In the forthcoming Functional Python Programming (https://www.packtpub.com/application-development/functional-python-programming) I was pressured by one of the technical reviewers to create a better example of composite function creation with decorators.

This was a difficult request. First, of course, "better" is poorly defined. More importantly, the example in the …

See http://www.pythonchallenge.com

Addicting. For folks (like me) who like this kind of thing. For others, perhaps just dumb. Or infuriating.

Years ago -- many, many years ago -- I vaguely remember a similar game with a name like "insanity" or something like that. Now there's http://www.notpron.com …

http://sophieclayton.github.io/2015-01-15-uw/novice/python/index.html A very nice tutorial. It's Focused on a specific problem. It covers the solution technology in some depth. I think the focus and depth features are important. It's often tempting to cover the technical features without really solving a problem. In …

I'm working on yet another Python book. This one looking at functional programming in Python. It doesn't really go with with Mastering Object-Oriented Python and Python for Secret Agents because the focus isn't on Python's strong suit.

In chapter one, a reviewer had this two-word question: "yield from?"

What? What …

I've now got my actual souvenir hard-copies of my two Packt books https://www.packtpub.com/application-development/mastering-object-oriented-python https://www.packtpub.com/hardware-and-creative/python-secret-agents So far, so good. I've got one more title in the works. After that, I think I'll have to take a small break and do some …

http://www.oreilly.com/pub/e/3255 I'm a pretty good public speaker. But I've avoided webcasting and podcasting because it's kind of daunting. In a smaller venue, the audience members are right there, and you can tell if you're not making sense. In a webcast, the feedback will be …

Old. But still interesting. Partial Function Application is not Currying It seems like hair-splitting. However, the distinction between bound variables and curried functions does have some practical implications. I'm looking closely at PyMonad and the built-in functools library. I'm finding some benefits in understanding functional programming and how to apply …

Let's talk small. When writing API's, it sometimes helps to have a small demo web site to show the API in a context that's easy to visualize. API's are sometimes abstract, and without an application to provide some context, it can be unclear why the path looks like that or …