Planet London Python

Unit test crib sheet

2008-08-07T11:13:11+00:00

Mainly for me, but hopefully of use to others too:

#!/usr/bin/python
#
# running this as "test_CribSheet.py -v "
# - gives you some cribsheet docs on what's going on and runs all the tests
#
# running this as "./test_CribSheet.py -v LikeCycleOfATest"
# - allows you to just run one of the suites.
#
# This doesn't replace documentation, and there's probably some hidden
# assumptions here, but it's quite useful.
#

import unittest
import os

class DemoDocStringsImpact(unittest.TestCase):
# Note that the next test doesn't have a doc string. Look at the results in -v

Links for 2008-08-06 [del.icio.us]

2008-08-07T05:00:00+00:00

Pharyngula: Basics: Sonic Hedgehog
Ariane Sherine: Dawkin 'bout a revolution
Best headline ever.

Links for 2008-08-05 [del.icio.us]

2008-08-06T05:00:00+00:00

Links for 2008-08-04 [del.icio.us]

2008-08-05T05:00:00+00:00

Mac Keyboard Shortcuts
PEP 9001 - Asteroid Impact Resistance
Regrets
There's a lession here for all of us.
Ban Comic Sans
PythonTestingToolsTaxonomy - Cheesecake - Trac
Python Mock/Stub Testing Tools
Python Package Index : Index of Packages Matching 'mock'
pymox - Google Code
Google's Python mock testing framework. Looks *really* good.

Paths with Spaces on the Mac

2008-08-04T10:28:58+00:00

Part of the power of systems that inherit a legacy from UNIX is their rich and flexible scripting system. Many desktop applications use this somewhere under the hood - either providing wrapper scripts as part of the application or even to implement core functionality. ... [580 words]

Updating 1st Gen iPhone to Unlocked and Jailbroken 2.0

2008-08-03T19:32:17+00:00

Around October of last year a bunch of us at Resolver Systems got imported iPhones and promptly jailbroke and unlocked them. The unlock process at the time was fairly arduous, so most of us have been running the OS version 1.0.2 since then. ... [949 words]

Links for 2008-08-02 [del.icio.us]

2008-08-03T05:00:00+00:00

Large Hadron Collider nearly ready - The Big Picture

Links for 2008-08-01 [del.icio.us]

2008-08-02T05:00:00+00:00

Giles Coren: selected correspondence

Links for 2008-08-01 [del.icio.us]

2008-08-02T05:00:00+00:00

Michael Nielsen » The Future of Science
Thoughful piece about potentially collaborative science
Drunk squirrel stumbles up tree
... and this is your brain on alcohol. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. James: remind you of PyCon?

Dependency Injection and Mock(ing) for Testing

2008-08-01T10:26:12+00:00

This blog entry is about changes to Mock - A Lightweight Mocking Framework for Testing, one of the projects (and thankfully small) that I will be working on once 'the book' is finally out of the way. Suppose you have the following code, how do you test some_method: {+coloring} class SomeClass(object): def some_method(self, arg): self.other = OtherClass(arg) {-coloring}Well, we could just call some_method, but what if OtherClass is expensive to construct (or establishes a database connection) and we'd really rather not do that in a unittest? ... [1061 words]

IronPython at Resolver Systems

2008-08-01T01:12:17+00:00

I wrote a little blurb about why we at Resolver Systems like Python, and specifically IronPython. It’s up on Pythonology.org’s “Python success Stories” section, and will also propagate to wingware.com and python.org.

http://pythonology.org/success&story=resolver

Zoner - DNS management UI

2008-07-31T13:43:43+00:00

A couple of years ago, while learning TurboGears, I wrote a web application to simplify management of DNS zone files. Fast forward to today and I finally found a few minutes to clean it up a bit and make a release.

It is called Zoner and differs from many DNS management interfaces in that it works directly with live zone files. The zone files remain the master copy of domain details and can still be edited manually without effecting Zoner, as opposed to storing the domain structure in a database and generating zone files when needed (or reconfiguring bind to read directly from SQL). It also stores an audit trail for all changes (made through Zoner) and zones can be rolled back to any previous version.

Zoner might also be a useful reference app for anyone learning TurboGears 1.0. It is relatively simple, uses SQLAlchemy and Kid with Paginate and Form widgets.

