DEV Community: Space Rock Media

Name my new WiFi

Shawn McElroy — Sun, 26 Apr 2020 18:31:54 +0000

So I've had the wifi name
Drop It Like It's Hotspot for some time. And I need a new one. Looking for suggestions for a new WiFi. Some ideas:

The Lan Before Time
The Silence of the Lans
Bill Wi the Science Fi
Frodo Laggins

What are your favorite python tips you don't see others use?

Shawn McElroy — Sat, 18 Apr 2020 23:40:55 +0000

Python is a wonderful language. It is easy to learn but like many other languages it still takes time to master. There are many small things in python, whether builtin or as a package, that make our lives easier.

What tricks or features in python do you love to use that help you write more concise code, that you don't see others use often.

For me, one thing I love making use of is functools.partial which can help you write code in a functional way, but also help make things simpler.

Namely, you can make common calls to other functions shorter if you will always call them with the same arguments.

>>> from functools import partial
>>> def multiply(x, y):
...     return x * y
>>> # partial lets us make a new function, by calling the old function with set parameters.
>>> double = partial(multiply, 2)
>>> print(double(4))
8

You can also call the method with named arguments

>>> triple = partial(multiply, y=3)
>>> triple(3)
9

But be careful cause arguments are passed in order

>>> quad = partial(multiply, x=4)
>>> quad(4)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: multiply() got multiple values for argument 'x'

multiply() got multiple values for argument 'x'

Pretty much anything in functools is great. you can find functool partial docs here

What are your favorite?

Do you have an inner monologue? Some don't.

Shawn McElroy — Sat, 08 Feb 2020 01:42:03 +0000

Today I learned... That some people don't have an inner monologue. Where you essentially talk to yourself in your own head, hearing your own voice, without physically verbalizing. And that some cannot do that.

I am totally surprised. I thought everyone could do that. But apparently many don't.

What I want to know, is for those that don't, how do you work out programming problems? How do you plan to write things before writing them? As I write this, I am just thinking the words in my head as if I was speaking them out loud. But I am not verbalizing.

I have a conversation with myself in my head about what to write. Or what my code is doing, or anything else.

It seems that those that don't, think in more abstract thoughts and have to verbalize them.

But I want to know more about this from others. Do you have one? Do you not? If not how do you deal with planning, reading, writing, or problem solving in your head.

I would love to hear. Or from those that know more about the topic.

Adrian Holovaty

@adrianholovaty

What?! Some people have constant internal monologues?

This post is mind-blowing and deserves all the attention it's getting: insidemymind.me/2020/01/28/tod…

20:05 PM - 07 Feb 2020

React/Vue components are just server side template components with worse performance. Change my mind.

Shawn McElroy — Sun, 26 Jan 2020 06:12:40 +0000

To this day, even after going through react tutorials, I still feel like it so much more overhead than what is needed compared to using a good templating engine like jinja. I can easily make components and in one file inject css and js that is only used on that component.

Plus, most times the templates are cached. So with very little css/js to load it's really fast. Basically like a static site.

But, data binding. Ok, so there's some is on the page that can change some elements. You can still make an Ajax request to some endpoint to get a json response and update the UI. Even faster with a websocket to subscribe to an endpoint. You still don't need react/Vue for that.

Another upside, is libraries getting out of date. No need to update your react version when a new one comes out. Less headache, no overhead. Sure there will be something if you're using is for Ajax requests, but that's likely an easier upgrade anyways.

I forget any other reason server site template rendering was just easier?

Note 1: My goal here is to have a conversation about this. I am trying to learn better for both sides of the argument.

Note 2: I do want to be fair in saying that I understand the desire for this for a rich interactive application interface that has a lot more moving parts that don't need to communicate with a back end. Such as where you would build an offline application

How do you respond to "What is tour greatest strength/weakness?" In interviews?

Shawn McElroy — Mon, 22 Jul 2019 16:24:55 +0000

Pretty much what the title says. In an inteview I have never not been asked the queariins:

What is tour greatest strength?
What is your greatest weakness?

I recently tried a response by telling them I had to tell mybweakneas first. My weakness is imposter syndrome. Feeling like I'm not qualified or that it some times gets to me when I see a 12 year old programming since 5 is at the same level as I am. Portraying that I know they're not but it feels that way.

And my strength is knowing that my persistence, attention to detail, and teamwork will always push me last that aa well as c9ntinute to make solid software.

The response seemed to go over well with them. I didn't get the job but it was a high demand position and didn't expect to. But I liked their responses with my answer.

How do you respond to these questions?

What are your favorite tools/libraries for writing TypeScript

Shawn McElroy — Sun, 21 Jul 2019 21:27:08 +0000

What are your favorite, or must have tools for writing TypeScript? I am just starting to pick it back up again after a long time and am not as familiar with the ecosystem anymore.

