Category Archives: Programming

Python Gotchas No. 2: Garbage Collection Oddities

Posted on October 30, 2009 by lorg

Python is a garbage collected language. The garbage collector will collect orphaned objects. These are objects that have no references. If an object has a __del__ method, it will be called when that object is collected. Note however, that there … Continue reading →

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Posted in Programming, Python | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

PythonTurtle delivers!

Posted on October 22, 2009 by lorg

A few days ago, a coworker asked me what tool he should use to teach another non-programming coworker some programming. I thought a little, and suggested PythonTurtle, and then also demonstrated the builtin turtle. I thought nothing much of it, … Continue reading →

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Posted in Programming, Python, Teaching Programming | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Python Gotchas 1: __del__ is not the opposite of __init__

Posted on October 20, 2009 by lorg

After discussing my last post with a friend and talking about a few other issues, we came to the conclusion that it would be worthwhile to discuss more gotchas. First though, what is a gotcha? Wikipedia gives a good definition: … Continue reading →

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Posted in gotchas, Programming, Python | Tagged , , | 6 Comments

GeneratorExit: another reason to upgrade to Python 2.6

Posted on October 18, 2009 by lorg

Ever heard of GeneratorExit? Unless you write generators, and do some unusual stuff with them, you probably haven’t encountered it. GeneratorExit is a special exception that gets raised from within a generator when it is close()-ed. For example, consider the … Continue reading →

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Fast Peak Autocorrelation

Posted on October 14, 2009 by lorg

So, I was at geekcon. It was a blast. There were many interesting projects, and I didn’t get to play with them all. I did get to work a bit on the Lunar Lander from last year, and this year … Continue reading →

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Posted in Algorithms, Math, Programming, Projects, Python, Utility Functions | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Preparing PyImprov for GeekCon on Friday

Posted on October 7, 2009 by lorg

A long long time ago, I wrote Pytuner. It was one of the first projects I published on this website. For a long time it just sat there, doing nothing, while the library it’s based on – PyMedia, wasn’t being … Continue reading →

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Posted in Programming, Projects, Python, Sound | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

10 Python Optimization Tips and Issues

Posted on September 21, 2009 by lorg

Following my previous post on Optimizing Javascript, I thought I’d write a similar post regarding Python optimization.

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Posted in computer science, Design, Optimization, Programming, Python | Tagged , , , , | 7 Comments

Checking the ulam spiral

Posted on September 17, 2009 by lorg

In the following post, the Ulam spiral is described. It’s a very simple object – write down consecutive natural numbers starting from 41 in a square spiral. Curiously, the numbers on the diagonal are primes: Reading this post, I immediately … Continue reading →

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Posted in Math, Programming, Python | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Bulk INSERTs FTW

Posted on July 17, 2009 by lorg

A short while ago, I had to research some API for a company I’m consulting for. This API yields very good quality data, but isn’t comfortable enough to process it for further research. The obvious solution was to dump this … Continue reading →

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Posted in Databases, Programming | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

A Simple Race-Condition

Posted on June 28, 2009 by lorg

Lately, I’ve mostly been working on my startup. It’s a web-application, and one of the first things I’ve written was a cache mechanism for some lengthy operations. Yesterday, I found a classic race-condition in that module. I won’t present the … Continue reading →

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Posted in Databases, Design, Programming | Tagged , , , , , | 14 Comments