A long list of top python projects in 2014.

A collection of design patterns and idioms in Python.

“Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it.” – Brian W. Kernighan.

Everyone tests their software to some extent, if only by running it and trying it out (technically known as “smoke testing”). Most programmers do a certain amount of exploratory testing, which involves running through various functional paths in your code and seeing if they work.

Systematic testing, however, is a different matter. Systematic testing simply cannot be done properly without a certain (large!) amount of automation, because every change to the software means that the software needs to be tested all over again.

This is an introduction to some lower level automated testing concepts, and how to use built-in Python constructs to start writing tests.

Anyone who has gone through the trouble of setting up a secure website knows what a hassle getting and maintaining a certificate can be. Let’s Encrypt automates away the pain and lets site operators turn on and manage HTTPS with simple commands.

No validation emails, no complicated configuration editing, no expired certificates breaking your website. And of course, because Let’s Encrypt provides certificates for free, no need to arrange payment.

In the modern era, software is commonly delivered as a service: called web apps, or software-as-a-service. The twelve-factor app is a methodology for building software-as-a-service apps that:

• Use declarative formats for setup automation, to minimize time and cost for new developers joining the project;
• Have a clean contract with the underlying operating system, offering maximum portability between execution environments;
• Are suitable for deployment on modern cloud platforms, obviating the need for servers and systems administration;
• Minimize divergence between development and production, enabling continuous deployment for maximum agility;
• And can scale up without significant changes to tooling, architecture, or development practices.

The twelve-factor methodology can be applied to apps written in any programming language, and which use any combination of backing services (database, queue, memory cache, etc).

A British company thought to be working closely with Apple has created a hydrogen fuel cell for an iPhone 6 that allows the device to go a week without recharging.

One of the git tips that I find myself frequently passing on to people is:

Don’t use git pull, use git fetch and then git merge.

The problem with git pull is that it has all kinds of helpful magic that means you don’t really have to learn about the different types of branch in git. Mostly things Just Work, but when they don’t it’s often difficult to work out why. What seem like obvious bits of syntax for git pull may have rather surprising results, as even a cursory look through the manual page should convince you.

In the world of software management there exists a dread place called "dependency hell." The bigger your system grows and the more packages you integrate into your software, the more likely you are to find yourself, one day, in this pit of despair.

This page provides guidelines for version numbering your software.

"Some best practices that would be difficult to otherwise stumble upon and self-learn."

Pybtex reads citation information from a file and produces a formatted bibliography. BibTeX style files are supported. Alternatively it is possible to write styles in Python.

Pybtex currently understands the following bibliography formats:

• BibTeX
• BibTeXML
• YAML-based format

The resulting bibliography may be output in one of the following formats (not supported by legacy BibTeX styles):

• LaTeX
• HTML
• markdown
• plain text