Use pychecker

If you program in Python, use pychecker. Because of the way Python works it can only detect some problems in the code when this code is executed. This is not very good, because you can have bugs hidden in your code for a long time and they might show up at the worst time. Pychecker is a static analysis program which will catch many of those problems just by analyzing the source code. The good part is that it really works. I've ran it on my little script and it detected few bugs. They were easy to fix but apparently not so easy to spot. I love this kind of tools: tools that compensate for the fact that humans are lazy and easily distracted. Those are the kinds of bugs that pychecker finds (according to the documentation):

• No global found (e.g., using a module without importing it)
• Passing the wrong number of parameters to functions/methods/constructors
• Passing the wrong number of parameters to builtin functions & methods
• Using format strings that don't match arguments
• Using class methods and attributes that don't exist
• Changing signature when overriding a method
• Redefining a function/class/method in the same scope
• Using a variable before setting it
• self is not the first parameter defined for a method
• Unused globals and locals (module or variable)
• Unused function/method arguments (can ignore self)
• No doc strings in modules, classes, functions, and methods

One note: since I use Windows I had to modify pychecker.bat to put quotes around the full path to python.exe (since it contained spaces and cmd.exe doesn't like that). I also copied pychecker.bat to a dir in my %PATH% so that I don't have to type the full path to execute it.

   

Blogging is a marathon, not sprint

Blogging is a seductive idea, so many people try it. It's also a lot of work, so many people stop after a week or two. I've seen that already a few times. So if you're starting a blog, remember: blogging is a marathong, not a sprint. Plan for that.

   

Can you believe it? K&R classic on C is on-line. Go and read it as I did so many years ago.

   

Amazon does it again

What do they do again? They evolve their service yet another time, this time providing Gold Box (look in the right-upper corner). The idea itself is neat but not revolutionary. But Amazon is great because it adds those neat ideas all the time and they add up in the end to one of the best e-commerce sites on the planet. Seth Godin also noticed Gold Box.