Joshua Strobl known for his work on the Budgie desktop and Solus Linux along with Fedora developers Alessandro Astone, Marc Deop i Argemí,Steve Cossette, and Red Hat's Troy Dawson have submitted this change proposal on making Fedora Plasma Workstation the default for next year's Fedora 42 release.

20 Apr 2024 8:01am GMT

WordPress is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) that allows users to create and manage websites, blogs, and online stores. It is built on PHP and uses a MySQL database, providing a user-friendly interface for managing website content, themes, plugins, and other aspects of the site. WordPress's key features are its flexibility and extensibility, allowing users to customize their websites with themes and plugins to meet their specific needs.

20 Apr 2024 6:12am GMT

Discover how to install the best Internet Download Manager (IDM), a top download manager in the market, on your preferred Linux distribution.

20 Apr 2024 4:23am GMT

Python does not have multiline comments. But you can use alternatives like docstrings, editor shortcuts, and conventional commenting methods, depending on your requirements.

Table of contents

1. Does Python have multi-line comments?
2. What about triple quotes?
3. Docstrings versus comments
4. What if I want to comment-out a whole block of code?
5. How to comment multiple lines
6. Use docstrings, your code editor, or version control

# This is a comment

this = "is not a comment"

Read the full article: https://www.pythonmorsels.com/multiline-comments/

19 Apr 2024 11:00pm GMT

I was suprised by the interest in the code I wrote for learning the platformer game. It wasn't the best Lisp code. I just uploaded what I had.

But enough people were interested that I decided to give it a once over. At https://github.com/jrm-code-project/PlatformerTutorial I have a rewrite where each chapter of the tutorial has been broken off into a separate git branch. The code is much cleaner and several kludges and idioticies were removed (and I hope none added).

19 Apr 2024 9:01pm GMT

Discover the latest strategies for a seamless transition to Drupal 10 at the DrupalTO meetup, where experts and enthusiasts converge to share insights and foster community. Dive into discussions that bridge knowledge gaps and strengthen ties within the Drupal community. Explore more in the detailed event recap!

19 Apr 2024 4:29pm GMT

News

Don't Miss Out: Last Call for DjangoCon US 2024 Talk Proposals!

Have you submitted your talk or tutorial for DjangoCon US 2024, in beautiful Durham, North Carolina, USA?

This is your last call to submit a talk or tutorial. The CFP deadline is April 24, 2024, at 12 PM EDT.

djangocon.us

PyPI: Expanding Trusted Publisher Support

PyPI added GitLab CI/CD, Google Cloud, and ActiveState as Trusted Publishing providers.

pypi.org

Django Software Foundation

DSF Board meeting minutes for April 11, 2024

Here are the DSF Board's meeting minutes for April 11, 2024.

djangoproject.com

Updates to Django

Today 'Updates to Django' is presented by Raffaella Suardini from Djangonaut Space!

Last week we had 10 pull requests merged into Django by 5 different contributors - including 1 first-time contributor! Congratulations to Aleksander Milinkevich for having their first commits merged into Django - welcome on board!

Coming in Django 5.0.5 (expected May 6th):

• Resolved a compatibility issue with Python 3.11.9+ and 3.12.3+ when validating email max line lengths with content decoded using the surrogateescape error handling scheme.
• Resolved a bug in Django 5.0 that makes Model.save() crash when creating a model instance with a GeneratedField and specifying a primary key.

Django Newsletter

Wagtail CMS

Wagtail Space CFP deadline is April 22

It's the last call to speak this summer at Wagtail Space US 2024.

Wagtail Space US 2024 - Call For Proposals

Wagtail Space Virtual Talks 2024 - Call For Proposals

wagtail.space

Sponsored Ad

Free Trial of Scout APM Today!

Need answers to your Django app questions fast? Avoid the hassle of talking with a sales rep and the long wait times of large support teams, and choose Scout APM. Get Django insights in less than 4 minutes with Scout APM.

scoutapm.com

Articles

7 simple examples using Django GeneratedField

Django 5.0 added a new feature, GeneratedField, which allows us to auto-calculate database fields. This article shows seven short examples of how to use it so the database performs calculations extremely quickly.

photondesigner.com

Django from first principles, part 3

In the third installment of his series on constructing a comprehensive Django project from a single file, Eric Matthes explores enhancing your homepage with templates.

mostlypython.com

Building forms with the Django admin

A look at multiple ways, including over time, to build and style forms in the Django admin.

