Most of the static site generators don’t seem to generate “sites”. They instead generate “blogs”, with the concept of posts and pages very deep-rooted in the implementation.

I mention because I recently came across statik which is a static site generator written in Python which really lets you generate sites. You get to define the “models” which you’d like your site to have (if you define Post and Page models, you have something like pelican). Imagine Django, but compile-time (for the lack of a better analogy).

I might write a blog (heh) post on this later, but I would definitely suggest checking it out if you’re interested in static sites.

Lots of C bashing going on here.

I’ll only comment that C is used today mainly in the embedded domain, a place where it is strong and growing (in terms of jobs etc).

For myself, Python 3 is different enough from Python 2 that it is close enough to learning a new language, and if I’m going to invest that much in a new language, it isn’t going to be Python. It’s just not compelling enough. I use Python for things mostly because I learned it 15 years ago and it is everywhere, not because it’s any good.

I downvoted this specifically because I don’t think inflammatory titles like this should be supported.

I’ve been asked this question too, and I gave one answer (the same as in the blog). The interviewer then proceeded to give me 3 more ways you could solve the same problem, each more esoteric than the previous. It was clear he had Googled the answer before the interview because as the blog says, this isn’t really a problem you’d face in real life.

I didn’t get the job.

Why did I think this would be a blog on how Indian food helps you concentrate better? :)

I think it depends on what you are doing it for: As a learning project, or something you want to charge money for (ie, something like a MVP)?

For a learning project, you do as much as you can. Because all abstractions leak, you need to know exactly how the system is working across all layers.

If you are building something you want to charge for, or something else you’d like to show to others, to boost your resume for example, then you always use the most stable existing solution.

My preference is for the latter, even for hobby projects. The problem is, as I wrote in my blog recently (http://pyskool.com/one-day-programmers-day-will-never-come/) , people choose projects that will take 20 years to complete, and then get bored after 20 days. They then give up and go to the next cool thing, get bored with that, move on etc , never finishing anything.

So my personal preference is to take the smallest thing, and actually finish it. Outsource everything not core to your product. Don’t spend 7 days getting an SSL cert and integrating Stripe, when you could just add a Payal or Gumroad button in 7 minutes.

But this is me coming from a bootstrapped/MVP angle, and it will be different for you based on your goals. Which is the second thing: You need to know what your goals are. Choose based on that.

Would it be fair to say that Flask is roughly equivalent to Sinatra, only in Python instead of Ruby?

This struck a chord with me. I’ve spent a large portion of my life pretending I’m going to build something amazing. It comes in waves. Get an idea, imagine how awesome I’ll be when I bring that idea to life, feel accomplished over work I’ve yet to do, weeks and a few feeble attempts later realize I’ll never make that awesome thing and start to feel terrible. Then I come up with another idea. Wash, rinse, repeat.

It’s not enough to have great ideas. You need to finish them too.

There’s a bunch of problems with this article.

So in order to argue that Python 3 is bad and development should stop and shift back to Python 2, it is a necessary prerequisite to explain why an all-volunteer army should stop volunteering in the way that they want to volunteer and start volunteering in the way that you want them to volunteer.

This frames the argument in stupid and highly misleading terms. The “Python 3 is bad” argument is a cause-and-effect argument: if the Python developers keep Python 2 deprecated while it’s heavily used, then the community will split, and there’s a presumption that splitting the community is bad. Countering this requires either disproving the implication or asserting that splitting the community isn’t bad, and this section fails to even attempt to address either of these.

Of the top 200 3rd party libraries, 80% have Python 3 support at the time of this writing.

If 99% of the libraries I’m using have Python 3 support, I’m stuck with Python 2. Unless I have enough time and expertise to port the libraries I’m missing (and of course I don’t), it really needs to hit that magical 100% for this talking point to go away.

This is equally absurd. For example in March 2014 Python 3 downloads overtook Python 2 downloads by a healthy margin 54% vs 46%.

I have to ask: who downloads Python from Python? I literally never have, either at home or at work. Everybody I know gets it from alternate distribution channels. I think this statistic is misleading; for instance, Debian’s popularity contest puts the ratio of installs of 2 to 3 at about 4:1.

