My politics

I posted a Python tidbit about checking if a string consists entirely of zeros and ones:I got a bunch of replies suggesting other ways. I wanted to post those, but I also wanted to check if they were right. A classic testing structure would have required putting them all in functions, etc, which I didn’t want to bother with.So I cobbled together...

My son Nat has autism, and one way it affects him is he can be very quiet and passive, even when he wants something very much. This played out on our drive home from Thanks­giving this week.Nat loves his routines, and wants to know what is going to happen. We make him a two-week calendar every weekend, laying out what to expect coming up....

I posted a Python tidbit about how for loops can assign to other things than simple variables, and many people were surprised or even concerned:params = { "query": QUERY, "page_size": 100, } # Get page=0, page=1, page=2, ... for params["page"] in itertools.count(): data = requests.get(SEARCH_URL, params).json()...

I was on episode 4 of the On The Board podcast: Taking on New Challenges. I’m never quite sure what parts of my experience people will be able to relate to, but it was a good chat with Jason and Michael about becoming a newb late in my career.

Something many people don’t realize is that I didn’t write the original coverage.py. It was written by Gareth Rees in 2001. I’ve been extending and maintaining it since 2004. This ancient history came up this week, so I grabbed the 2001 version from archive.org to keep it here for posterity.I already had a copy of Gareth’s original page about...