406.ch

Styling a Django RSS Feed

A straightforward way to style your RSS feed in a Django app.

hyteck.de

Enforcing conventions in Django projects with introspection

Some code and tips to combine Python and Django introspection APIs to enforce naming conventions in your Django models.

lukeplant.me.uk

Tutorials

Building a Voice Notes App with Django and OpenAI

In this tutorial, you will learn how to build a voice notes app using Django and OpenAI for speech-to-text conversion. Additionally, AlpineJS will manage the state on the front end.

circumeo.io

Videos

Django 2024: The Latest Development Trends

Scheduled for Apr 25, 2024. Tune in to our upcoming livestream, where we'll take you through the latest Django Developers Survey results based on responses from 4,000 Django developers.

youtube.com

Understanding Wasm: How We Got Here by Chris Dickinson @ Wasm I/O 2024

Let's put Wasm and the problems it solves into historical context: what are we trying to solve, and for whom? What has been tried before? What makes this effort more likely to succeed? We'll examine the history of virtual machines, operating systems, & hypervisors from the 1960s through the 2010s.

youtube.com

Podcasts

Django Chat #161: Kraken - Çağıl Uluşahin Sönmez

Çağıl is a Lead Backend Engineer at Kraken Tech, Django Software Foundation Vice President, and Django London Meetup co-organizer. We discuss her background studying computer science in Turkey, organizing DjangoGirls and Python events in Istanbul, and her current work today.

djangochat.com

Python Test #218: Balancing test coverage with test costs

Nicole is a software engineer and writer, and recently wrote about the trade-offs we make when deciding which tests to write and how much testing is enough.

pythontest.com

Django News Jobs

New jobs for this week!

Senior AI Engineer (f/m/d) at 1&1 🆕

Michigan Online Software Engineer at University of Michigan

Web developer at der Freitag Mediengesellschaft

Backend Software Architect, EarthRanger (Contract Opportunity) at AI2

Senior Software Engineer (backend) - IASO at Bluesquare

Remote Full-stack Python Developer at Scopic

Django Developer at The Developer Society

Django Newsletter

Projects

matthiask/django-translated-fields

Django model translation without magic-inflicted pain.

github.com

inkandswitch/tiny-essay-editor

Simple markdown editor w inline comments, on latest auto merge stack.

github.com

Sponsorship

🌷 Spring Newsletter Sponsorships

Want to reach over 3,750+ active Django developers? Full information is available on the sponsorship page.

django-news.com

This RSS feed is published on https://django-news.com/. You can also subscribe via email.

19 Apr 2024 3:00pm GMT

Boosting Productivity in Drupal with Composer 2

Editor Fri, 04/19/2024 - 16:10

19 Apr 2024 1:10pm GMT

What are the benefits of using a decoupled data processing system? How do you write reusable queries for a variety of backend data platforms? This week on the show, Phillip Cloud, the lead maintainer of Ibis, will discuss this portable Python dataframe library.

[ Improve Your Python With 🐍 Python Tricks 💌 - Get a short & sweet Python Trick delivered to your inbox every couple of days. >> Click here to learn more and see examples ]

19 Apr 2024 12:00pm GMT

When you're adding a new feature, like connecting your contact form to Mailchimp, on your Drupal website, you'll want to make sure it works the same way when you move it from one stage to another. Luckily, Drupal has a handy feature called Configuration Synchronization for this.

This feature helps you easily export and import all the settings and setup between different copies of your Drupal website. In this blog post, we'll take a closer look at how Configuration Synchronization works and some tips for using it effectively. We will also understand the best ways to make sure your Drupal development stays consistent across different environments.

19 Apr 2024 11:33am GMT

In this post, we will talk about how to run Visual ChatGPT in Python with Google Colab. ChatGPT has garnered huge popularity recently due to its capability of human style response. As of now, it only provides responses in text format, which means it cannot process, generate or edit images. Microsoft recently released a solution for the same to handle images. Now you can ask ChatGPT to generate or edit the image for you.

In the image below, you can see the final output of Visual ChatGPT - how it looks like.

To read this article in full, please click here

19 Apr 2024 8:37am GMT

In this guide, learn how to debloat (or swap) Ubuntu system to a cleaner version by removing unnecessary packages and installing new packages as a DEB.

The post How to Debloat (or Swap) an Ubuntu System (Ultimate Guide) appeared first on Linux Today.

19 Apr 2024 2:00am GMT

A web application firewall (WAF) is a type of application firewall that lets you see and analyze HTTP traffic to and from a web application. It has the objective of preventing attacks that seek to deny service and steal data.

