I don’t use that title lightly. Not sure how I’ve never heard of git worktrees before, but I’ll definitely be giving them a spin.
Speaking of git, I don’t normally do a lot of coding in my day job, but crunch time is crunch time:
If nothing else, it’s cathartic to stretch those muscles.
I’m continually surprised at how much resistance I can put up to learning a new technology when there’s a comfortable equivalent to fall back on, because once I’m finally forced to engage, and get over the initial inertia, I’m typically able to quickly pick up the new skill.
Today’s example: FastAPI. I went from zero to fully-functional serverless stack in an hour. That wasn’t so bad! I probably shouldn’t have wasted any time with my go-to HTTP framework when I was prototyping, though to be fair, their conceptual similarities made porting painless.
Learning to learn fast is a driver of exponential personal growth.
Last week I stumbled onto this presentation I made for a job interview I did nearly 11 years ago. Python generators are pretty cool! I also dig the vaguely LCARS styling, which was a built-in theme of Google Sheets.
Thought it’d be fun to share here. Enjoy!
(Oh, and in posting this I also learned how to ensure a consistent aspect ratio in CSS. Cool!)
I like Github gists. They’re perfect for long-term publishing of any code snippet you might want to refer to later, without the overhead of a formal repository. I’ve used them as backing storage for a number of blog posts as well, and will do so again today:
Need to bulk update the contact information across a set of domain names you own in Route 53? I got you. Need to do it across a whole slew of AWS accounts (or anything across a number of accounts)? No problem.
Happy scripting!
Part of the CTO job is being conversant in a broad set of technical domains. I’ve never been a data engineer, but a current project has need, and thus I’ve been getting up to speed.
Spent some time on a flight this morning reading Amazon Redshift documentation, and found this beauty:
How helpful, Amazon: a best practice for loading data is to first learn how to load said data? Wouldn’t have guessed that. I wonder what other wonders of wisdom await me…
Last week I finished The Principles of Product Development Flow, based on a recommendation from the article I wrote about in Fightin’ Words. To say it was relevant to my current line of work is an understatement; I immediately mailed a copy to our de facto development process person.
Luckily for us all, though, there’s an official TL;DR version online. It’s a plethora of pithy principles packed onto one page. Go check it out!
I’m a sucker for travel point programs (and gamification more broadly). I’ve achieved maximum status on American Airlines, and am almost there with Marriott. When you get to the upper tiers there are crossover benefits with other programs, but they require activation. Today I tried taking advantage linking my Marriott status to Hertz, but the website threw a delightful stack trace:
Error processing capillary request: Error converting value {null} to type 'System.DateTime'. Path 'profiles[0].fields.marriottstatusmatchd', line 1, position 792. - at Newtonsoft.Json.Serialization.JsonSerializerInternalReader.EnsureType(JsonReader reader, Object value, CultureInfo culture, JsonContract contract, Type targetType) at Newtonsoft.Json.Serialization.JsonSerializerInternalReader.SetPropertyValue(JsonProperty property, JsonConverter propertyConverter, JsonContainerContract containerContract, JsonProperty containerProperty, JsonReader reader, Object target) at Newtonsoft.Json.Serialization.JsonSerializerInternalReader.PopulateObject(Object newObject, JsonReader reader, JsonObjectContract contract, JsonProperty member, String id) at Newtonsoft.Json.Serialization.JsonSerializerInternalReader.CreateObject(JsonReader reader, Type objectType, JsonContract contract, JsonProperty member, JsonContainerContract containerContract, JsonProperty containerMember, Object existingValue) at Newtonsoft.Json.Serialization.JsonSerializerInternalReader.SetPropertyValue(JsonProperty property, JsonConverter propertyConverter, JsonContainerContract containerContract, JsonProperty containerProperty, JsonReader reader, Object target) at Newtonsoft.Json.Serialization.JsonSerializerInternalReader.PopulateObject(Object newObject, JsonReader reader, JsonObjectContract contract, JsonProperty member, String id) at Newtonsoft.Json.Serialization.JsonSerializerInternalReader.CreateObject(JsonReader reader, Type objectType, JsonContract contract, JsonProperty member, JsonContainerContract containerContract, JsonProperty containerMember, Object existingValue) at Newtonsoft.Json.Serialization.JsonSerializerInternalReader.PopulateList(IList list, JsonReader reader, JsonArrayContract contract, JsonProperty containerProperty, String id) at Newtonsoft.Json.Serialization.JsonSerializerInternalReader.CreateList(JsonReader reader, Type objectType, JsonContract contract, JsonProperty member, Object existingValue, String id) at Newtonsoft.Json.Serialization.JsonSerializerInternalReader.SetPropertyValue(JsonProperty property, JsonConverter propertyConverter, JsonContainerContract containerContract, JsonProperty containerProperty, JsonReader reader, Object target) at Newtonsoft.Json.Serialization.JsonSerializerInternalReader.PopulateObject(Object newObject, JsonReader reader, JsonObjectContract contract, JsonProperty member, String id) at Newtonsoft.Json.Serialization.JsonSerializerInternalReader.CreateObject(JsonReader reader, Type objectType, JsonContract contract, JsonProperty member, JsonContainerContract containerContract, JsonProperty containerMember, Object existingValue) at Newtonsoft.Json.Serialization.JsonSerializerInternalReader.Deserialize(JsonReader reader, Type objectType, Boolean checkAdditionalContent) at Newtonsoft.Json.JsonSerializer.DeserializeInternal(JsonReader reader, Type objectType) at Newtonsoft.Json.JsonConvert.DeserializeObject(String value, Type type, JsonSerializerSettings settings) at Newtonsoft.Json.JsonConvert.DeserializeObject[T](String value, JsonSerializerSettings settings) at Brierley.HertzModules.Custom.CapillaryIntegration.CapillaryManager.d__8.MoveNext() in C:\devroot\htz-loyalty\code\Portals\CustomModules\CapillaryIntegration\CapillaryManager.cs:line 66 --- End of stack trace from previous location where exception was thrown --- at System.Runtime.ExceptionServices.ExceptionDispatchInfo.Throw() at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.HandleNonSuccessAndDebuggerNotification(Task task) at Brierley.HertzModules.Custom.MemberStat.d__8.MoveNext() in C:\devroot\htz-loyalty\code\Portals\CustomModules\MemberStat.ascx.cs:line 305
Probably not a great thing to leak, because one can learn a lot from a stack trace. For example, I can see their webserver runs on Windows, that it’s based on C# and uses ASP.Net web user control files, and that it uses the Newtonsoft JSON framework. If I were nefarious, and hunting for vulnerabilities, that’s a treasure trove.