Links for 2008-07-30 [del.icio.us]

2008-07-31T05:00:00+00:00

Enhance your input fields with simple CSS tricks
The Power of mdfind
Spotlight's command line interface

Try Python (Python in the Browser) and Silvershell

2008-07-30T20:38:38+00:00

One of the longer term projects I'd like to work on is the Try Python tutorial. The website currently just shows Python in the Browser, which is an interactive Python interpreter running in an HTML textarea on the webpage. ... [420 words]

Learning Python via ShowMeDo

2008-07-30T14:53:43+00:00

Every now and again it is useful to look back at what’s been achieved - ShowMeDo started three years ago and we considered ourselves lucky if 1 Python video was contributed a month. Now we get several whole series each month! Often each series is information-laden and created by a competent screencaster. Viewers learn very quickly and they remember ’seeing it happen’ after they’ve watched the video.

I figured that a look at some of the recent series might be useful. In total we have over 330 Python screencasts, with 8 series alone for Django. Over 150 of the screencasts are aimed at Beginner Python coders.

We’ve had several series which cover test-driven development (TDD), unit testing and coverage, as well as discussing the whole development process. Seeing these hard-core videos teaching ‘a good way of coding’ is really nice, these skills are hard to describe and easy for a beginner to ignore. Three that spring to mind are:

Agile Development Tools in Python inc. VirtualEnv, PasteScript
Agile Python+Pylons inc. TDD, coverage, unit testing
Developing emol! inc. use-cases and class diagrams in 24 beautiful episodes

It is nice to see some web-framework series sprouting up:

In the Club (for paying users) we’ve been busy, currently we’re simultaneously publishing several meaty series. They’re aimed at beginner/intermediate Python programmers, mixing Python background with useful worked examples:

In total we have 11 strong series in the Club which reduce the learning time for a beginner. We’ve also commissioned some of our open-source authors to join us in the Club, two new series on ‘batteries included’ and ‘C+Python’ are in the works.

We welcome new open-source authors - each author’s contributions are special to us, we don’t stick ads on the pages or require ownership of any rights. We just do our best to bring an author’s knowledge to a wider audience.

I guess the biggest thing that we’ve achieved is ‘recognition’ - it is nice mailing a project author to discuss a relevant series that we’ve had submitted and to have them say ‘ShowMeDo - yes, I was watching some cool stuff there just the other day…’.

Also Scary

2008-07-30T10:38:29+00:00

My PyCon UK talk hass been accepted. It's even considered notable!. ;-)

Pissed as a Newt?

2008-07-30T10:34:42+00:00

Pissed as a newt - look who's number three!

The Future is Here

2008-07-30T10:20:18+00:00

Michael is twittering his wife's labour. Scary.

She should consider herself lucky it's not a Flickr photostream.

Update: OMFG, he's not alone: Realtime results for contractions.

Links for 2008-07-29 [del.icio.us]

2008-07-30T05:00:00+00:00

Bechdel's Law
1. Does it have at least two women in it, 2. Who [at some point] talk to each other, 3. About something besides a man.
python-pipeline - Google Code
Subversion Hosting - SVNRepository.com

Links for 2008-07-29 [del.icio.us]

2008-07-30T05:00:00+00:00

Ultimate Libertarian Quote List
Many great quotes from many great people

Too Many Projects, Too Little Time

2008-07-29T22:19:01+00:00

One annoying thing about spending the last year writing, is that I haven't been able spend much time on other projects (although I did recently manage to push out a ConfigObj release). I've already spent (in my mind) the spare time I will have once the book is done three times over. ... [481 words]

Neo Freerunner: first impressions

2008-07-29T21:46:50+00:00

I finally got my hands on my Neo Freerunner two weeks ago and have been playing with it when time allows (so much so that I haven't given myself time to blog about it).

Overall, the hardware is great. The first thing you notice is that the unit feels very solid and the quality of the display is excellent; bright and high resolution. I've had success with wifi, GPS, the SD card slot and basic GSM usage. I haven't had a change to try out the accelerometers yet, mainly due to a (surprising) lack of software that uses them.

