Let's talk about profound confusion.

I got an email with a subject of this, "Python's Protocol Reduces Reliance on Duck Typing". The resulting conversation led to this nugget: "... my current project could use protocols in Python, and thus I didn't need to rely on duck typing and instead could use …

I heard about these less than a week ago.

• https://openmarine.net/openplotter
• https://github.com/openplotter/pypilot
• https://signalk.org/installation.html

This is very interesting. Very interesting.

I have a partially complete IoT anchor alarm.

The idea of leveraging the boat's other devices through a Signal-K interface is …

See A 5-Point Framework For Python Performance Management.

It seems straight-forward to me. Have goals. Measure your ability to meet them.

I don't see too many teams doing this, though.

I could be wrong, but, I think performance is left to arguments and complaints, not solid engineering.

I get asked about good books for beginners. Here's an example:

"What Python books do you recommend for novices so they can learn from beginner to advanced?"

For me, this is nearly impossible to answer.

"Beginner" is often undefined. I have to turn this around and ask what you already …

I have to admit, it's very difficult to respond to this comment. I have to fight down the urge to say things like "The Reader is not an idiot," or "At some point, we have to assume they've seen a computer before."

AFAIK there's little or no useful data data …

A pragmatic description of a language (like Python) from axiomatic -- or really axiom-like -- foundations is exasperatingly hard. I don't think I have any answers, but I sure do have a lot of challenges. I think there's a path that involves a lot of "don't look down -- just edge along the …

When I started in this business I was given a flowcharting template.

See https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/object-groups/flowcharting-templates. I'm pretty sure I had one of these: https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_690078.

Since then, things have changed a little.

I fondly recall using the Rational Rose …

See https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/find-the-smallest-positive-number-missing-from-an-unsorted-array/ This seems to be a popular coding interview problem.

The Python code shown on the site seems almost maliciously misleading.

The full problem is this:

You are given an unsorted array with both positive and negative elements. You have to find the smallest positive …

Working on a new book. Fun stuff. It's going to cover Python 3.9.

I'm adding the type hints material. And that means PEP 585. Which means type hints for generics can use the generic types. We can use list[int] instead of List[int] and avoid from typing import …

Yes, that's what the email said.

I was -- well -- shocked. Too shocked to be polite. Content Warning: much snark follows.