The post 6 Best Free and Open-Source Web Application Firewalls appeared first on Linux Today.

18 Apr 2024 10:00pm GMT

Steven Shiau released today a new version of his Clonezilla Live system for disk cloning/imaging based on the powerful Clonezilla software, Clonezilla Live 3.1.2-22, which adds a newer kernel and patches the live system against the latest XZ backdoor.

The post Clonezilla Live Is Now Patched Against the XZ Backdoor, Powered by Linux 6.7 appeared first on Linux Today.

18 Apr 2024 8:00pm GMT

What do you think this does:

class A(object):
 def aa(self):
 return 'A1'
class A(object):
 def aa(self):
 return 'A2'
a = A()
print("%s" % a.aa())

It prints "A2".

But before you think "what's the big deal, the __dict__ of A is getting updated", how about this:

class A(object):
 def aa(self):
 return 'A1'
class A(object):
 def bb(self):
 return 'A2'
a = A()
print("%s" % a.aa())

This fails with "AttributeError: 'A' object has no attribute 'aa'".

Apparently, the latter definition replaces the former completely. This is darkly amusing.

Python 3.12.2

18 Apr 2024 2:44am GMT

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17 Apr 2024 10:00pm GMT

Problem:
When copying from tmux in gnome-terminal, the text is full of whitespace. How do I delete it in gvim?

Solution:
/ \+$

Obviously.

This is an area where tmux is a big regression from screen. Too bad.

16 Apr 2024 8:26pm GMT

Problem: After an update to F39, a system continues to boot F38 kernels

The /bin/kernel-install generates entries in /boot/efi/loader/entries instead of /boot/loader/entries. Also, they are in BLS Type 1 format, and not in the legacy GRUB format. So I cannot copy them over.

Solution:
[root@chihiro zaitcev]# dnf install ostree
[root@chihiro zaitcev]# rm -rf /boot/efi/$(cat /etc/machine-id) /boot/efi/loader/

I've read a bunch of docs and the man page for kernel-install(8), but they are incomprehensible. Still the key insight was that all that Systemd stuff loves to autodetect by finding this directory or that.

The way to test is:
[root@chihiro zaitcev]# /bin/kernel-install -v add 6.8.5-201.fc39.x86_64 /lib/modules/6.8.5-201.fc39.x86_64/vmlinuz

15 Apr 2024 5:51pm GMT

When the Medley Interlisp Project began reviving the system around 2020, its Common Lisp implementation was in the state it had when commercial development petered out in the 1990s, mostly prior to the ANSI standard.

Back then Medley Common Lisp mostly supported CLtL1 plus CLOS and the condition system. Some patches submitted several years later to bring the language closer to CLtL2 needed review and integration.

Aside from these general areas there was no detailed information on what Medley missed or differed from ANSI Common Lisp.

In late 2021 Larry Masinter proposed to evaluate the ANSI compatibility of Medley Common Lisp by running the code of popular Common Lisp books and documenting any divergences. In March of 2024 I set to work to test the code of the book Practical Common Lisp by Peter Seibel.

I went over the book chapter by chapter and completed a first pass, documenting the effort in a GitHub issue and a series of discussion posts. In addition I updated a running list of divergences from ANSI Common Lisp.

Methodology

Part of the code of the book is contained in the examples in the text and the rest in the downloadable source files, which constitute some more substantial projects.

To test the code on Medley I evaluated the definitions and expressions at a Xerox Common Lisp Exec, noting any errors or differences from the expected outcomes. When relevant source files were available I loaded them prior to evaluating the test expressions so that any required definitions and dependencies were present. ASDF hasn't been ported to Medley, so I loaded the files manually.

Adapting the code

Before running the code I had to apply a number of changes. I filled in any missing function and class definitions the book leaves out as incidental to the exposition. This also involved adding appropriate function calls and object instantiations to exercise the definitions or produce the expected output.

The source files of the book needed adaptation too due to the way Medley handles pure Common Lisp files.

Skipped code

The text and source files contain also code I couldn't run because some features are known to be missing from Medley, or key dependencies can't be fulfilled. For example, a few chapters rely on the AllegroServe HTTP server which doesn't run on Medley. Although Medley does have a XNS network stack, providing the TCP/IP network functions AllegroServe assumes would be a major project.

Some chapters depend on code in earlier chapters that uses features not available in Medley Common Lisp, so I had to skip those too.

Findings

Having completed the first pass over Practical Common Lisp, my initial impression is Medley's implementation of Common Lisp is capable and extensive. It can run with minor or no changes code that uses most basic and intermediate Common Lisp features.

