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Tag Archives: Programming

Using SQLite in Python

Python has had support for SQLite built-in since version 2.5.
This is a very convenient pairing as SQLite is an excellent lightweight SQL implementation that I find very useful for a variety of tasks e.g. data mining.  Or any task involving manipulating complex data sets where I’d otherwise end up resorting to using a full blown [...]

Fail to succeed!

The more experienced I become the more aware I become of what I don’t know and the more I come to terms with the fact that I make mistakes.
The awareness of what I don’t know helps keep me humble, humility makes working as part of a team easier:  as there is no pressure to have [...]

No bad programming languages

I encountered some truly hideous source code today in a programming language in which I wouldn’t have thought hideous obscure code was possible:  C#.  It was my first real experience of abject horror when looking at the source code of a C# application. Obviously with hindsight it would seem that you can write hugely, dense, [...]

You Aren’t Gonna Need It!

A very common trap to fall into while implementing a new system or feature is to add functionality to ‘future proof’ your code for a use case that you imagine in may be required in the future.  The future for the purposes of this post is any time that is not in your current development [...]

Fail fast, fail cheap!

I was explaining this to some junior programmers the other day and it’s worth repeating.  Failure is fine in software engineering, in fact it is expected: I get nervous if something works first time these days as I know my limits and expect to make mistakes.  However I think that new programmers don’t always realise [...]