I will need to play with VS Code And IntelliJ to see which one I like more for TS. I have both.

There are obvious libraries I feel like Jest for writing tests. Or webpack for managing assets. But what other libraries and tools are your must have for writing full stack TS?

(I am looking at Vue.js and tailwind for the front end)

How has failing made you a better developer

Shawn McElroy — Sun, 14 Jul 2019 09:16:45 +0000

Whether it's a task at work you failed to get working, broke production, needed help, got fired, didn't get a dream job, couldn't find a job, or even failed at something on your own personal or side projects...

We all know that some times these moments can get the best of us. But how have failing these made you a better developer?

What are your best tips for writing technical blog posts?

Shawn McElroy — Sat, 13 Jul 2019 22:51:53 +0000

Especially targeted at those new to writing technical blog posts, but any tips are welcome. Exactly as the title implies:

What are your best tips for writing technical blog posts?

Ranging from just talking about tech, to programming tutorials, to code-heavy posts.

For me, the main tip is to just write. If you are stuck on a part of a post, write a note stating what you may want there and write the next part. The other is to write an outline.

What helps you write well and get them done?

What is your opinion on websites with dark themes?

Shawn McElroy — Sun, 30 Jun 2019 23:21:04 +0000

For the longest time, I never liked websites, especially personal or blogging sites, that had a dark theme. They all looked terrible. Looking back I am sure they probably had way too high of contrast with white text with pitch-black backgrounds. But I can't pull them up so I don't remember details.

All I remember for years was that dark themes were mostly terrible. Even more so for personal blogs.

Today, I feel like I could be swayed on that decision. I have been using the dark theme for DEV and I like it, despite the fact I think there could be some subtle improvements (I am not a designer so I may not be the right to ask what those would be). But with the changes in making editors dark themed, browsers, terminals, discord, and many more; I feel like dark themes could have a better chance.

But that feeling is hard to shake.

Why do you think that dark themes are good (despite light text on dark background supposedly being easier on the eye)? Dark themes also have the problem of being harder to see in bright light, usually on phones/tablets when outside.

So how would you change my mind on dark themes on sites being terrible? What are sites that have great themes with good visibility of the content? And why do they always feel so much worse for a personal blog, product, or marketing sites (I used to work for a company with a dark themed marketing site and nobody internally liked it)?

When do you crosspost for visibility and SEO?

Shawn McElroy — Sat, 29 Jun 2019 01:01:37 +0000

I have finally started my blog after way too long. It's a process that can be intimidating purely for how much work you think you will need to do. Even if you know the material well. It's also to help me get better at technical writing.

But one thing I see different answers to, is WHEN to cross post. Also some places seem to want to cross post earlier than others. Medium seems to want fresher content so posting there earlier might help. Where as DEV doesn't seem to be effected by that.

In general from what I have read, once you post on your site, you should wait up to a week to cross post on other sites like DEV. I feel bad for cross posting in places like reddit where it feels more spammy to me asking people to look at my content. Otherwise, I could post on linkedin and other sources. And sharing on social media should be done right away to get the traffic to your primary domain.

What other suggestions do you guys have about when to post, and possibly where (outside of maybe community specific areas based on your topic since that can varyvso widely).

The Python virtual environment with Pyenv & Pipenv

Shawn McElroy — Fri, 28 Jun 2019 07:05:15 +0000

Originally published on my site at writingco.de. This is a cross-post from my content blog. I will be publishing new content every week or so, and you can sign up to my newsletter if you'd like to receive my articles and other info tidbits directly to your inbox!

There is a history of confusion around packaging and managing a python virtual environment. Do we use pyvenv? venv? virtualenvwrapper? Lately, other options have come out of the woodwork. The use of pyenv gives us the ability to manage python versions much like nvm and rvm, while Pipenv is the successor to pip itself and is slated to be merged in eventually.

Installing Pyenv

Pyenv allows you to easily install different versions of python along side each other on your system without conflicts. It is not supported on windows but python can easily be installed from their website. Just make sure to add it to your windows PATH.

Installation is pretty straight forward, simply run these commands to get it set up.

$ git clone https://github.com/pyenv/pyenv.git ~/.pyenv
$ echo 'export PYENV_ROOT="$HOME/.pyenv"' >> ~/.bash_profile
$ echo 'export PATH="$PYENV_ROOT/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bash_profile

There are some more installation details on their repo page if you have any trouble. They also have instructions for users of zsh. You will likely need to reload your terminal after installation to have the pyenv command available.