Last Chapter of IronPython in Action Finished

2008-07-29T21:09:53+00:00

The last chapter of IronPython in Action is finally done. There is still work to do before the book is complete (appendices, index, updating the first chapter in light of the last year in IronPython), but chapters 12 (Databases and Web Services written by Christian Muirhead) through to 15 are now ready to go to the final review phase. ... [301 words]

One-Day Python Classes

2008-07-29T12:29:10+00:00

Holden Web's third Introduction to Python class starts on September 9. It runs from Tuesday through Thursday, and I could easily use the training room for an extra day if I had a suitable topic for a one-day class. The question is, what would people want to learn? More specifically, what would they pay to come and learn?

I have a couple of ideas for popular topics, but your suggestions are also welcome. And since there's only over a month to go, better hurry! Thanks.

Links for 2008-07-28 [del.icio.us]

2008-07-29T05:00:00+00:00

Enhance your input fields with simple CSS tricks
Useful design advice
CSS Layouts: 40+ Tutorials, Tips, Demos and Best Practices
More useful CSS stuff
NETTUTS - Submit A Form Without Page Refresh using jQuery
The title says it all, really
In Search of the Holy Grail (of Web Layout)
Simple design study showing how to obtain a liquid center column with two side bars

PyCon UK: Talk and Tutorial Lists Up

2008-07-28T22:41:11+00:00

PyCon UK is drawing closer, it's on 12th-14th September and now that most of the organisers are back from EuroPython [1] the list of talks and tutorials is now up. This is our second PyCon UK conference, and this year we start with a full day of tutorials on the Friday (don't forget to include the tutorials when you book). ... [403 words]

Feature Freeze for Resolver One 1.2 Release

2008-07-28T21:38:49+00:00

The first major update to Resolver One after our public release in January, was version 1.1 in June. The focus of the 1.1 release was performance improvements. ... [519 words]

Links for 2008-07-27 [del.icio.us]

2008-07-28T05:00:00+00:00

Free Vector World Maps Collection
Useful map data

Kamaelia Talks at Pycon UK, September 12-14th Birmingham

2008-07-28T00:15:53+00:00

My talk suggestions have been accepted by the committee [*] and so I'll be giving the following two talks at Pycon UK:

George Bernard Shaw was wrong

2008-07-27T13:01:02+00:00

... or rather incomplete. This quote is often used as a good rationale for sharing ideas, and as a nub of an idea it's good, but incomplete:

If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.

It's nice and on a most basic of levels it's true. However it's utterly incomplete as anyone who's worked on anything based on sharing ideas, be it brainstorming, collaborative working, open source or anything else. It's actually more a combinatorial explosion of ideas you get and in fact with just two "completely atomic" ideas you never have just 2 ideas, you always have at least 3 - A, B, meld(AB). In fact this sequence should bring flashbacks to many people to their maths:

Microsoft at OSCON

2008-07-26T10:17:24+00:00

The last session I attended before leaving for the airport was the Friday morning plenary session. Sam Ranji of Microsoft announced several new initiatives (documented in his Port 25 blog), including sponsorship of the Apache Software Foundation. This doesn't mean Microsoft are abandoning IIS development.

After the keynotes were over there was a Q&A session, but it seemed like the AV technicians (who seemed to do a pretty awesome job overall) hadn't set up monitor speakers, and so those on stage found it difficult to hear the questions. Which were mostly for Sam, and sometimes a little hostile!

I tried to ask him how it would be possible to change the corporate ethos so that stupidities like the recent OOXML debacle aren't repeated, but I'm not sure the desire to help survived the mangling by the sound system. Microsoft have been a sponsor member of the Python Software Foundation for some time now, and they are as welcome as all our other members.

It was clear, listening to Sam speak with delegates after his talk, that he "gets" open source. It's frustrating to read people complaining about Microsoft without being prepared to engage and argue that open source and full interoperability can actually help the company meet its business goals more effectively. By doing so we can help Sam get the ears of the business-line managers, and thereby promote open source from within.

I left him with a business card and an offer of assistance. It remains to be seen whether anything comes of it.

Links for 2008-07-25 [del.icio.us]

2008-07-26T05:00:00+00:00

Simple Clearing of Floats
Thanks to Phillip Pearson for pointing out this neat CSS hack.

Where's Sean Reifschneider When You Need Him?

