programming

A compact little chart for anyone considering a start with programming languages.

Huh. Look at that. That’s a clever regex to find all printable ASCII characters.

This, my friends, is how you write a damn review. Pythonista deserves this kind of excellent work. It’s an amazingly well designed and implemented app, just like Federico’s “review”.

I’m kind of blown away by Pandas. It’s a Python library for manipulating data. For example, look how easy it is to work with plain text arrays of data. That just scratches the surface. How about combing with Matplotlib to read, manipulate and then plot data? Sure. This looks like another lost weekend for me. Like any reasonably complex Python module, I’m having a tough time getting it installed on Mountain Lion.

Macscripz is an interesting idea. It’s single clearing house for scripts. It’s attractive and I like the simple layout. I especially appreciate the “Undo” column. What I really want is for the code to also be viewable in a Github like format. I’m always very hesitant to download scripts from people I don’t know. Macsripz does promise some moderation though. Every script on Scripz.com is pre-screened, so don’t ever worry about harming your system with any of our tweaks, we only upload quality content.

The Pythonista app for iPad is a Python interpreter for iOS.1 I have used and the Python for iOS and it is a nice facsimile of running Python on a Mac. But Pythonista is more than a Python interpreter. Background I’ve used the Python for iOS app on my iPad. It’s a solid iOS app that does one thing well. It allows me to work with core Python modules and run them.

Wow, only 12 steps? Simeon Franklin does the best run down I've read of Python decorators.

I'm thrilled with the current state of text editors. There is a wealth of excellent applications on Mac, PC and iOS for working with plain text files. On the PC and ocassionally the Mac1, I use Sublime Text (previous post). ST2 is extremely powerful. For someone with the right commitment, there's magic to be had. $60 gets a cross platform, scriptable and gorgeous text editor. Sounds like a good deal to me.

I've been using Sublime Text 2 betas for what seems like forever. Even the early betas were rock solid. I use Sublime Text on Windows (I really do deserve your pity) and BBEdit on Mac. I still prefer BBEdit but it's a close race.1 If Textmate and Quicksilver had a love child that was raised by VIM, it would be Sublime Text 2. Don't be naïve though. It's a serious tool.

While this post at Depth First is about learning to code as a chemist, it's generally applicable to anyone. Some great quotes too. Identifying good problems - problems that when solved will yield profitable outcomes - is one of the most difficult and valuable things we do in our careers as scientists. This is equally true in software. Finally, you can only learn so much from a lecture or book.