➜ pyenv
pyenv 1.2.12-2-geb68ec94
Usage: pyenv <command> [<args>]

Some useful pyenv commands are:
   commands List all available pyenv commands
   local Set or show the local application-specific Python version
   global Set or show the global Python version
   shell Set or show the shell-specific Python version
   install Install a Python version using python-build
   uninstall Uninstall a specific Python version
   rehash Rehash pyenv shims (run this after installing executables)
   version Show the current Python version and its origin
   versions List all Python versions available to pyenv
   which Display the full path to an executable
   whence List all Python versions that contain the given executable

See `pyenv help <command>' for information on a specific command.
For full documentation, see: https://github.com/pyenv/pyenv#readme

The primary sub-commands we will be dealing with today are local, global, and install. First, let’s look and see what versions we have on our system.

➜ pyenv versions
* system

Installing New Versions

For most users, you will only have the system interpreter. Let’s install 3.7 as another global version of python.

➜ pyenv install 3.7
python-build: definition not found: 3.7

The following versions contain `3.7' in the name:
  2.3.7
  3.3.7
  3.7.0
  3.7-dev
  3.7.1
  3.7.2
  3.7.3
  miniconda-3.7.0
  miniconda3-3.7.0
  stackless-3.3.7

See all available versions with `pyenv install --list'.
...

If the version we ask for is only a partial match, it will show us which versions we can install. Let's install the latest, which will take a few minutes.

➜ pyenv install 3.7.3
Downloading Python-3.7.3.tar.xz...
-> https://www.python.org/ftp/python/3.7.3/Python-3.7.3.tar.xz
Installing Python-3.7.3...
Installed Python-3.7.3 to /home/shawn/.pyenv/versions/3.7.3

Now let’s make 3.7.3 globally available so there is no messing with our system python:

➜ pyenv global      
system
➜ pyenv global 3.7.3
➜ pyenv global      
3.7.3
➜ pyenv versions
  system
* 3.7.3 (set by /home/shawn/.pyenv/version)

We are now defaulting to 3.7.3. For now, we are done with pyenv. It is a very simple tool to use.

Pipenv: the Python Virtual Environment

To install pipenv, you can install it through your system's package manager as described here on their repo page.

The setup

To get started we need to create a simple project. Let’s clone a repo I have that has a few basic files in it for tracking projects in git.

➜ git clone git@gitlab.com:autoferrit/template.git demo
Cloning into 'demo'...
remote: Enumerating objects: 6, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (6/6), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (6/6), done.
remote: Total 6 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)
Receiving objects: 100% (6/6), done.
➜ cd demo
➜ ls -la
Permissions Size User Date Modified Git Name
drwxr-xr-x - shawn 27 Jun 12:10 -- .git
.rwxr-xr-x 474 shawn 27 Jun 12:09 -- .editorconfig
.rwxr-xr-x 2.2k shawn 27 Jun 12:09 -- .gitattributes
.rw-r--r-- 138 shawn 27 Jun 12:09 -- Pipfile
.rw-r--r-- 96 shawn 27 Jun 12:09 -- Readme.md

You can see the file contents at the GitLab project.

.editorconfig: helps tell the editors (with appropriate plugins) what formatting options should be used on files in this project.
.gitattributes: This keeps line endings in check when working on various platforms (I am looking at you, windows).
Pipfile This is where we will keep of application requirements rather than using requirements.txt

The Pipfile would also be generated from the following command.

➜ pipenv --python 3.7.3 install

This will create your python virtual environment, which you can then use by running pipenv shell. The best part is that Pipenv supports Pyenv and will use python versions installed using that tool making our system much cleaner.

A simple API

To show how to use it, we are going to create a very basic API using FastAPI. Install the requirements with the following command:

➜ pipenv install fastapi uvicorn

This will create a Pipfile.lock which is analogous to package-lock.json in node.js. Creating a repeatable environment when the code is run through a CI server or production is critical and this is where Pipenv shines. It makes sure we can actually deploy the same versions of packages AND their requirements. Let’s run this code.

➜ uvicorn main:app --reload

Now you can see your API by visiting http://127.0.0.1:8000/items/5?q=somequery. If you would like to follow along in this tutorial, you can read the fastapi tutorial in their documentation here.

The Pipfile

Let’s open up our Pipfile to see what has installed in our python virtual environment.

[[source]]
name = "pypi"
url = "https://pypi.org/simple"
verify_ssl = true

[dev-packages]

[packages]
fastapi = "*"
uvicorn = "*"

[requires]
python_version = "3.7"

By default, Pipenv will always install the newest versions of packages. Which is what we should all be doing. When new versions are released and we run pipenv install it will install the newer version that was released. To update a package, we can run pipenv update fastapi or if we want to update all we can run pipenv update. If we need to pin a specific version, you can do so in the same way if you were to use standard pip and requirements.txt.

How do I install Dev Packages in my environment?