The majority of the code I tried ran as expected. However, this work did reveal significant gaps and divergences from ANSI.

To account for the residential environment and other peculiarities of Medley, packages need to be defined in a specific way. For example, some common defpackage keyword arguments differ from ANSI. Also, uppercase strings seem to work better than keywords as package designators.

As for the gaps the loop iteration macro, symbol-macrolet, the #p reader macro, and other features turned out to be missing or not work.

While the incompatibilities with ANSI Common Lisp are relativaly easy to address or work around, what new users may find more difficult is understanding and using the residential environment of Medley.

Bringing Medley closer to ANSI Common Lisp

To plug the gaps this project uncovered Larry ported or implemented some of the missing features and fixed a few issues.

He ported a loop implementation which he's enhancing to add missing functionality like iterating over hash tables. Iterating over packages, which loop lacks at this time, is trickier. More work went into adding #p and an experimental symbol-macrolet.

Reviewing and merging the CLtL2 patches is still an open issue, a major project that involves substantial effort.

Future work and conclusion

When the new features are ready I'll do a second pass to check if more of the skipped code runs. Another outcome of the work may be the beginning of a test suite for Medley Common Lisp.

Regardless of the limitations, what the project highlighted is Medley is ready as a development environment for writing new Common Lisp code, or porting libraries and applications of small to medium complexity.

#CommonLisp #Interlisp #Lisp

Discuss... Email | Reply @amoroso@fosstodon.org

14 Apr 2024 10:51am GMT

Building forms with the Django admin

The title of this post was shamelessly copied from Jeff Triplett's post on Mastodon.

Why?

Many websites need a simple way of embedding forms, for example as a contact form or for simple surveys to collect some data or inputs from visitors. Django's forms library makes building such forms straightforward but changing those forms requires programming skills and programmer time. Both of them may not be readily available. More importantly, sometimes it's just nice to give more tools to web publishers.

The simple way to build something like this is to use a form builder such as Google Forms, Typeform, Paperform or anything of the sort. Those options work nicely. The downsides are that embedded forms using those services load slowly, look differently, cost a lot or collect a lot of data on users, or all of those options. Because of that there's still a place for building such functionality locally.

If I wanted to use PHP and WordPress I could just use WPForms and call it a day. Since I do not actually want that this blog post is a bit longer.

The early days: form-designer

One of the first Django-based third party apps I published was the form-designer. The first version was uploaded to PyPI in 2012 but it had already been used in production for more than two years at that point in time. I had used Git submodules for the deployment back then, before switching to Python virtualenvs some time later (and never looking back!)

The form-designer is still maintained actively. Because of Django's stability and because of the fact that the app doesn't do all that much it doesn't require much development at all.

The form designer supports a selection of standard HTML5 input fields out of the box and also has an optional django-recaptcha integration. All fields support some basic configuration such as setting a title, a help text, marking the field as required etc. Submissions can be sent to a configurable email address and can be saved in the database and later exported as an XLSX file. It's also possible to define your own actions.

More flexibility needed: feincms3-forms

A few years back I mentioned feincms3-forms in a weeknotes entry. The reasons why form-designer wasn't sufficient for a project back then are outlined in the blog post:

feincms3-forms - A new forms builder for the Django admin interface

For a current project we needed a forms builder with the following constraints:

• Simple fields (text, email, checkboxes, dropdowns etc.)
• Custom validation and processing logic
• It should be possible to add other content, e.g. headings and explanations between form fields

The form_designer fulfilled a few of these requirements but not all. It still works well but I wanted a forms builder based on django-content-editor for a long time already. Also, I really like the feincms3 pattern where the third party app only provides abstract models. Yeah, it is much more work to start with but the flexibility and configurability is worth it - especially since it's possible to write straightforward code to handle special cases[^2] instead of configuring even more settings.

The humble beginnings are here in the feincms3-forms repository. The test suite already shows how things work together but as of now no documentation exists and no release has been made yet. I hope it will be ready for a first beta release in the next few weeks 😄

Since then I have used feincms3-forms more often than form-designer, for building simple forms and also to build multi-step form wizards with custom fields, custom validation, configurable steps etc. The README now actually explains why the project exists and how it could be used.

It still doesn't come close to WPForms in terms of included functionality; a big feature which is missing is conditional logic because I haven't yet had a use for it.

The feincms3-forms forms support all types of content between form fields (basically everything django-content-editor supports). Plugins for form fields are more flexible and can add as many input fields to the form as they want, you're not restricted to single values or single input fields.

