Consider, for a moment, the shelve and dbm packages for storing things in a “database.” Built-in. Lightweight. The database is essentially a mapping from identifiers to objects. It can be quite nice.

The shelve module directly puts Python objects in a file. It’s an ideal database structure for Python …

I saw a confusing post on https://fosstodon.org.

I won't link to it, but I will quote it because it repeats some common misconceptions.

I have some iterator chain (in reality longer and more complex than this example).
And now in one or more steps, I need to add …

First, read this: Hazards And Safeguards for Software Rewrites. This is an infuriating article. The first part is nonsense. I wonder if it's intended to be read ironically? Maybe it's a list of bad ideas? Skip straight to the Safeguards for Rewrites section. It's really good.

Also, this Characterization Testing …

There are many good reasons to use shell scripts. Mostly, a script can be useful when it's an alias that launches an application. Beyond that, I have doubts.

I wasted three days because I refused to get a grip on how matplotlib really works.

Most of the time, folks like me are happy and successful using the pyplot module. The Quickstart provides brilliant, working examples.

As my partner's grandfather used to say, "We're off to the races in …

I'm sick of reading about THE Ternary Operator.

There is not merely a single operator that is ternary. There are many operators that are ternary.

Here's one example:

>>> 6+1 >= 6 >= 6-1

The >= >= operator is ternary. It has 3 operands. Count them.

There are a 36 of these ternary operators …

Stand-alone document files for tech writing are awful. They should not be used as widely as they are.

This is a disheartening thing to read

As someone who doesn't do a ton of JSON parsing on the command line, I tend to forget jq syntax.

Two tools I really like are gron (make JSON greppable) from @tomnomnom and jqp ..., which provides a "tui playground for exploring jq."

98 …

See Python 3.12: what didn't make the headlines. This is very helpful.

It is a great list of 7 key features of Python 3.12.

With one tiny point I need to object to.

A "Dice Mechanic"? Yes. The thing you do with the dice to determine an outcome. We'll use Python to see how the dice shake out.