To install development packages just pass the --dev argument.

➜ pipenv install --dev ptpython

And to install development packages:

➜ pipenv install --dev

By default, pipenv install will ONLY install the base packages that should live on production. This is what we want. Passing the --dev parameter will allow us to install base AND dev packages locally or during the CI process.

The pip in the $SHELL

To activate the environment, simply run

demo on writingcode master [!?] 
➜ pipenv shell        
Launching subshell in virtual environment…
 . /home/shawn/code/sandbox/demo/.venv/bin/activate

demo on writingcode master [!?] via demo 
➜ pip list    
Package Version
---------- -------
Click 7.0    
fastapi 0.30.0 
h11 0.8.1  
httptools 0.0.13 
pip 19.1.1 
pydantic 0.28   
setuptools 41.0.1 
starlette 0.12.0 
uvicorn 0.8.2  
uvloop 0.12.2 
websockets 7.0    
wheel 0.33.4

Note: I am showing my full terminal text here to show that it is now adding via demo to the prompt for the python environment. You will likely see this represented differently. Often times it looks like this:

(demo) $ pip list
...

Checking for vulnerabilities in your virtual environment

Possibly one of the best features is the ability to check for vulnerabilities.

➜ pipenv check
Checking PEP 508 requirements…
Passed!
Checking installed package safety…
All good!

We have no vulnerabilities in our python virtual environment. That’s a good thing. Let's try to add one.

➜ pipenv install 'django==2.1'
➜ pipenv check
Checking PEP 508 requirements…
Passed!
Checking installed package safety…
36883: django <2.1.6,>=2.1.0 resolved (2.1 installed)!
Django 2.1.x before 2.1.6 allows Uncontrolled Memory Consumption via a malicious attacker-supplied value to the django.utils.numberformat.format() function.

36522: django <2.1.2,>=2.1 resolved (2.1 installed)!
An issue was discovered in Django 2.1 before 2.1.2, in which unprivileged users can read the password hashes of arbitrary accounts. The read-only password widget used by the Django Admin to display an obfuscated password hash was bypassed if a user has only the "view" permission (new in Django 2.1), resulting in display of the entire password hash to those users. This may result in a vulnerability for sites with legacy user accounts using insecure hashes.

36517: django <2.1.2,>=2.1.0 resolved (2.1 installed)!
django before 2.1.2 fixes a security bug in 2.1.x. 
If an admin user has the change permission to the user model, only part of the
password hash is displayed in the change form. Admin users with the view (but
not change) permission to the user model were displayed the entire hash.

WHOAH! Don’t install Django 2.1. Luckily it was fixed, let’s update it.

➜ pipenv update django
Locking [dev-packages] dependencies…
Locking [packages] dependencies…
✔ Success! 
Updated Pipfile.lock (9d4a23)!
Installing dependencies from Pipfile.lock (9d4a23)…
  🐍 ▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉ 11/11 — 00:00:01
All dependencies are now up-to-date!

➜ pip list            
Package Version
---------- -------
...  
Django 2.1    
...

Wait why is the old version installed? This is GOOD! Why? It means that our setup is idempotent. Why? It didn’t work because we pinned version “2.1” of Django. So we should unpin that in the Pipfile by changing the version to "*". We should now be able to have the expected outcome.

➜ pipenv install            
Pipfile.lock (10cb8d) out of date, updating to (9d4a23)…
Locking [dev-packages] dependencies…
Locking [packages] dependencies…
✔ Success! 
Updated Pipfile.lock (10cb8d)!
Installing dependencies from Pipfile.lock (10cb8d)…
  🐍 ▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉ 12/12 — 00:00:04

➜ pip list      
Package Version
---------- -------
...  
Django 2.2.2  
...

Conclusion

Pyenv and Pipenv make it much easier to keep your python virtual environment and versions in check. You can now make your environments consistently deployable across systems. Python has a history of being a headache when it comes to consistently installing requirements across systems. Using these tools will help you focus more on your actual code.

Unfortunately, Pipenv isn’t geared towards those making libraries to be uploaded to pypi which still requires setup.py. Hopefully, in the future, they will find a way to update the packaging system with these too

And Here is the link again to subscribe to my newsletter. You can also follow me on twitter.

How do you manage your environments and dependencies in Python?

What tools have you built?

Shawn McElroy — Tue, 25 Jun 2019 16:39:51 +0000

This is sort of a follow up to this post:

Invest in building custom tools

Ben Halpern ・ Jun 16 '19 ・ 1 min read

#productivity

I am curious to what tools people have built that you use either locally or in production that helps you be more efficient. From automating, to building, code generation, scheduling/reminders, or anything else.

Even if you never released it (you should!) I would be interested in knowing what non well-known tools people have made to make their own developer lives easier