Packages

• form-designer
• feincms3-forms

12 Apr 2024 5:00pm GMT

I've seen this "anti-pattern" a few times in CLOS code. A superclass 'super will have a subclass 'sub and there will be a primary method specialized to the superclass.

(defmethod foo ((instance super) arg)
  (format t "~&Foo called on ~s." arg))

Then I'll see an :around method defined on the subclass:

(defmethod foo :around ((instance sub) arg)
  (format t "~&Start foo...~%")
  (call-next-method)
  (format t "~&End foo.~%"))

The intent here is clearly that code in the method specialized on the subclass is invoked "around" the call to the method specialized on the superclass.

But the :around qualifier is not necessary and probably doesn't do what is intended. If we remove the :around qualifier, then the most specific primary method will be the foo method specialized on 'sub. And the (call-next-method) invokation will chain up to the foo method specialized on 'super. It will work as was likely intended.

:around methods are useful when the superclass wants to run a method "around" the subclass. :around methods are combined from least specific to most specific - the opposite order of primary methods - so that the superclass can wrap the call to the subclass. An good example of where an :around method would be handy is when you need to sieze a lock around the call to the method. The superclass would sieze the lock in an :around method that would run before any of the subclass primary methods ran.

Ordinary chaining of methods doesn't need the :around qualifier. Just chain the methods.

02 Apr 2024 4:25am GMT

One of my first TIL entries was about how you can imitate Node's node_modules semantics in Python on UNIX-like operating systems. A lot has happened since then (to the better!) and it's time for an update. direnv still rocks, though.

02 Apr 2024 12:00am GMT

The Cost of Coffee

One of the ideas that James Hoffmann - probably the most influential… influencer in the coffee industry - works hard to popularize is that "coffee needs to be more expensive".

The coffee industry is famously exploitative. Despite relatively thin margins for independent café owners¹, there are no shortage of horrific stories about labor exploitation and even slavery in the coffee supply chain.

To summarize a point that Mr. Hoffman has made over a quite long series of videos and interviews², some of this can be fixed by regulatory efforts. Enforcement of supply chain policies both by manufacturers and governments can help spot and avoid this type of exploitation. Some of it can be fixed by discernment on the part of consumers. You can try to buy fair-trade coffee, avoid brands that you know have problematic supply-chain histories.

Ultimately, though, even if there is perfect, universal, zero-cost enforcement of supply chain integrity… consumers still have to be willing to, you know, pay more for the coffee. It costs more to pay wages than to have slaves.

The Price of Software

The problem with the coffee supply chain deserves your attention in its own right. I don't mean to claim that the problems of open source maintainers are as severe as those of literal child slaves. But the principle is the same.

Every tech company uses huge amounts of open source software, which they get for free.

I do not want to argue that this is straightforwardly exploitation. There is a complex bargain here for the open source maintainers: if you create open source software, you can get a job more easily. If you create open source infrastructure, you can make choices about the architecture of your projects which are more long-term sustainable from a technology perspective, but would be harder to justify on a shorter-term commercial development schedule. You can collaborate with a wider group across the industry. You can build your personal brand.

But, in light of the recent xz Utils / SSH backdoor scandal, it is clear that while the bargain may not be entirely one-sided, it is not symmetrical, and significant bad consequences may result, both for the maintainers themselves and for society.

To fix this problem, open source software needs to get more expensive.

A big part of the appeal of open source is its implicit permission structure, which derives both from its zero up-front cost and its zero marginal cost.

The zero up-front cost means that you can just get it to try it out. In many companies, individual software developers do not have the authority to write a purchase order, or even a corporate credit card for small expenses.

If you are a software engineer and you need a new development tool or a new library that you want to purchase for work, it can be a maze of bureaucratic confusion in order to get that approved. It might be possible, but you are likely to get strange looks, and someone, probably your manager, is quite likely to say "isn't there a free option for this?" At worst, it might just be impossible.

This makes sense. Dealing with purchase orders and reimbursement requests is annoying, and it only feels worth the overhead if you're dealing with a large enough block of functionality that it is worth it for an entire team, or better yet an org, to adopt. This means that most of the purchasing is done by management types or "architects", who are empowered to make decisions for larger groups.

When individual engineers need to solve a problem, they look at open source libraries and tools specifically because it's quick and easy to incorporate them in a pull request, where a proprietary solution might be tedious and expensive.