2008-07-24T18:36:54+00:00

Another conference, another sucky network. OSCON's wireless network hasn't performed as well as I'd have expected it to from my experience four years ago. With roughly 2,500 delegates in a large area there's no reason why I should be unable to associate with an access point.

Sean's setup and management of the 2007 PyCon in Dallas remains the best conference network I have used.

All this seems very effete, of course, given that ten years ago there was no such thing as a public wireless network. But as technology moves on expectations move up, and many people this week have suggested OSCON's network will need to improve for next year.

Is My Nose Borked ...

2008-07-24T06:10:16+00:00

... or do all Portland Conference Center hotels smell of stale fried food?

I am having a great time, and the PDXers are wonderfully hospitable, but I suspect the hotel staff need to take a week off and smell the places they work with a fresh attitude.

I have stayed in many hotels that don't have this problem, but the two I have visited so far this week (including the "conference hotel" I am staying in) aren't the freshest environments I have ever encountered.

Links for 2008-07-23 [del.icio.us]

2008-07-24T05:00:00+00:00

Python for Executives
A shortish blog post addressing management fears of deploying Python

Test the Betas, Already!

2008-07-24T05:58:47+00:00

OK, if you saw the last mention of the Beta 2 release of Python 2.6 and 3.0 you might have got this message, but the subject line makes it pretty explicit.

Every time a new release comes out it goes through the alpha, beta and release candidate stages without enough people actually downloading it and making sure their applications run. (Then, surprisingly often, within a month or so of the final release someone comes along and says "Hey, this breaks feature "X").

The developers are taking a lot of care to try and ensure that the next version comes out bug-free. Wouldn't it be nice if we could provide an army of savvy testers to saturate the betas with potential problems, so they don't become problems in the release candidates or final release?

Your language needs you! Seriously ... and particularly if you run the Windows version!

Links for 2008-07-22 [del.icio.us]

2008-07-23T05:00:00+00:00

78 RPM record MP3s
Great collection of authentic old music
Nine ways to obfuscate e-mail addresses compared
Useful results of a study on address harvesting

Mark Shuttleworth at OSCON

2008-07-23T00:21:00+00:00

Mark, an accomplished speaker, started by confessing that he had no doubt that Linux would be the platform of the future, and suggesting that tools like Firefox and bazaar had claimed ownership of their application space by providing extensibility in a modular way: conform to the interfaces, and the application becomes a platform. All the same, he insisted there is also a need to work with Windows (which makes sense since there are so many Windows systems around).

One of the issues Mark discussed was how we can extend agile techniques in ways inspired by community-driven processes. Architecting your tool set and your enterprise for collaboration and communication is essential. Ubuntu's governance is entirely separated from Canonical's, and Mark suspects that might turn out to be a best practice.

Tools must be extensible, and whether they are open source or proprietary they must be usable as components in diverse systems. The ultimate goal is "permissionless" development - new people coming in wanting to do new things need to be able to take the tools and run with them to implement their own ideas. His ideal for Ubuntu is for any developer worldwide to branch the Ubuntu code and publish their version in ways that other people can in turn pick up and run with.

Another best practice Mark has identified is time-based releases, which lend a rhythm to the development process and allow developers to keep track of what's happening in the trunk, which should be releasable at any time. More and more projects are thinking about synchronizing their releases. Imagine if a multitude of Linux distributions could collaborate to release at the same time, providing a "development cadence", encouraging individual tool developers to finalize their own releases for incorporation into a multitude of distributions.

Mark sees todays open source development world as struggling to provide free software, but the questions is how will the economic models support this? Free software is easy to love: it costs nothing to acquire. But who will fund the development of the free software? This will require innovations in economics that will, with a historical perspective, possibly be one of the more significant changes in these turbulent times. Having three almost-monopolies each controlling their own distribution would be counter-productive, and advertising on the desktop is offensive.

At Canonical they are hiring people to work on the desktop to build tools that benefit the providers of services. This will fundamentally change the world.

The challenge of the next two years is to lift the Linux desktop to a level where it is effectively art! How do Linux distributions not emulate Apple, but blow right past them. Jamie Zawinski says we should be aiming to build software tools that help their users get laid! The only doubts Mark had about that as a goal were related to Jamie's stated goal of making software that his mother could use ...

