This week was mostly covered by a longer business trip to a customer who is implementing our solution for automating newspaper production. I loved these three days with the customer to figure out, how to produce the newspaper in the future and how to translate all these implicit rules saved in the editors’ brains to rules in the software. As much as I enjoy the peace and silence in my home office, I also love to do these workshops onsite with a well-defined topic.
Reading
I started to read the novel Freiheitsgeld a few weeks ago. Even though its mixture of topics still sounds interesting, it is still a bit boring after being halfway in. The basic idea of a society with a basic income where you only work for luxuries beyond the basics is still cool. Maybe I expected a bit more action or a more thrilling story. For the moment, I will put it aside and read something lighter and more straightforward. I will jump into season 8 of Star Trek Deep Space Nine. I loved the TV series, and the books from Cross Cult get many good reviews.
Articles, Videos, Podcasts
📃 Kia’s more affordable EV2 is getting ready to undercut Tesla — This is good news for me. I was able to test an EV6 some weeks ago, and it is brilliant, but far too big. The upcoming EV 2 to EV 4 sound like the cars I want to consider.
📃 Python F-String Codes I Use Every Day — Great article by pybytes. I love Python’s f-strings, but I also have to look up more complex formats every time I intend to use them. This is a great reference.
📺 Python 3.12 Generics in a Nutshell – 6 minutes of condensed knowledge about Python Generics. Again, a good video from the YouTube channel Arjan Codes.
🎙️ #379: Constable on the debugging case — In this episode of Python Bytes podcast I learned about the constable library, what I am using for debugging since then and I love this unobtrusive approach.
Tools
constable — Quote from the README:
If you find yourself aimlessly adding ✨ print ✨ statements while debugging your code, this is for you. 🤝
I never really learned to embrace a debugger like VSCode provides it. I know how to use it and do it in complex situations. But 90% of the time, I just want to inspect a variable, and then I go for a quick print-statement. constable provides a more convenient way to do the very same.
micro — Occasionally I need a simple console-based editor with a sane default configuration. Currently, I am evaluating micro to see, if it is a better fit for the not-configured vi with see on systems.
Fun
📺 Interview with Senior JS Developer 2024 — Yes, it is a bit unfair, but as every good comedy it contains a good amount of truth. It made me laugh really hard.
Pic of the week
On my business trip, I had the “chance” to spend some time on the main station in Dortmund. Seems as they are losing platforms here and there. Just as they are losing trains like the one I should have taken in Dortmund. Where is platform 12 to 15? And maybe you can see the platform in the background too. Again, number 19 is missing. That’s confusing.
