Technology – Page 4 – Chad Dotson

Decisions in 1 Pomodori

By chad April 17, 2015Doing Things Better, Programming, UncategorizedNo Comments

All programmers suffer from analysis paralysis at some point in their career. The trick is bringing it to a swift conclusion. Try this to move forward next time. Give yourself 1 pomorodi (25 minutes) to analyze the problem. After that make a decision and go with it. Whatever falls out…

DSLR Lightning Trigger 2

By chad April 5, 2015Arduino, Hobbies, Photography, Programming, Software Engineering, Technology5 Comments

Lightning Drought Back in September, I created a simple Arduino-based lightning trigger (original article). I've been waiting since then for the chance to test the circuit in the field. Yesterday provided the first real chance to test the circuit; unfortunately, I missed it. Improving the Program Even though I missed…

Becoming an Entrepreneur as a Software Engineer Vol 2

By chad March 29, 2015Programming, Software Engineering, WorkNo Comments

This is part two of my discussion and thoughts on seeking to become an entrepreneur as a software engineer. These are my current thoughts on the process and how to achieve my overall goals in becoming an entrepreneur. This entry centers on the belief that becoming an entrepreneur occurs in…

On Software Engineering

By chad March 23, 2015Hobbies, Key Concepts, Photography, Programming, Ramblings, Software EngineeringNo Comments

Spring Writing from the patio on a much deserved day off. What a day, sunny and 68 this 3rd day of spring. It sometimes makes it real hard to work inside in a windowless box. It's been a busy day of a different sort, but dang I could get used…

A Better AsyncTestCase for Python

By chad March 21, 2015Doing Things Better, ProgrammingNo Comments

If you need asynchronous support in python unit tests, there are a few possibilities. A simple google search points you to a few packages, one being tornado. Tornado's tornado.testing.AsyncTestCase seems straight-forward. However it does have a shortcoming: it's not thread-safe. Trying to use it with a thread will result in…

Hardware vs Software – A Realization

By chad February 21, 2015Arduino, Raspberry Pi, TechnologyNo Comments

I spent some time over the past year tinkering with Arduinos and Raspberry Pis and had a bit of a realization: Hardware circuit components are simply the syntax for creating physical devices. As a software person, putting hardware into that context has really given it a lot of meaning.

Automating Pylint with Gulp.js

By chad February 6, 2015Doing Things Better, Software Engineering, TipsNo Comments

Automating Pylint (and other Python Tasks) can be achieved with several viable python-based methods, but what if we used Gulp.js? The following code snippet gathers runs Pylint on the set of python files defined by pySource. var gulp = require('gulp'), shell = require('gulp-shell'); gulp.task("pylint", function() { log('Linting with pylint ->…

Node.js vs Python vs PyPy – A Simple Performance Comparison – Updated

By chad December 30, 2014Programming, Software Engineering, Technology, Uncategorized5 Comments

Some History This is a followup to my original post: Node.js vs Python vs PyPy - A Simple Performance Comparison. This article corrects a discrepancy caused by a slight difference in the JavaScript implementation which skewed the Node.js results. The Algorithm As stated in the previous article, I've attempted to…

Notes On Writing Testable JavaScript Vol 1

By chad November 6, 2014Programming1 Comment

When writing JavaScript, I am a big fan of minimizing functionality and variables exposed publicly, which we all know to be good practice. However, this leads to anonymous functions and functions hidden within closures. So.... How Do You Test That? How exactly do you test private methods in JavaScript? To…

Make It Easy

By chad October 18, 2014Key Concepts, Programming, Software Engineering1 Comment

Building a successful product is usually complicated business. With any luck a project will have an automated deployment process. This however is only part of the equation. Another significant part would be an automated build process. Long Term Success Long term success means making it easy for new people to…