Many people will proclaim that the eval() function is reprentnatly evil.
Feel free to skip the two rants.
The eval() function is relatively easy to work with.
Important
Limit the globals to the fewest possible names.
A too-common claim is that we can't use eval() because an …
This is delightful: Packt has this Humble Bundle including The Modern Python Cookbook.
The Humble Bundle with The Modern Python Cookbook
Since it's right arund my birthday, consider this discount my gift to you.
Invest in yourself.
more ...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 ...