I write all my books using LaTeX. Parts of LaTeX are (at first) confusing.
Recently, I had a moment of despair when my LaTeX processing tools no longer worked.
Don't panic. Gather the data.
If the logs aren't good enough to reveal what's going on, fix the logs.
Q: "Can you recommend books that are good for a beginner wanting to learn python?"
Me: "Depends on the person’s background..."
Q: "They has a deep background in the problem domain. Recently they've been doing a lot of reporting and analytics using SQL."
Okay. That's excellent.
One of the …
more ...The back-story. See Coping With Complexity. See https://github.com/cloud-custodian/cel-python for the code base.
Back around May 26, I created this branch. Today -- July 2 -- I've got the tests to pass.
I made mistakes. I spent a lot of time making a some significant mistakes …
The back-story. See Coping With Complexity. See https://github.com/cloud-custodian/cel-python for the code base.
I've reached the point where progress is clearly impossible. A bad decision a few weeks ago has reached it's inevitable conclusion. I've made a terrible mistake. About 1,000 lines of code -- and tons …
more ...I'm struggling with brain cramps trying to understand something my past self wrote. Current me needs to go outside and do something that doesn't involve software or complexity. Sadly, current me is trying to make one small change and it feels like the software has passed out of the realm …
more ...We test software. We test people.
My lawyer, all my various doctors, even the coffee bar on main street is subject to testing. The coffee shop proudly posts their score from health inspections. Want to know about food safety? Ask them.
My professionals all have walls full of diplomas and …
more ...Ugh.
A painful stretch of hours looking for a problem. Working on this: https://github.com/cloud-custodian/cel-python/wiki/Evaluation-Design. I need to address a performance problem and upgrade things generally to get them ready for 3.13 and 3.14.
You know how it goes, right?
I touched something …
more ...This: https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/12/opinion_column_ransomware/
Shabby IT infrastructure built with criminally low budgets.
What did we expect?
Of course there will be ruthless exploitation of weakness.
Clearly, minimal IT budgets -- just enought to "keep the lights on" -- will provide avenues for exploitation.
more ...Generally, I try to frown on Domain-Specific Languages. Often, a tidy set of related functions, or a group of class definitions with a few decorators can create something that's every bit as expressive as a DSL in native Python syntax.
There are a few cases where a DSL can be …
more ...Recently, we talked about extracting data from complex relational databases. This is -- in a way -- another case study for my Unlearning SQL book. This is a description of what comes next after the "low-level" conversion. Warning: it's complicated.
BLUF: Take the time to get rid of SQL processing.
more ...