The long arc of language convergence continues. With generics and iterators, Go is significantly closer to Python’s reusability and expressiveness. Take the built-in function sum. Prior to generics, a Go version would have needed separate i…
GraphQL documentation recommends cursor-based pagination, and it has subsequently become a popular standard. In general, we’ve found that cursor-based pagination is the most powerful of those designed. Especially if the cursors are opaque,
This is not an overview of packaging, nor a history of the tooling. The intended audience is an author of a simple package who merely wants to publish it on the package index, without being forced to make uninformed choices. The crux of the…
The conventional wisdom is to prefer composition over inheritance. More specifically to use delegation over single inheritance. Like the recommendation on closing files, the advice is well-intentioned but omits the fact that Python does not…
Decorators are a beloved feature of Python, but like any good thing can be overused. The key is acknowledging that decorators are just functions. A function returning another function, usually applied as a function transformation using the
The myths and misconceptions regarding null behavior in GraphQL are epic. Even the spec is wrong. Inputs (such as field arguments), are always optional by default. However a non-null input type is required. In addition to not accepting the
This is how the GraphQL documentation introduces execution, as a hierarchy of resolvers: You can think of each field in a GraphQL query as a function or method of the previous type which returns the next type. In fact, this is exactly how G…
Random selection utilities used to be common in interviews. Less so in Python circles because of the builtin random module. Still advanced examples may come up. First is a generalization of shuffle and sample. Next up is a random sample in
An old interview challenge is to generate prime numbers or check if a number is prime. No advanced mathematics needed, just variants on the Sieve of Eratosthenes. Starting with a basic prime checker. A common optimization is to skip even nu…
Three gods A, B, and C are called, in no particular order, True, False, and Random. True always speaks truly, False always speaks falsely, but whether Random speaks truly or falsely is a completely random matter. Your task is to determine t…
REST and ORMs are both infamous for: GraphQL aims to overcome REST’s shortcomings through a flexible query language, and succeeds in doing so on the client side. But on the server side, GraphQL resolvers have effectively recreated the same
It has become conventional wisdom to always explicitly close file-like objects, via context managers. The google style guide is representative: Explicitly close files and sockets when done with them. Leaving files, sockets or other file-lik…