The Web 2.0 explosion has taught us that to survive in the web world a software product needs to be instantly attractive, and deliver functionality immediately in a profoundly usable way. Canonical have been investing in the process and the technology, and they are now trying to
realize the dream that Mark so elegantly elucidated in his presentation.

Django 1.0 Alpha 1 released

2008-07-22T14:39:22+00:00

We learned yesterday that the Django development team had released the first alpha on the trail to the 1.0 release due early in September.

This is great news: it means that the major items that have been developed on the sidelines (a refactoring of the queryset code and a rewrite of the admin application to use NewForms) are now fully merged into the trunk. Most of the functionality for the eventual release is now in place, though of course the feature freeze doesn't start until the betas, scheduled for two weeks time.

Happy Birthday me!

2008-07-21T09:01:06+00:00

28 today!

OSCON Bound

2008-07-19T12:14:17+00:00

Flying out to Portland tomorrow arriving late evening (I only just got back from California, and I wanted a little time at home). I am giving a Python in 3 Hours tutorial on Monday morning, but don't have many other set commitments during the week.

Anyone who wants to get together for a meal or a drink, just leave a comment here, or email me.

Resilience Against Errors in User Code: Catching String Exceptions

2008-07-18T22:04:15+00:00

Suppose you have an application that executes user code. You want to be resilient against errors in that code, you don't want to crash if exceptions are raised in user code, but you want to be able to report the errors. ... [549 words]

Why so quiet?

2008-07-18T10:31:39+00:00

My links are all going in del.icio.us and my gnomic utterings are going in Twitter, that's why. Doesn't leave a lot to go here.

Oh, and my Mac died again. More on that later...

Code Swarm

2008-07-18T10:08:02+00:00

code_swarm - Python from Michael Ogawa on Vimeo.

I so want to run this over my current project.

Best Website Ever

2008-07-18T09:56:13+00:00

The London Review of Breakfasts. It's the attention to detail that appeals; check out the contributor list. Marvelous.

Via Nell.

CPython Getting Serious About Quality: Help Needed

2008-07-17T11:08:22+00:00

Beta2 of Python 2.6 and 3.0 was due out today. It isn't going to happen, and for the best of reasons. Under the guidance of release manager Barry Warsaw the developers have started to pay serious attention to the output of the buildbots, the systems which perform continuous integration testing of the development version of the Python interpreter.

Barry has just announced that there are three issue serious enough to delay the release, even though this potentially means slipping the release schedule (though time will tell whether that's a serious concern). If you are a Python developer, please take notice of what he said in an email to the python-dev list earlier today:

Please everyone, if you have only a little bit of time to work on Python, I hope you will attack the release critical and deferred blocker issues, and work on turning the buildbots green.  These are the top priorities in order to get 2.6 and 3.0 out on time.  And just as added incentive, our October 1st goal is being noted by downstream vendors. [Possibly confidential information about third parties redacted].

Quality is important. Please do whatever you can to help. Many people can benefit from a little extra effort now.

Blog on Blogging: Inside the Blogosphere Questionnaire

2008-07-16T13:33:21+00:00

Interesting that this should come up at the same time as the last entry. I recently got asked to take part in the Inside the Blogosphere: Blogger Questionnaire. ... [745 words]

How Did I Get Started In Software Development?

2008-07-16T13:09:13+00:00

Scott Cowan, of the appropriately named Sleep Overrated blog, has tagged me, asking how I got started in software development. I say appropriately named, because it's now 3am and I'm facing a second night without sleep. ... [924 words]

PyPy Continues to Catch Up

2008-07-12T22:34:44+00:00

Interesting news from the EuroPython sprints at Vilnius via Holger Krekel. PyPy supports Django well enough to run the Pinax application put together by an open source team coordinated by James Tauber. It's great to see Python expanding in so many directions at once. The future is definitelyto be interesting.

Django seems to be becoming one of the "how good is your implementation" tests for Python implementations. Not only are the PyPy team using it in this way, but IronPython and Jython are as well. Since Jython is now in alpha with a Python 2.5-compatible implementation the picture is looking better and better every day.

The one thing nobody has discussed much is the attitude of the PyPy, Jython and IronPython development teams to migration towards Python 3.0. Does it represent the next wave, or will it end up as an isolated development?