Shell meme

I'm responding to peer pressure. I pretty much only use the shell for one thing and rarely restart it...

andre$ history|awk '{a[$2]++ } END{for(i in a){print a[i] " " i}}'|sort -rn|head
322 python
76 cd
26 ls
11 grep
8 pwd
8 find
5 sudo
3 rm
3 def
2 svn

Using Clone Digger

There's a new tool available for Python programmers: Clone Digger. While it has not been officially released, it is available from the svn repository. Clone Digger finds code duplications in a given project, and creates a fairly comprehensive report (html file). Seeing the duplications on a screen is a powerful motivation for refactoring.

Check it out!

Update:

Just to make it clear: I had nothing to do with this project; I just found out about it via the gsoc-python-mentors list.

Inspiration and persistence

While mindlessly wasting time instead of programming selectively reading the internet, I came across this gem by Seth Godin which I reproduce in its entirety:

Persistence

Persistence isn't using the same tactics over and over. That's just annoying.

Persistence is having the same goal over and over.

That's it.

A wiser person would most likely leave it at that. However, this lead me thinking of my goals when it comes to programming which I thought I should write down if only to help me reflect upon them again at a later time. I can sum them up as follows:

1. Do something that is fun but that gives me some sense of accomplishment rather than just wasting time.
   
2. Find ways to make it easier for others to learn programming (in Python).

In doing so, I have found myself oscillating between two extremes:

1. Trying to follow the "release early, release often" philosophy.
2. Trying to get everything "just perfect" before releasing anything.
   

Trying to get things "just perfect" is something that can lead to procrastination and delays. As an example, rur-ple's version 1.0 release candidate 3 has not been updated since July 2007. The next version should be the final 1.0 ... but somehow, I am not happy with many details and I'd like to get everything right for 1.0. Too often I read about (usually commercial) software which is officially released and is considered by its users to be a Beta version. All open source programmers I have met have a sense of pride in their work that I share. So I postpone the final release and end up working on something else...

I went the other way with a little utility called lightning compiler (now at version 2.1), whose version 1.0 was released as a recipe in the online Python cookbook. Much of the rapid evolution of lightning compiler came from user feedback, as expected from the "release early, release often" philosophy. Yet, following the same philosophy generated relatively little feedback for rur-ple of for crunchy to date. I did get some feedback for rur-ple which has been used at an elementary school in Austria, at a high school and a university in the U.S., among others, but it has often been very indirect.

Still, I am persistent. Following Seth Godin's definition of persistence, my second goal written above can be described as finding a solution as to Why Johnny can't code. Or, as I have written elsewhere

My goal is to provide an introduction to programming which is as "smooth" as possible. We sometime hear the phrase "steep learning curve" to characterize some difficult to grasp concept. I think it is important to have as few "steep learning curves" as possible in the learning process. GvR [Guido van Robot] uses a slightly easier syntax than Python ... but at the expense of having a "step-like learning curve" when one wants to go from GvR's world to Python programming. Since Rur-ple uses Python, there is no transition to speak of.

Both rur-ple and Crunchy, and to a lesser extent lightning compiler (which has been incorporated within rur-ple) have been inspired by that goal.

However, sometimes I stray from that goal. For example, inspired by an earlier post on Georg Brand's remarkable Sphinx, Crunchy now includes a prototype for an automated documentation testing framework along the lines of sphinx.ext.doctest which was released yesterday. My intention is to update Crunchy's implementation so that it can be totally compatible with Sphinx's. And while I believe that this is a neat (and fun!) thing to include in Crunchy, it only very indirectly contribute to my overall goal and ends up delaying the 1.0 release for Crunchy.

Blogging too can be a distraction. However, it is my hope that it may generate a few comments that will contribute to inspire me to make Crunchy even more useful.

Success is the result of inspiration and persistence.

Crunchy: Pycon 2008 release

Crunchy is getting really close to a 1.0 version. To mark the Pycon 2008 event (that I won't be able to attend), I just did a new release (0.9.9). It has a few new goodies that I won't list here, leaving Johannes do the demonstration. As for me, I am heading down South for a vacation with my kids.

Note: the opening Crunchy page indicates that this is version 0.9.8.6 - which is incorrect.

What is left to be done for version 1.0 is cleaning up the existing documentation (proofreading, proofreading, proofreading) and adding a few more pages to it. New features will have to wait until after 1.0.... unless we get feedback from Pycon attendees for "must have" features that we could implement quickly.

As far as I know, there are no bugs (famous last words). If you find any, please let us know.

Pycon and Crunchy

This year's Pycon program looks very interesting. I wish I could be there but, alas, the timing was just wrong for me this year. This is doubly disappointing as I would have been able to meet with Johannes Woolard in the flesh. Yes, forget Guido van Rossum, Alex Martelli and other famous names: the one person I wanted to meet is Johannes. For more than a year an a half, I have had the pleasure of collaborating with Johannes on Crunchy, without ever meeting him. This year, Johannes will be the one showing Crunchy off. I'm sure he'll do a great job.

And, if anyone is looking to hire a bright, young, hard-working programmer, Johannes will graduate from Oxford this year.

99 problems: looking for volunteers

Some time ago, Dr. Werner Hett created a list of 99 Prolog problems that could be used to skills in logic programming. More recently, a Ruby learner posted a Ruby version of the first 10 problems, and his solutions. This seemed to be a good idea, especially if one makes use of doctests ... and Crunchy :-). So, I've started my own version of these which you can get as a zip file (containing 6 problems and their solutions) from the Crunchy main page. If you have never done so before, to load a local html file within Crunchy, you simply click on the "Browsing" menu on the left hand side and scroll down until you reach the "Closer to home" section and follow the instructions.

Note that with the next version of Crunchy (the current one is 0.9.8.6) you will be able to start Crunchy with an arbitrary file using something like

python crunchy.py --url=full_local_path_or_url

It would be nice if there could be a complete Python version of the 99 Prolog problems. If anyone is interested in helping, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Automated documentation code testing - part 2

Thanks to Crunchy's simple plugin architecture, after only a few hours of coding the automated documentation testing (for html files) described here has been implemented (the "first approach" described, that is.) It will be part of the next Crunchy release. In theory, code samples for a complete book could be all tested at the click of a button, provided that the book is available as an html document. The next step will be to define a few new directives so that reStructuredText documents can be used as well.

Now, while I have a few sample test files, it would be nice is to find someone who has a real life document with embedded Python code samples as a test user...