Regardless, if downloads of the old, deprecated version of your software only trail the new version by 15%, something is terribly terribly wrong with your migration plan.

[Rails] by the way, is not backwards compatible either

Python 3 would be much less of a big deal if Python broke compatibility in major ways with every minor version. (Of course, Python as a whole would likely also be much less of a big deal.) Comparing your problems to those of a terribly-run project and claiming victory is hardly a compelling argument.

And, of course, the entire article misses the actual giant elephant in the room: huge volumes (I would guess a significant majority) of all the Python code anywhere in the world is internal code for companies which will never be ported because there’s no business benefit whatsoever but which nevertheless must be maintained.

I mean, I get it; you really like Python 3 and you think the improvements were well worth making. I do too! (Well, I happen to think they did Unicode 100% wrong. But everything else was an improvement.) But in the process, they’ve broken it into two languages, and because of the incompatibility I have to use Python 2 at work. So now I’m forced to either use a deprecated language at home or use different languages at home and work; and Python 3 is the worst combination of not better enough and not different enough from Python 2, so I’m not likely to pick it.

I don’t know enough about the ins-and-outs of Python’s development, but I can personally vouch for the frustration of developing in Python 3. Not because the language itself is a problem (in fact, I’ve had very few problems with Python 3 as a language), but because the third party libraries which are so prevalent in Python 2 and nowhere near as available in Python 3.

Perhaps forking Python 2 is the proper solution, but there is always an issue with forking something standardized, as XKCD puts so well.

As a user, my only concern is having something usable for professional work. For now, that language is still Python 2 for me. Anecdotally, I am not alone. Whatever solution is chosen, a solution to this issue must be found.

I agree with this in general, though don’t know about the Wordpress comment. Installing Wordpress takes two minutes, and is faster than hand crafting HTML. Not to mention, it’s so easy to extend and add functionality. I would always choose Wordpress as a first choice, unless I had a good reason not to.

Man, this article seems unnecessarily negative:

Now, I’ll admit it to anyone that I hate PHP with the passion of a thousand burning suns.

… every PHP code base I’ve seen is an absolute wreck, and I pity the soul of the one who has to maintain it. How could any real engineer use PHP?

Designers weren’t afraid to use it. For the first time ever, PHP let dumb people (you know, people who understand people) …

… until now the embedded device landscape has been ruled by bit-banging neckbeard overlords …

Now the author might be trying to use literary freedom to entertain the reader as embedded software development isn’t always the most captivating topic. And, it’s true, that for the Internet of Things to really succeed, it will need an almost frictionless entry point – something PHP is excellent at. But does the author need to do so with such negativity?

(meta: I want to downvote this article because there I feel it’s negativity out weighs any benefit, but that isn’t one of the listed reasons. On purpose? I’d guess so, as the truly awful stuff (outright racism/sexism/etc) would probably be immediately moderated.)

After reading the article, my only comment is : What?

I have no idea what the Alljoyn thingy is, and how it relates to PHP.

From the AllJoyn website:

“The AllJoyn framework is an open source software system that provides an environment for distributed applications running across different device classes with an emphasis on mobility, security, and dynamic configuration. The AllJoyn system handles the hard problems inherent in heterogeneous distributed systems and addresses the unique issues that arise when mobility enters the equation.”

So what does it do again?

And then I found this gem:

“The types of applications that will use the AllJoyn framework are limited only by the imagination of developers. ”

I know what we’re dealing with now. What Joel Spolsky called Architecture Astronauts.

i agree that if you use an ORM you trade in problems for others.

the article generalizes the different orm patterns that exist. not all orm are created equal.

since all data can be “relational in nature” his solution to “Encapsulate your relational queries into a Model layer” will in the end just produce your own ORM or lots of duplicated and hard to maintain code.

we currently use the Ruby Sequel Library. I like it because it provides different levels. You can easily drop to customised SQL and speed up things if necessary.

This is all profoundly true stuff. Probably everybody knows it already… right?