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pyproject-pub: A simple Python project template

I hate repeating myself. It's boring. Life is too short. Like any self respecting hacker I will go out of my way to avoid it, even when I suspect it would cost me more to automate something away than to just do it by hand.

On the other hand, doing stuff I've done before by hand is no fun, while writing scripts is fun. Even when it does take longer, time is relative, or so Einstein said.

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Understand the system, make stuff happen, or die trying.

Specialization. Most of the people who work for big companies do it. They're good at this one specific thing the company needs to get done. They work with other people who are good at other things.

On one hand, specialization is necessary and useful. It doesn't make sense to try and train everybody to be good at everything. As they say, jack of all trades and master of none.

Getting started with Python and Lisp

A few weeks ago I talked with a friend studying computer science who I discovered had never experienced the joy of programming with a high level language. Not only that but he didn't have the first clue what he was missing. I feared without my immediate intervention another perfectly good mind would be wasted in programming hell. At his university they were using Java for nearly everything so he had somehow gotten the terribly mistaken idea that it didn't really matter what programming language one used. I carefully explained that:

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Why I love programming: a crude theory of mind

I've been programming a bit today and I am enjoying myself and focusing for hours at end, which has lately been next to impossible for me when working on other things (e.g., website design).

It's made me think about why I'm having such a hard to reproducing the focus and satisfaction I feel when I'm programming when I'm doing non-programming stuff.

Fact is, I've noticed I find it much more difficult to get in the zone when I'm not programming. I feel slow and unproductive (compared with development) and that leads to low morale and avoidance/procrastination feedback loops.

Why parallel programming is hard

Implementing Cloudtask took more time than I had planned due mainly to the challenges of parallel programming, which I hadn't done that much of before. Also, parallel programming really is inherently far more difficult than serial programming.

In my mind there are three major challenges: