Lies, damned lies, and statistics.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_stati...
2,494 karma · joined April 18, 2013
I'm Vasudev Ram, an independent software consultant, trainer, and writer, with many years of software experience in multiple technologies and business domains. Software and database design, Python, Flask, SQL and many relational databases, Unix and Linux, PDF generation and the use of many open source tools and libraries, are among my main (current) technology skills, though I've worked on many other areas earlier, such as Ruby, Rails, Java, servlets, C (a lot, on Unix, some on Windows), Visual Basic, and proprietary and higher-end Unix versions (HP-UX and others).
I also have team leadership and project management experience in companies where I worked.
I have a lot of experience on 1) software development projects (spanning different parts of the life cycle, such as requirements, design, development, and testing), and 2) some experience on software product development, in companies (and also increasingly, by my own independent product work).
I was the team leader for a successful database middleware product developed in C on Windows, which was somewhat widely used in client projects.
Programmatic PDF generation is one of my niche interests, and I created xtopdf, a PDF creation toolkit for Python; see this presentation about xtopdf for an overview:
http://slides.com/vasudevram/xtopdf
xtopdf is used by some well-known organizations (and others), including Packt Publishing (UK), the Software Freedom Law Center (USA), and ESRI (NL). I've received email from people from these organizations, telling me that they use and like xtopdf.
Follow me on Gumroad for my software product updates - I will release some products over time (software, books and courses):
https://gumroad.com/vasudevram/follow
If you follow, you will only get email from me when I release a new product or a new version of an existing product.
Web site: https://vasudevram.github.io
Blog: http://jugad2.blogspot.com - about Python, Linux, open source, startups, innovation, ... (see About page there) - running it from 2008, so a lot of posts there.
I've written a few technical articles, which have been somewhat well received, on topics such as C (about developing Linux utilities), Python (about using xtopdf), Linux (about using Knoppix) and vi (a vi quickstart tutorial), on sites like IBM developerWorks, Packt Publishing, and Linux For You. Links to the the articles are available from the About page of my blog (see above) or from my web site (see above).
Posts about Python: jugad2.blogspot.com/search/label/python
Posts about xtopdf: jugad2.blogspot.com/search/label/xtopdf
Posts about DLang: jugad2.blogspot.com/search/label/DLang
Use the same sort of URL as the above 3, to get categories of posts with other labels - just change the label at the end of the URL, i.e the word after the last slash. Or look at the right margin of my blog to find labels for topics of interest (warning - it is rather long).
My Python recipes on ActiveState Code:
code.activestate.com/recipes/users/4173351/
My Bitbucket account (with my open source projects): https://bitbucket.org/vasudevram (all or most there are my own projects, including xtopdf, PDFXMLRPC and PySiteCreator)
My Github account: https://github.com/vasudevram (mainly other people's projects, that I've forked, there, as of now (for me to study); some of my own will be added over time).
Lies, damned lies, and statistics.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_stati...
Ha. Like other such newbie-isms.
One of my favorites:
Computer: Hit any key to continue.
User: Where's the any key?
A google search will turn many more amusing ones.
I think they are some of the same folks who later founded PythonAnywhere, which I had also tried.
I read recently somewhere that they were acquired by Anaconda.
The Wikipedia article article says it had 3 phone jacks.
IIRC, I saw something about it on HN at the time, but did not read it, being busy.
One of the GoF guys, too.
Whoops! What a brain fart, or cosmic ray effect, or whatever :)
I meant to write:
>VisualAge for Java, which became Eclipse.
It was still possible to edit and correct my previous comment, but since people had replied already, I decided to correct myself in a reply to my own comment above.
Thanks, guys, for pointing out the mistake.
"Our incredible journey" ...
https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/
In earlier years, many of them literally had those words in their final blog posts or emails to their users.
Now some of them seem to have got wise to the Tumblog above, so are changing their words, though not their meaning.
>beetle
TIL that genetic scientists have successfully crossed plants and animals! ;)
But, great comment. Upvoted.
(AS/400 is midrange. They are called something else now, I heard. Maybe I-series.)
A lot of those indispensable infrastructure systems we all depend on, such as insurance, income tax, etc., run on mainframes, as they have for decades now.
So don't diss big iron / Big Blue.
I, for one, hope they have many years left, though I guess they could do with improving their corporate culture and business practices some.
A while ago, so some details may be wrong.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other_India_Press
https://www.otherindiabookstore.com/about
I got to know about them through coming across the book Tending the Earth, by Winin Pereira.
https://www.banyantreebookstore.com/product-page/tending-the...
I have some background in organic gardening, and think it is a very good book.
It is about more than just organic gardening, though.
Uncanny valley, or maybe I just read the signals and interpreted them right.
The Architecture of Open Source Applications
In this case, published in a book 30 years ago, at least:
"Prefer composition over inheritance" was mentioned in an early page of the GoF book (the Design Patterns book) - in 1994.
I recently saw a video about a terminal emulator being developed in Zig by Mitchell Hashimoto.
Googled now and found the text of the talk, which links to the video.
https://mitchellh.com/writing/ghostty-and-useful-zig-pattern...