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  1. If you’re getting the following error in Inkscape on (k)ubuntu when trying to open the Extension Manager:

    [long traceback snipped]
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'appdirs'

    the best way to deal with it seems to be sudo apt install python3-appdirs, as trying to install the appdirs module with pip or pip3 might not put it in the right place for the system python3 which inkscape is using, especially if you use something like conda or pyenv.

  2. ↪ Aaron Parecki: Ok that was fun, thanks for all the responses! Lots of great stuff in there. Now take your favorite programming language and tell me the 3 things you most dislike about it. No complaining about languages you don't use!

    For python, the lack of type information for function signatures and return values in the documentation has always annoyed me.

    The lack of naming consistency in the standard library, too — it’s almost as bad as PHP, with nospaces, under_scores and CamelCase at every level: modules, classes, functions, arguments.

    I can’t think of a third major annoyance off the top of my head though, and almost every time I use another programming language, I end up realising just how well designed some aspect of python is, so it’s not doing too badly.

  3. It just took me about 30 mins to figure it out, so here’s how to install python plugins in KiCad 5.0 on a Mac.

    1. Make sure your build of KiCad has scripting enabled. It looks like fresh downloads have it by default, but it doesn’t hurt to check. Go KiCad → About KiCad → Show Version Info and make sure that all of the KICAD_SCRIPTING_ flags are set to ON.
    2. Find pcbnew’s plugin search path list. Open pcbnew, and open Tools → Scripting Console. Run import pcbnew; print pcbnew.PLUGIN_DIRECTORIES_SEARCH and you’ll see a list of folders which pcbnew will search for plugins
    3. Move your plugin files/folders to one of these locations
    4. In pcbnew, Tools → External Plugins… → Refresh Plugins. Your Tools → External Plugins menu should fill up with plugins.

  6. When using the python2.7 gzip module with StringIO, it’s extremely important to call GzipFile.close() after you’ve finished writing to it. If you don’t, the archive will probably not be readable as the CRC record will not be appended, and you’ll get a bunch of IOErrors despite everything looking fine.

  7. for anyone using QtMultimedia QAudioInput with python’s wave module to write PCM data to a wave file: to convert between QAudioFormat’s sampleSize() number and wave’s sample width number, divide by 8, e.g:

    wave_file_to_write.setsampwidth(audio_format.sampleSize() / 8)

    QAudioFormat’s sampleRate() number works as it is.

  9. Any ideas why the Icelandic locale in +natsort doesn’t correctly sort Icelandic characters alphabetically (aábcdðeé etc)? I just implemented a rather awkward hacky way of sorting them using the alphabet and natsort.versorted, but would rather find a way to correct the root issue.

  11. Today’s lesson: be VERY careful with programmatic use of contribute_to_class(). It doesn’t overwrite existing fields of the same name, resulting in intriguing errors when the ORM tries to do a SELECT query containing the same columns hundreds of times over…

  13. Finally solved a long-standing problem getting Icelandic characters to work properly in files being downloaded onto Windows machines for use as SPSS syntax. Turns out the solution is to explicitly set the download charset to UTF-8, and to prepend an unnecessary BOM (yuk) to the beginning of the file as so (context: Django view):

    import codecs

def export_spss(request):
    response = HttpResponse(export_spss(), status=200, mimetype="application/x-spss; charset=utf-8")
    response['Content-Disposition'] = 'attachment; filename=syntax.sps'
    response.content = codecs.BOM_UTF8 + response.content
    return response

    Why is a BOM, which should be completely unnecessary in a UTF-8 file (it has no variable byte order after all) apparently required by some Windows software in order to tell it that the file is UTF-8 encoded, despite Unicode mode being on? Sigh.

  14. The Heroku python client library is horribly out of date, and many simple things which should work don’t, throwing confusing errors. Here’s my version:

    # coding: utf-8

import requests

HEROKU_URL = 'https://api.heroku.com'


class Client():
    def __init__(self, api_key, heroku_url=None):
        self.heroku_url = HEROKU_URL if heroku_url is None else heroku_url
        self.session = requests.Session()
        self.session.headers.update({'Accept': 'application/vnd.heroku+json; version=3'})
        self.session.auth = ('', api_key)

    def get(self, path):
        r = self.session.get('%s/%s' % (self.heroku_url.rstrip('/'), path.lstrip('/')))
        r.raise_for_status()
        return r.json()

    def post(self, path, data=None):
        r = self.session.post('%s/%s' % (self.heroku_url.rstrip('/'), path.lstrip('/')), data=data)
        r.raise_for_status()
        return r.json()

    Add similar methods for DELETE if you find you require it. I haven’t yet, as the idea of programatically being able to delete apps is much more worrying than the ability to create them.

  15. Today in “things I have typed instead of import”: imprto, improt, implore

    I actually quite like how implore pandas looks in my code.

  17. I’m getting too used to (puredata.info) — I just right-clicked a python class and expected a hypermedia “help” option with params, example usage etc.

    Jetbrains PyCharm does have an inline documentation feature, which (when invoked via a complex keyboard “shortcut”), produces this gem:

    Even when this feature does work, it shows code “documentation” in a monospace font, typically with no usage example or links to other relevant documentation, as is standard in puredata.

    Our tools are inadequate.

    Update: added puredata documentation for comparison:

    In case it’s not clear from the screenshot, that usage example is live code — it can be interacted with, changed, copied and pasted, played with, experimented with. We typically can’t do that with existing text-based code, let alone mere usage examples.

    More thoughts I want to add to this, but I will write them up as a full article.

  18. If you’re using pika as a client and are getting “ConnectionClosed” exceptions, test or look very carefully through the code being executed — it is probably not a pika or rabbitmq issue but some other exception.

    E.G. I just spent half an hour tearing apart pika connection handling code when it turns out the exceptions were caused by passing a dict rather than an instance of template.Context to template.render().

  20. Javascript has no real Set or Dictionary implementation, which for someone spoiled by python’s set and dicts is rather frustrating. However, in leiu of the poorly supported js Set type, plain old objects can be massaged into acting as both sets and dicts:

    
// Python: d = dict()
var d = {};

// d['key'] = 'value'
d['key'] = 'value';

// d.get('nonexistent', 'fallback')
d.hasOwnProperty('nonexistent') ? d['nonexistent'] : 'fallback';

// d.keys()
Object.keys(d);

// s = set()
var s = {};

// s.add(1)
s[1] = true;

// 1 in s
s.hasOwnProperty(1);

// Accessing all values in set:
Object.keys(s);

    Notes: the in operator can be used to test membership, but will incorrectly return true for __proto__, as well as all properties up the prototype chain, i.e. all properties and methods of Object. hasOwnProperty is much safer to use.

    Similarly, the use of the ternary operator for get-item-with-fallback could in theory be replaced with d['item'] || 'fallback', unless of course the value stored was falsey, in which case the or will incorrectly return a truthier fallback.