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vram22

2,494 karma · joined April 18, 2013

Kismet code: 6883da

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).

submissionscomments
vram22··on Am I too old to create a popular programming language?
>average

Lies, damned lies, and statistics.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_stati...

vram22··on Am I too old to create a popular programming language?
yes without elaborating
vram22
·
·on BASIC turns 60
>It was always a big mystery why renaming my program from .BAS to .EXE didn't let me click to run it like other programs.

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.

vram22··on Curl and libcurl creator Daniel Stenberg's About page
Read it. Found it interesting.
vram22··on IBM nearing a buyout deal for HashiCorp, source says
Do people use them for that, and is it cost-effective?
vram22··on PySheets – Spreadsheet UI for Python
Yes. They actually had a product, and IIRC, I had downloaded and tried it.

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.

vram22··on FreeBee: AT&T Unix PC emulator
You could connect a phone to it. I think I saw an old magazine article (maybe BYTE) about it once, which said that, and had a photo of it, with the phone.

The Wikipedia article article says it had 3 phone jacks.

vram22··on FreeBee: AT&T Unix PC emulator
C++ too, right? Unless Bell Labs was spun out of AT&T before that. Stroustrup started C++ at Bell Labs as C with Classes.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%2B%2B

vram22··on Zoho is attracting the attention of African startup founders
Also, IIRC, the CEO of Freshworks (company behind FreshDesk) was heading product management at Zoho earlier.
vram22··on IBM nearing a buyout deal for HashiCorp, source says
Got it, thanks.
vram22··on IBM nearing a buyout deal for HashiCorp, source says
What's the story behind that?

IIRC, I saw something about it on HN at the time, but did not read it, being busy.

vram22··on IBM nearing a buyout deal for HashiCorp, source says
Wow.

One of the GoF guys, too.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Gamma

vram22··on IBM nearing a buyout deal for HashiCorp, source says
Yes, I noticed my error above, and corrected it, thanks to you, in a reply to myself.
vram22··on IBM nearing a buyout deal for HashiCorp, source says
>VisualAge for Java, which became Smalltalk.

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.

vram22··on IBM nearing a buyout deal for HashiCorp, source says
Soon, from the acquired party:

"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.

vram22··on IBM nearing a buyout deal for HashiCorp, source says
>fruit

>beetle

TIL that genetic scientists have successfully crossed plants and animals! ;)

But, great comment. Upvoted.

vram22··on IBM nearing a buyout deal for HashiCorp, source says
My semi-educated guess is that mainframes are a much bigger chunk still.

(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.

vram22··on IBM nearing a buyout deal for HashiCorp, source says
Back in the day I read that Eclipse was based on an IBM IDE for Smalltalk called VisualAge, which they ported to VisualAge for Java, which became Smalltalk.

A while ago, so some details may be wrong.

vram22··on No one buys books
Another one is Other India Press.

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.

vram22··on No one buys books
I saw the second part of your comment coming, while reading the first part - in my mind's eye :)

Uncanny valley, or maybe I just read the signals and interpreted them right.

vram22··on Ask HN: High quality Python scripts or small libraries to learn from
The 500 Lines or Less section from https://aosabook.org/en/

The Architecture of Open Source Applications

vram22··on If Inheritance is so bad, why does everyone use it?
Code example?
vram22··on If Inheritance is so bad, why does everyone use it?
Ha ha, yes, happens all the time.

In this case, published in a book 30 years ago, at least:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40005520

vram22··on If Inheritance is so bad, why does everyone use it?
>It looks like composition over inheritance has caught on as the better default in other languages

"Prefer composition over inheritance" was mentioned in an early page of the GoF book (the Design Patterns book) - in 1994.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_Patterns

vram22··on Lago, Open-Source Stripe Alternative, banks $22M in funding
Yup.

https://jugad2.blogspot.com/2013/12/google-gets-recursion.ht...

vram22··on Linux Crisis Tools
Some HN monkeyboy has nothing better to do with his time than downvote a polite reply to a thanks.
vram22··on Ask HN: What non-AI products are you working on?
Damn! The cool emoji I added after the word cool (for wordplay based on your app idea), got removed by the HN form submission process.
vram22··on Ask HN: What non-AI products are you working on?
Cool!

;)

vram22··on Ask HN: What non-AI products are you working on?
Interesting.

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...

vram22··on Ask HN: What non-AI products are you working on?
ChatGPT, puh-leeze find me more posts like this!
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