That's assuming that a proprietary solution to your problem even exists. In the infrastructure sector of the software economy, free options from your operating system provider (Apple, Microsoft, maybe Amazon if you're in the cloud) and open source developers, small commercial options have been marginalized or outright destroyed by zero-cost options, for this reason.

If the zero up-front cost is a paperwork-reduction benefit, then the zero marginal cost is almost a requirement. One of the perennial complaints of open source maintainers is that companies take our stuff, build it into a product, and then make a zillion dollars and give us nothing. It seems fair that they'd give us some kind of royalty, right? Some tiny fraction of that windfall? But once you realize that individual developers don't have the authority to put $50 on a corporate card to buy a tool, they super don't have the authority to make a technical decision that encumbers the intellectual property of their entire core product to give some fraction of the company's revenue away to a third party. Structurally, there's no way that this will ever happen.

Despite these impediments, keeping those dependencies maintained does cost money.

Some Solutions Already Exist

There are various official channels developing to help support the maintenance of critical infrastructure. If you work at a big company, you should probably have a corporate Tidelift subscription. Maybe ask your employer about that.

But, as they will readily admit there are a LOT of projects that even Tidelift cannot cover, with no official commercial support, and no practical way to offer it in the short term. Individual maintainers, like yours truly, trying to figure out how to maintain their projects, either by making a living from them or incorporating them into our jobs somehow. People with a Ko-Fi or a Patreon, or maybe just an Amazon wish-list to let you say "thanks" for occasional maintenance work.

Most importantly, there's no path for them to transition to actually making a living from their maintenance work. For most maintainers, Tidelift pays a sub-hobbyist amount of money, and even setting it up (and GitHub Sponsors, etc) is a huge hassle. So even making the transition from "no income" to "a little bit of side-hustle income" may be prohibitively bureaucratic.

Let's take myself as an example. If you're a developer who is nominally profiting from my infrastructure work in your own career, there is a very strong chance that you are also a contributor to the open source commons, and perhaps you've even contributed more to that commons than I have, contributed more to my own career success than I have to yours. I can ask you to pay me³, but really you shouldn't be paying me, your employer should.

What To Do Now: Make It Easy To Just Pay Money

So if we just need to give open source maintainers more money, and it's really the employers who ought to be giving it, then what can we do?

Let's not make it complicated. Employers should just give maintainers money. Let's call it the "JGMM" benefit.

Specifically, every employer of software engineers should immediately institute the following benefits program: each software engineer should have a monthly discretionary budget of $50 to distribute to whatever open source dependency developers they want, in whatever way they see fit. Venmo, Patreon, PayPal, Kickstarter, GitHub Sponsors, whatever, it doesn't matter. Put it on a corp card, put the project name on the line item, and forget about it. It's only for open source maintenance, but it's a small enough amount that you don't need intense levels of approval-gating process. You can do it on the honor system.

This preserves zero up-front cost. To start using a dependency, you still just use it⁴. It also preserves zero marginal cost: your developers choose which dependencies to support based on perceived need and popularity. It's a fixed overhead which doesn't scale with revenue or with profit, just headcount.

Because the whole point here is to match the easy, implicit, no-process, no-controls way in which dependencies can be added in most companies. It should be easier to pay these small tips than it is to use the software in the first place.

This sub-1% overhead to your staffing costs will massively de-risk the open source projects you use. By leaving the discretion up to your engineers, you will end up supporting those projects which are really struggling and which your executives won't even hear about until they end up on the news. Some of it will go to projects that you don't use, things that your engineers find fascinating and want to use one day but don't yet depend upon, but that's fine too. Consider it an extremely cheap, efficient R&D expense.

A lot of the options for developers to support open source infrastructure are already tax-deductible, so if they contribute to something like one of the PSF's fiscal sponsorees, it's probably even more tax-advantaged than a regular business expense.

I also strongly suspect that if you're one of the first employers to do this, you can get a round of really positive PR out of the tech press, and attract engineers, so, the race is on. I don't really count as the "tech press" but nevertheless drop me a line to let me know if your company ends up doing this so I can shout you out.

Acknowledgments

Thank you to my patrons who are supporting my writing on this blog. If you like what you've read here and you'd like to read more of it, or you'd like to support my various open-source endeavors, you can support my work as a sponsor! I am also available for consulting work if you think your organization could benefit from expertise on topics such as "How do I figure out which open source projects to give money to?".

30 Mar 2024 11:00pm GMT

This year I will be going to two conferences: PyCon 2024, and North Bay Python 2024.

