O'Reilly News & Commentary

Four short links: 24 August 2011 - STM in Python, Static Web is Back, Cyberwar, and Virtual Language Education

By Nat Torkington
August 24, 2011

STM in PyPy -- a proposal to add software transactional memory to the all-Python Python interpreter as a way of simplifying concurrent programming. I first learned about STM from Haskell's Simon Peyton-Jones at OSCON. (via Nelson Minar) Werner Vogels' Static Web Site on S3 -- nice writeup of the toolchain to publish a web site to static files served...

Four short links: 17 August 2011 - Tabular Data API, Open Stanford Courses, Wearable TV, and Wearable Sensors

By Nat Torkington
August 17, 2011

Tablib -- MIT-licensed open source library for manipulating tabular data. Reputed to have a great API. (via Tim McNamara) Stanford Education Everywhere -- courses in CS, machine learning, math, and engineering that are open for all to take. Over 58,000 have already signed up for the introduction to machine learning taught by Peter Norvig, Google's Director of Research. Wearable...

Four short links: 12 August 2011 - Learning Adventure, Python Data Analysis, Lanyrd Technology, and New Sensor

By Nat Torkington
August 12, 2011

Hippocampus Text Adventure -- written as an exercise in learning Python, you explore the hippocampus. It's simple, but I like the idea of educational text adventures. (Well, educational in that you learn about more than the axe-throwing behaviour of the cave-dwelling dwarf) Pandas -- BSD-licensed Python data analysis library. Building Lanyrd -- Simon Willison's talk (with slides) about the...

Four short links: 8 August 2011 - Graph ORM, Graphic Computation, Web Intents, and Async RPC

By Nat Torkington
August 8, 2011

Bulbflow -- a Python framework for graph databases: it's like an ORM for graphs. (via Joshua Schachter) Nomograms -- the lost art of graphical computing. (via John D Cook) Web Intents -- adding Android-style Intents to the web. Services register their intention to be able to handle an action on the user's behalf. Applications request to start an Action...

Four short links: 17 May 2011 - Sorting Out 9/11, Tagging Text, Unlocking Scientific Publishing, and Internet Archive's Meatspace Branch

By Nat Torkington
May 17, 2011

Sorting Out 9/11 (New Yorker) -- the thorniest problem for the 9/11 memorial was the ordering of the names. Computer science to the rescue! Tagger -- Python library for extracting tags (statistically significant words or phrases) from a piece of text. Free Science, One Paper at a Time (Wired) -- Jonathan Eisen's attempt to collect and distribute his father's...

Less Code Is Better

By Paul Barry
May 10, 2011

I'm a big fan of the "less code is better" principle, in that I firmly believe the number of bugs in my code is directly related to the number of lines of code I write.

Four short links: 25 April 2011 - Healthcare Data, C64 Emulator, Python Machine Learning, and Startup Success Stats

By Nat Torkington
April 25, 2011

E-Referral Evaluation Interim Findings -- in general good, but note this: The outstanding system issues are an ongoing source of frustration and concern, including [...] automated data uptake from the GP [General Practitioner=family doctor] PMS [Patient Management System], that sometimes has clearly inaccurate or contradictory information. When you connect systems, you realize the limitations of the data in them....

Four short links: 21 March 2011 - Javascript Master Class, Stats for Pythonistas, CAM Floor, and HTML Extraction

By Nat Torkington
March 21, 2011

Javascript Trie Performance Analysis (John Resig) -- if you program in Javascript and you're not up to John's skill level (*cough*) then you should read this and follow along. It's a ride-along in the brain of a master. Think Stats -- an introduction to statistics for Python programmers. (via Edd Dumbill) Bolefloor -- they build curvy wooden floors. Instead...

Four short links: 17 March 2011 - Data Manual, Data Processing, Piracy Report, and Fragile Free

By Nat Torkington
March 17, 2011

The Open Data Manual -- a HOWTO for organisations wanting to open up data. This report discusses legal, social and technical aspects of open data. The manual can be used by anyone but is especially designed for those seeking to open up data. It discusses the why, what and how of open data — why to go open, what...

Four short links: 2 March 2011 - Python Unicode, Cognitive Enhancement, Journal Balk, Engineering SaaS

By Nat Torkington
March 2, 2011

Unicode in Python, Completely Demystified -- a good introduction to Unicode in Python, which helped me with some code. (via Hacker News) A Ban on Brain-Boosting Drugs (Chronicle of Higher Education) -- Simply calling the use of study drugs "unfair" tells us nothing about why colleges should ban them. If such drugs really do improve academic performance among healthy...

Four Short Links: 2 February 2011 - Visualization Papers, Immersive Learning, Readability, and Quora's Technology

By Nat Torkington
February 2, 2011

Seven Foundational Visualization Papers -- seven classics in the field that are cited and useful again and again. Git Immersion -- a "walking tour" of Git inspired by the premise that to know a thing is to do it. Cf Learn Python the Hard Way or even NASA's Planet Makeover. We'll see more and more tutorials that require participation...

Developer Year in Review: Programming Languages - Java's wild ride, multicore drives functional, and a look at how the usual programming suspects stacked up in 2010.

By James Turner
December 22, 2010

This year brought confusion and chaos in the Java space, continued growth for functional languages due to the attack of multicore, and the usual popularity for all of the dynamic languages we know and love.

Strata Gems: Make beautiful graphs of your Twitter network - Use Gephi and Python to find your personal communities

By Edd Dumbill
December 9, 2010

Using a bit of Python and the Gephi graph tool, exploring your own Twitter network is a great way to learn about analyzing networks: and the results definitely have a "wow" factor.

Four short links: 30 September 2010 - Python Exercises, Maker Revolution, Dodgy Memes, and Government Licenses

By Nat Torkington
September 30, 2010

Learn Python The Hard Way -- Zed Shaw's book on programming Python, written as 52 exercises: Each exercise is one or two pages and follows the exact same format. You type each one in (no copy-paste!), make it run, do the extra credit, and then move on. If you get stuck, at least type it in and skip the...

Four short links: 20 September 2010 - Robot Trades, Quirky Adventures, Tabular Data Library, and It's Hard to be Evil

By Nat Torkington
September 20, 2010

The Tracks of Bizarre Robot Traders (The Atlantic) -- I love the idea that these mysterious effect-less trades might simply be there to slow down competitors' analytic systems because every millisecond matters. MS Paint Adventures -- a weird mashup of MS Paint and text adventure games. tablib -- a format-agnostic tabular dataset library for Python. (via joshua on delicious)...

New OST Course! "Python 2: Getting More Out of Python" by Steve Holden

By Trish Gray
September 15, 2010

The O'Reilly School of Technology is excited to announce the release of Python 2: Getting More Out of Python. This is the second course in the upcoming Python Programming Certificate Series, and right now you can enroll at 50% off normal tuition. Check out the below video of me interviewing Steve about his courses in a webcast from a few months ago:

Four short links: 4 August 2010 - Python Reasoning, Learning the Right Way, Curated Folksonomy, Arduino Image Correction

By Nat Torkington
August 4, 2010

FuXi -- Python-based, bi-directional logical reasoning system for the semantic web from the folks at the Open Knowledge Foundation. (via About Inferencing) Harness the Power of Being an Idiot -- I learn by trying to build something, there's no other way I can discover the devils-in-the-details. Unfortunately that's an incredibly inefficient way to gain knowledge. I basically wander around...

1 to 17 of 17