Eric Matthes

Git

Cleaning up a long series of commits

MP 127: How do you make sure you've cleaned up all your diagnostic code? I've been doing a bunch of refactoring work on a moderately sized project recently. I'm always looking for ways to work more efficiently, and use tools like Git better. It&

GitHub

Building a checklist of all functions in a file

MP 126: How do you make a GitHub task list for reviewing all functions in a file? I've been steadily working on bringing django-simple-deploy to a 1.0 release, and this has involved a lot of refactoring. At some stages of development, I want to do a quick

reflections

Was AI invented or discovered?

MP 125: I would argue it was discovered, and that's a helpful distinction. There's no doubt that regardless of anyone's opinion about whether AI is useful or not, it's disrupting many industries, and will continue to do so. The distinction between invention

Selenium

Archiving real estate images

MP 124: It should be simple to do, right? We're in the process of buying a house at the moment, and we want to keep a copy of the pictures on Zillow that show how the house is currently set up. Lots of people want to do this,

real-world projects

Financial literacy with Python

MP 123: Modeling mortgage loans, to help make clearer financial decisions. We're in the process of buying a house, and whenever we go through this process I spend a lot of time looking at all the different options about taking out such a significant loan. I always do

reflections

Why we have third-party ecosystems

MP 122: And why I like them so much. Something people new to Python don't always understand well is the role of "third party" packages in the ecosystem. People learn the basics of Python, and then they want to do something that requires functionality that'

reflections

Coding is political

MP 121: It always has been, and it sure is now. I was going to write about how much I like third-party ecosystems such as PyPI this week, and what you should know about them. But writing generically about software development at this moment feels like burying my head deep

real-world projects

Birthdays and lotteries

MP 120: I rarely play the lottery, but when I do I like to model it afterwards. I've written recently about surviving a pretty serious medical event and then making it through a hurricane with some life interruptions, but no significant harm. When I was in the hospital,

Django

Django from first principles, part 20

MP 119: How do you keep learning about Django? Note: This is the 20th (and final) post in a series about building a full Django project, starting with a single file. This series is free to everyone, as soon as each post comes out. This was a much longer series

Django

Django from first principles, part 19

MP 118: Deploying a simple Django project. Note: This is the 19th post in a series about building a full Django project, starting with a single file. This series is free to everyone, as soon as each post comes out. In the last post, we did some final reorganization of

django-simple-deploy

Thinking about architecture

MP 117: How often do you write a new, moderately complex library from scratch? Note: Our power was just restored yesterday afternoon, so we ended up going 12 days without power or running water. Internet service is still a week or two away. I've been able to get

reflections

Out of the frying pan...

MP 116: ...and into the fire, as the saying goes. Note: I think this post was published yesterday, but not sent as an email to anyone. If you received this twice as an email, I apologize. Mostly Python just passed 5,000 subscribers, which required an update to my Ghost

reflections

Programming, interrupted

MP 115: A surprise trip to the ICU instead of a planned trip to DjangoCon. Content notice: Discussion of a serious medical event; the discussion is not overly graphic. This week has gone a lot different than planned. I was supposed to be at DjangoCon this week, but instead I

Git

Amend your git commits

MP 114: Now is the best time to fix an unclear or misleading commit message. Note: I will wrap up the Django from first principles series in the next few weeks. The next step is deployment, and that's a complicated enough topic that it will take a little

Django

Django from first principles, part 18

MP 113: Restructuring the project. Note: This is the 18th post in a series about building a full Django project, starting with a single file. This series will be free to everyone, as soon as each post comes out. In the last post, we gave users the ability to write

Django

Django from first principles, part 17

MP 112: Letting users write new posts. Note: This is the 17th post in a series about building a full Django project, starting with a single file. This series is free to everyone, as soon as each post comes out. In the last post we gave users the ability to