At PyCon, I will be promoting my open source work and my writing on this blog. As I'm not giving a talk this year, I am looking forward to organizing and participating in some open spaces about topics like software architecture, open source sustainability, framework interoperability, and event-driven programming.

At North Bay Python, though, I will either be:

1. doing a lot more of that, or
2. looking for new full-time employment, pausing the patreon, and winding down this experiment.

If you'd like to see me doing the former, now would be a great time to sign up to my Patreon to support the continuation of my independent open source work and writing.

The Bad News

It has been nearly a year since I first mentioned that I have a Patreon on this blog. That year has been a busy one, with consulting work and personal stuff consuming more than enough time that I have never been full time on independent coding & blogging. As such, I've focused more on small infrastructure projects and less on user-facing apps than I'd like, but I have spent the plurality of my time on it.

For that to continue, let alone increase, this work needs to-at the very least-pay for health insurance. At my current consulting rate, a conservative estimate based on some time tracking is that I am currently doing this work at something like a 98.5% discount. I do love doing it! I would be happy to continue doing it at a significant discount! But "significant" and "catastrophic" are different thresholds.

As I have said previously, this is an appeal to support my independent work; not to support me. I will be fine; what you will be voting for with your wallet is not my well-being but a choice about where I spend my time.

Hiding The Hat

When people ask me what I do these days, I sometimes struggle to explain. It is confusing. I might say I have a Patreon, I do a combination of independent work and consulting, or if I'm feeling particularly sarcastic I might say I'm an ✨influencer✨. But recently I saw the very inspiring Matt Ricardo describing the way he thinks about his own Patreon, and I realized what I am actually trying to do, which is software development busking.

Previously, when I've been thinking about making this "okay, it's been a year of Patreon, let's get serious now" post, I've been thinking about adding more reward products to my Patreon, trying to give people better value for their money before asking for anything more, trying to finish more projects to make a better sales pitch, maybe making merch available for sale, and so on. So aside from irregular weekly posts on Friday and acknowledgments sections at the bottom of blog posts, I've avoided mentioning this while I think about adding more private rewards.

But busking is a public performance, and if you want to support my work then it is that public aspect that you presumably want to support. And thus, an important part of the busking process is to actually pass the hat at the end. The people who don't chip in still get to see the performance, but everyone else need to know that they can contribute if they liked it.¹

I'm going to try to stop hiding the metaphorical hat. I still don't want to overdo it, but I will trust that you'll tell me if these reminders get annoying. For my part today, in addition to this post, I'm opening up a new $10 tier on Patreon for people who want to provide a higher level of support, and officially acknowledging the rewards that I already provide.

What's The Deal?

So, what would you be supporting?

What You Give (The Public Part)

1. I have tended to focus on my software, and there has been a lot of it! You'd be supporting me writing libraries and applications and build infrastructure to help others do the same with Python, as well as maintaining existing libraries (like the Twisted ecosystem libraries) sometimes. If I can get enough support together to more than bare support for myself, I'd really like to be able to do things like pay people to others to help with aspects of applications that I would struggle to complete myself, like accessibility or security audits.
2. I also do quite a bit of writing though, about software and about other things. To make it easier to see what sort of writing I'm talking about, I've collected just the stuff that I've written during the period where I have had some patrons, under the supported tag.
3. Per my earlier sarcastic comment about being an "influencer", I also do quite a bit of posting on Mastodon about software and the tech industry.

What You Get (Just For Patrons)

As I said above, I will be keeping member benefits somewhat minimal.

1. I will add you to SponCom so that your name will be embedded in commit messages like this one on a cadence appropriate to your support level.
2. You will get access to my private Patreon posts where I discuss what I've been working on. As one of my existing patrons put it:

   I figure I'm getting pretty good return on it, getting not only targeted project tracking, but also a peek inside your head when it comes to Sores Business Development. Maybe some of that stuff will rub off on me :)

3. This is a somewhat vague and noncommittal benefit, but it might be the best one: if you are interested in the various different projects that I am doing, you can help me prioritize! I have a lot of things going on. What would you prefer that I focus on? You can make suggestions in the comments of Patreon posts, which I pay a lot more attention to than other feedback channels.
4. In the near future² I am also planning to start doing some "office hours" type live-streaming, where I will take audience questions and discuss software design topics, or maybe do some live development to showcase my process and the tools I use. When I figure out the mechanics of this, I plan to add some rewards to the existing tiers to select topics or problems for me to work on there.

