@AlSweigart@mastodon.social
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AlSweigart

@AlSweigart@mastodon.social

Author of "Automate the Boring Stuff with Python" and other programming books. Mostly harmless. he/him

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AlSweigart, to random
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What's funny about the "put glue on pizza" advice from Google AI is that that screenshot could have easily been faked... but you can't prove the AI didn't make this recommendation.

AlSweigart, to random
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I am listening to myself being interviewed on the Stack Overflow podcast. I always cringe at the sound of my own recorded voice, but this is necessary for me to improve my public speaking. Please clap.

https://stackoverflow.blog/2024/05/14/spreading-the-gospel-of-python/

AlSweigart, to random
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AlSweigart, to random
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"You can tell this is a left-wing podcast because we spent the first 45 minutes providing context before even starting to talk about the episode's topic."

AlSweigart,
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@jacob I purposefully left out which podcast I was paraphrasing. :)

AlSweigart, to random
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All operating systems are broken. Linux is broken because it is deficient for the user, but Windows is broken because it is malicious to the user.

lauren, to random
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All too often I see techies (and clearly I qualify as a techie) who don't seem to give a damn about non-techie users of these systems. So long as there's some techie workaround for privacy-invasive systems ("oh yeah, do this to the URL -- run this extension, do this and that") they don't seem to be concerned at all that the vast majority of people just use systems in their default states and are burned every day by these systems. I've seen this attitude by so many techies my entire career, and if anything it's worse now. This is, by the way, where the term "lusers" for users (commonly heard in the tech community) came from. I find this attitude by this segment of techies to be disgraceful.

AlSweigart,
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@lauren "It works on my machine" is techie for "Not my problem" is the polite way of saying, "Fuck you, got mine."

AlSweigart, to random
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Here's one thing I don't like about how software people write documentation:

If A is a type of X and B is a type of X, there's a preference to separate X into its own definition elsewhere (like deduplicating code by putting it in a function). But this means the explanation of A or B is incomplete, because you have to click to learn what X is. If X is a type of Y, now you have to click again to figure out Y. You just wanted to learn what B was, but now you have to learn everything.

AlSweigart,
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You didn't necessarily want to learn everything, you just wanted to learn enough (with the option of diving into more detail later).

An endless chains of references is efficient for computers, but documentation has to be useful to human beings.

It's okay for documentation to have duplicate info. It's more work for the documentation writer, but makes it easier for the documentation reader. The later is more important than the former.

AlSweigart, (edited )
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@SnoopJ @chrisjrn @glyph @EvilDMP I'll pushback on this, because 1) we don't need to fully explain the dependent topics, just explain them enough and 2) we write docs for experienced dev's reference more than beginner's tutorial far, far more often than the other way around.

Documentation golf produces unreadable docs the way code golf produces unreadable code.

AlSweigart,
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@SnoopJ @chrisjrn @glyph @EvilDMP And also, we almost always write docs exclusively for the experienced developer's reference.

So many of the terse docs could be vastly improved by just appending a, "For example..."

But instead we give the barest definitions and expect the reader to work out the implications from first principles.

AlSweigart, to random
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Is there anyone at #PyConUS sprints who knows stuff about SEO and is free for a chat today? I'm looking into how to improve the rankings of the official Python docs on Google et al.

AlSweigart, to random
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Is anyone else leaving #PyConUS on Amtrak Wednesday at 7:30 on train 42? I know a few people are. I'll be wearing my conference badge to signal, say hi if you see me.

AlSweigart, to random
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Hey #PyConUS, you can get several dev ops ebooks from @nostarch in their latest Humble Bundle benefiting the Python Software Foundation! (Be sure to click Adjust Donation and Custom Amount to max out the share going to the @Thepsf.

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/dive-into-dev-ops-no-starch-books

AlSweigart, to random
@AlSweigart@mastodon.social avatar

It's not a big problem if you missed talks at #PyConUS. They're all recorded and will be posted to https://pyvideo.org/ which also has over 18,000 recorded talks from other PyCons around the world.

AlSweigart, to random
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I slept in for the first time during #PyConUS today, but now I'm ready to start sprinting on...

...ooof. Not only do I have a ton of existing projects, but I've learned of so many new things this weekend at the conference that I want to dive into too.

AlSweigart, to random
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I was exhausted by #PyConUS but was pretty sure @brainwane's closing keynote would be good, so I showed up.

She hit it out of the park. This is one you should check out when the video gets uploaded.

"Infrastructure is how we care for each other at scale."

AlSweigart, to random
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I'm glad that everyone is masking at #PyConUS. The conference has made some good decisions about safety tradeoffs (masking in general, but allowing unmasked indoor lunches, etc) without affecting attendance: PyCon has sold out and is back to pre-pandemic attendance!

AlSweigart, to random
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The "imitation intelligence" term from @simonw in this morning's keynote on AI reminded me of this scene from Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age", published in 2000:

AlSweigart, to random
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The keynote today by @simonw is one of the most impressive and important talks I've ever seen. (Up there with K Lars Lohn's 2016 keynote).

I absolutely had to post this photo:

AlSweigart, to random
@AlSweigart@mastodon.social avatar

If you want to see my "Forbidden Zone" music video that I performed for my #pyconus lightning talk, it's online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sjk4UMpJqVs and the source is at https://github.com/asweigart/scrollart/blob/main/python/forbiddenzone.py

AlSweigart, to random
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I wrote up this blog post a while back on how to do #pycon and I think it mostly holds up: https://automatetheboringstuff.com/how-to-do-pycon.html

Lana, to random
@Lana@beige.party avatar

I'm a simple woman so maybe I don't understand this but if I were personally ordered by a judge not to tamper with the jury at my trial and then I did it anyway 10 different times and then I told my convicted sex offender coworker to tamper with the jury on my behalf and he did it and then bragged about doing it... I would not still be gallivanting around this side of a jail cell. And neither would my dipshit sex offender coworker.

Someone please explain this for me. Someone explain real slow because I'm fucking livid this gigantic treasonous asshole keep getting away with crimes that are designed to let him get away with the crimes we're trying to convict him of.

AlSweigart,
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@Lana Because that's the way the world works.

AlSweigart, to random
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One of the myths of firearms training is that you need to spend a lot of time at the gun range. Really, you only need it for getting accustomed to recoil. Everything else (draw, grip, stance, aim) can be done at home, with or without a laser pointer round. And the most important thing about community defense: organizing with those in your community.

BigJackBrass, to random
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This week on "It can't possibly live up to the title":

AlSweigart,
@AlSweigart@mastodon.social avatar

@BigJackBrass "When she feels the insidious thrilling of high frequency penetrating the marrow of her bones, she will divulge the secret recipe."

Well, I got a new line to try out with the missus tonight.

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