enperezzeledon

Here’s a simple function which is supposed to strip any ".jpg" extension from a file name. def photo_name(photo_file): "Return the name of the photo" return photo_file.rstrip('.jpg') assert photo_name('cat.jpg') == 'cat' assert photo_name('selfie.jpg') == 'selfie' assert photo_name('emoji.gif') == 'emoji.gif' # A GIF is not a photo As shown, it passes a few simple tests. Unfortunately it turns out to be broken. >>> photo_name('dog.jpg') 'do' >>> photo_name('tile.png') 'tile.pn' There’s no mystery here. A check of the documentation shows that the optional chars parameter to str.rstrip specifies a set of trailing characters to be removed from the source string. So, in the example above, '.jpg' means: strip trailing characters in the set {'.',…

We’re working on MVP1, short for Minimum Viable Product One — the first version of our new App. The term MVP applies. You put something (product) which works (viable) in front of a user as quickly as possible (minimum). Then you improve it based on their response. MVP1 is an oxymoron. It implies there’ll be an MVP2, a second minimum viable product. But there can only be a single minimum. By including an update based on user feedback version two is no longer minimal, it’s simply a viable product. So the 1 in MVP1 is redundant, making the very title, MVP1, non-minimal! Software almacen de Cea Ordenadores...

Recently I attended a demonstration of a product intended to help design software, right down to implementation details. It failed to convince me. It did, however, succeed in reminding me of this short work by Jorge Luis Borges: On Exactitude in Science Jorge Luis Borges, Collected Fictions, translated by Andrew Hurley. …In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire,…

A quick note on some useful updates made to standard Python maths support. Math.prod does for * what sum does for +. It was added at Python 3.8. >>> math.prod([3, 4, 5]) 60 >>> math.prod([]) 1 Added in 3.9, math.lcm, returns the least common multiple of its integer arguments. As with math.prod, an empty list of arguments returns 1. Extended in 3.9, the related function math.gcd now accepts an arbitrary list of arguments. For Euclidean geometry, math.hypot now supports n-dimensional points, and math.dist has been added, again working on any pair of n-dimensional points. These useful additions and extensions are all in the standard math module (along with several others…

Jurassic Jigsaw My thanks to Eric Wastl for another excellent Advent of Code. I’ve now worked through all 25 puzzles, some simple, some tough, some familiar, some new; all beautifully set and highly enjoyable. Day 20, Jurrasic Jigsaw, took me longest by far to complete. The puzzle is easy to understand. You have to assemble jigsaw pieces into a seascape. For part one, you need to find the corner pieces. For part two, you must locate monsters in the seascape. Here, a jigsaw piece is a monochrome square, represented like so: ..##.#..#. ##..#..... #...##..#. ####.#...# ##.##.###. ##...#.### .#.#.#..## ..#....#.. ###...#.#. ..###..### And this is the sea monster: # # ##…

Once again, I’m enjoying solving Eric Wastl’s excellent Advent of Code puzzles. Today, day 12 involved a ship navigating in a 2D plane. The ship follows a series of instructions taking the form of actions and values such as F10 N3 F7 R90 F11 ..., where, for the first part: actions N, S, E, W step by the value in the compass directions N, S, E, W actions L, R turn the ship left and right by the number of degrees specified by the value action F advances the ship in the direction it faces by the given value Perhaps the most obvious way to model this is by implementing…