell us how to do it.

    Definitely taken a few weeks though.

    dabeaz,
    @dabeaz@mastodon.social avatar

    @orsinium Exactly! I think the math part of it is pretty interesting and unexpected to a kid. Wait, there's a use for all of that algebra stuff? "Yeah kid, you just saved yourself the trouble of wiring up another 40 chips."

    dabeaz,
    @dabeaz@mastodon.social avatar

    After finally getting digits 0-7 to display, kid wanted to see the digits count. So, a bit more coding with NAND gates--implementing increment directly from a truth table. Finally, "lucky for you kid, I just happen to have a quad-input flip-flop and a 555 timer (as one does)."

    So we finally ended up with this beautiful rat's nest of work, slowly counting digits.

    Thus concluding the first lesson on "how do computers work?"

    dabeaz,
    @dabeaz@mastodon.social avatar

    @djmitche Nice! I remember seeing stuff like that in the Radio Shack catalog back in the day.

    dabeaz,
    @dabeaz@mastodon.social avatar

    @neirbowj Nice! Oh my, was that "bomb" incident all the way back in 2002? Yikes! I must admit that one of the appeals of a project like this is just how scary the end result looks. Nobody else (especially teachers and parents) know what's going on with it.

    dabeaz,
    @dabeaz@mastodon.social avatar

    @neirbowj Whew! I know I've been getting old and time flies, but at least it hasn't flown THAT much. Yet.

    deech, to random
    @deech@mastodon.social avatar

    In broad strokes this pretty much matches my experience with Haskell and web services. Never again.

    https://loglog.games/blog/leaving-rust-gamedev/

    dabeaz,
    @dabeaz@mastodon.social avatar

    @deech That's quite the read but echos my limited experience of "not getting" Rust. I'm not one to deny other people's experience and enthusiasm with it, but my brain is not at all wired for thinking in that language.

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