Nix is a tool for configuring software environments according to source files. I’ve been hearing more and more about Nix on Hacker News and Twitter. The idea of it appeals to me, so I’ve been tinkering with it over the past few weeks.
Source: My First Impressions of Nix, an article by Michael Lynch.
This article describes some principles I’ve found useful for designing good Python library APIs, including structure, naming, error handling, type annotations, and more. It’s a written version of a talk I gave in June 2023 at the Christchurch Python meetup.
Source: Designing Pythonic library APIs, an article by Ben Hoyt.
Search capabilities span from free text (think Google) to raw data access (think SQL). In between, there’s a wide range of options for narrowing a search that are often provided with UI elements. But what if there are too many fields for a UI to search on? Search DSLs can give a user more granular access to searching without exposing an overly complicated interface.
Source: Building Search DSLs with Django, an article by Dan Lamanna.
In the evening I finished Cruel and Unusual, Book 4 in the Kay Scarpetta series by Patricia Cornwell. I liked the story. Cornwell is getting better and better with each book in the Kay Scarpetta series.
Earth failed. In a desperate bid to escape, the spaceship Enkidu and its captain, Heorest Holt, carried its precious human cargo to a potential new paradise. Generations later, this fragile colony has managed to survive, eking out a hardy existence. Yet life is tough, and much technological knowledge has been lost.
Then strangers appear. They possess unparalleled knowledge and thrilling technology – and they've arrived from another world to help humanity’s colonies. But not all is as it seems, and the price of the strangers' help may be the colony itself.
In the evening I started in Children of Memory, Children of Time book 3 by Adrian Tchaikovsky.
In the acknowledgements the author gives a nod to his research sources which include the fantastic book The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman. I read this book several years ago while living in Mexico and highly recommend it.