Also interesting is the namespace of the module: Brierley. A quick Google search tells me that The Brierley Group is “a recognized innovator in the design of Customer Loyalty programs” and is behind a number of the ones I use every time I travel. Who knew there were companies who specialize in this sort of thing? Learn something new every day I guess.
A joy of my life is hacking around on APIs so I can automate things that would otherwise be manual. I’ve done it with Ticketmaster, American Airlines, WordPress (i.e. this blog), the AWS Product API, a payment page, a physician search API, a bunch of internal Amazon tools, and now (I’m happy to say) Tableau.
Deep in the land of San Diego, in the fires of his MacBook, the Developer Jud forged a Python script, and into this script he poured his creativity, his manipulations, and his will to dominate all APIs.
One script to rule them all.
One by one, the free websites of the Internet fell to the power of the script. There were some who resisted… but the power of Chrome Dev Tools could not be undone.
Getting to know your professional colleagues at a personal level is risky. I regularly read advice to avoid it. That’s a reasonable strategy to avoid some of the lows of gainful employment, but it also hamstrings the chance to achieve truly beautiful successes, not to mention it forfeits a potent antidote to loneliness.
So yeah, not only am I going to ignore that advice, I’m doubling down on getting better at being a student of other people. To that end, last week I started reading How to Know a Person, from which I extracted the following list of conversation starters:
Full credit to David Brooks here, I’m just repeating his excellent ideas. Keep learning, friends!
Ohio in the early 90s had few educational options for a middle schooler interested in computers. But when there’s a will (and willing parents, thank you) there’s a way. Somehow I got signed up for a correspondence course in Pascal in 8th grade. Yes, an actual class where I never met in person (and only rarely spoke to the teacher on the phone). Where the majority of exchanges were via the good old fashion United States Postal Service. Where code had to be printed out, mailed, marked up, and mailed back (how’s that for slowing down rapid iteration!)
Despite it seeming painful to modern ideas of remote learning, the material was quite useful in my overall development. Up until then I was completely self-taught; reasonably good in BASIC and some rudimentary C. Learning Pascal, however, really opened up a new world. And luckily for you all, I still have a number of my Pascal programs, which I recently uploaded to Github for your browsing pleasure. Here’s the good stuff that awaits you:
MARKET.PAS – This one’s special for two reasons. First, it’s the oldest of all these files, with a last modified date of Dec 6, 1992, making it the earliest example of code I wrote that I still have in digital form (the absolute oldest being this handwritten BASIC program from 1987). And second, it was my attempt to implement the Stock Market Game, a board game from the 1970s that my mom and I played together when I was a kid. No one else in the family ever wanted to join; it was kinda “our thing” (as was Scrabble).GRADE.PAS – A simple gradebook app for teachers. I believe this was the final project for my correspondence course.CYBER.PAS & CYBORG.PAS – Today you couldn’t pay me enough to get into video game development, but as a youngling I had a thing for trying to build them. This code is a tiny step towards what looks like a side-scrolling shooter involving robots and lasers.KARATE.PAS & KGRAPHIC.PAS – Another game effort, this one a fighter like Mortal Kombat, but with stick figures, because I am terrible at visual art. Pretty sure I got it to a reasonably playable state, though the mechanics were terrible and it required two people because there was no AI to speak of.JDNCRYPT.PAS – Built this encryption tool to protect DIARY.TXT, which I still have (but no, I’m not gonna share it). Basically I reinvented a simple rotation cipher using an insecurely predictable pseudo-random number generator, with an easily bypassed magic parameter kill-switch on the executable. How cute. Rule one of cryptography: never ever write your own.GAME133.PAS – In college a mathy friend of mine and I got really into the Number Jumbler. I wrote this solver to do research into combinations that had no solutions. Two years later when I started my first real job, I was tasked to learn Ada, and as part of that effort I ported this solver.FYI, in upcoming posts I intend to expand on my personal tech history; including a visual history of my computer setups. Will it be of interest? Maybe! But I’m going to do it regardless.