Programming Leftovers

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Jan 21, 2023

• How to improve Python packaging, or why fourteen tools are at least twelve too many | Chris Warrick

  There is an area of Python that many developers have problems with. This is an area that has seen many different solutions pop up over the years, with many different opinions, wars, and attempts to solve it. Many have complained about the packaging ecosystem and tools making their lives harder. Many beginners are confused about virtual environments. But does it have to be this way? Are the current solutions to packaging problems any good? And is the organization behind most of the packaging tools and standards part of the problem itself?

  Join me on a journey through packaging in Python and elsewhere. We’ll start by describing the classic packaging stack (involving setuptools and friends), the scientific stack (with conda), and some of the modern/alternate tools, such as Pipenv, Poetry, Hatch, or PDM. We’ll also look at some examples of packaging and dependency-related workflows seen elsewhere (Node.js and .NET). We’ll also take a glimpse at a possible future (with a venv-less workflow with PDM), and see if the PyPA agrees with the vision and insights of eight thousand users.

• We invested 10% to pay back tech debt; Here's what happened

  Anyone who has maintained software for a while knows that it tends to rot over time. It takes deliberate effort to prevent that from happening. In this post I will talk about a story how one team successfully dealt with it and conclude with some practical tips.

• Use.GPU Goes Trad — Acko.net

  I've released a new version of Use.GPU, my experimental reactive/declarative WebGPU framework, now at version 0.8.

  My goal is to make GPU rendering easier and more sane. I do this by applying the lessons and patterns learned from the React world, and basically turning them all up to 11, sometimes 12. This is done via my own Live run-time, which is like a martian React on steroids.

  The previous 0.7 release was themed around compute, where I applied my shader linker to a few challenging use cases. It hopefully made it clear that Use.GPU is very good at things that traditional engines are kinda bad at.

• TTF text in titlebar gui_engine

  There are two functions used to draw text on the screen; characterRGBA() and stringRGBA(). These are part of SDL_gfx. The SDL_gfx package is mostly for drawing shapes, such as lines, polygons, circles, etc.; however, it also has some bitmap fonts builtin, of various sizes. The default size is 8x8 pixels. These are basic 256-character ASCI fonts.

• gui_engine fully converted to TTF

  The down-arrow in the drop-down list was previously a character from the gfx 8x8 set. I changed it to a "trigon", which is a triangle, a shape that is available in SDL_gfx -- might make it a bit smaller. The "x" in the checkbox is still from the gfx 8x8 set.

• FOSDEM back in full force for 2023

  FOSDEM is back and ready to mingle! After two years of hosting the event virtually, Brussels will once again welcome attendees on February 4 & 5 for this free event on the old stomping grounds of the ULB Solbosch Campus.

  This two-day event is renowned worldwide as one of the best open source conferences, with over 8,000 people in attendance. With such a reputation and large crowd to impress, we are excited to be presenting 8 different talks, in 7 devrooms as well as on the main track. To get the full picture on each presentation, check out the details below. For those unable to make it, there will be live streams for all track. We'll be sharing the links on our social media channels as soon as they become available.