If that sounds like a good deal to you, please sign up now. If you're already supporting me, sharing this and giving a brief testimonial of something good I've done would be really helpful. Github is not an algorithmic platform like YouTube, despite my occasional jokey "remember to like and subscribe", nobody is getting recommended DBXS, or Fritter, or Twisted, or Automat, or this blog unless someone goes out and shares it.

29 Mar 2024 11:56pm GMT

NCache Java Edition with distributed cache technique is a powerful tool that helps Java applications run faster, handle more users, and be more reliable. In today's world, where people expect apps to work quickly and without any problems, knowing how to use NCache Java Edition is very important. It's a key piece of technology for both developers and businesses who want to make sure their apps can give users fast access to data and a smooth experience. This makes NCache Java Edition an important part of making great apps.

This article is made especially for beginners to make the ideas and steps of adding NCache to your Java applications clear and easy to understand. It doesn't matter if you've been developing for years or if you're new to caching, this article will help you get a good start with NCache Java Edition. Let's start with a step-by-step process to set up a development workstation for NCache with the Java setup.

22 Mar 2024 1:00am GMT

Despite some notable shortcomings in the contemporary technology landscape, XML is still a powerful language offering key advantages in complex data storage scenarios.

Compared with a popular data interchange format like JSON, for example, XML's syntax places a greater emphasis on machine readability over human readability, making its error-checking process more efficient. Most importantly, XML is great at storing unique data types with multiple variables, whereas JSON is optimized for relatively simple and concise object storage. XML's advantages and disadvantages both stem from the fact that it's not a dedicated data interchange format like JSON at all; rather, it's a complex markup language (more similar to HTML) with powerful data interchange capabilities.

21 Mar 2024 12:00pm GMT

I blogged about Java stream debugging in the past, but I skipped an important method that's worthy of a post of its own: peek. This blog post delves into the practicalities of using peek() to debug Java streams, complete with code samples and common pitfalls.

Understanding Java Streams

Java Streams represent a significant shift in how Java developers work with collections and data processing, introducing a functional approach to handling sequences of elements. Streams facilitate declarative processing of collections, enabling operations such as filter, map, reduce, and more in a fluent style. This not only makes the code more readable but also more concise compared to traditional iterative approaches.

20 Mar 2024 10:00pm GMT

I had a problem with my Frankenstein stack of Plone 4 with various bits (core libraries) upgraded on it. Here's a description of my bug: When I upload an image and try to use it in a Volto block that referenced its image scales download url (such as @@images/<random-uuid4>.jpg) the image URL didn't work, it resulted in 404 error. When I reindexed the image in the catalog, then it worked. Now, the funky part is that I could reproduce the problem not only on my "doomed" Plone 4 stack, but also in the modern Plone 6 stack that we use for our main customer.

07 Feb 2024 6:06am GMT

For my own reference, as I had to do a cleanup of zc.async tasks. The interface was too slow. bin/zeo_client debug queue = app._p_jar.root()['zc.async'][''] for i in range(len(queue)): queue.pull(0)

29 Jan 2024 1:11pm GMT

The 2023 editon of the anual Plone conference happend from October 2nd to 8th in Eibar, Basque Country

The kitconcept team was present with 8 developers. Our team members gave plenty talks, keynotes and trainings.

kitconcept and friends having team dinner

Trainings

Two days filled with trainings. Free for all conference attendees. This offer is unique in the Plone community and kitconcept team members were the backbone of the trainings about how to use Plone 6. From deployment to development to deep insides into how Volto and Plone 6 works.

Alok Kumar, Jakob Kahl: Volto and React

Alok Kumar and Jakob Kahl did a two day training to help developers get started with Volto and React:

https://2023.ploneconf.org/schedule/training/volto-and-react

Check out their trainings online if you want to catch up:

• React Training

• Volto Hands-On Training

Érico Andrei : Installing Plone

Our colleague Érico Andrei gave a training about installing Plone on Day 2, the 3rd of October

https://2023.ploneconf.org/schedule/training/installing-plone

Víctor Fernandez de Alba, Tiberiu Ichim: Effective Volto

Víctor Fernandez de Alba is kitconcept CTO and the Volto Release Manager. Tiberiu Ichim is a Volto team member and one of the key contributors to Volto. They gave key insights into how to work effectively with Volto. If you have experience with Volto and you want to become a real pro, this is the training you should go to.

https://2023.ploneconf.org/schedule/training/effective-volto

https://training.plone.org/effective-volto/index.html

Day One

On day one, kitconcept team members presented two talks, including the main keynote of the day.

Keynote State of Plone

Team members Érico Andrei, Víctor Fernández de Alba and Timo Stollenwerk together with Maurits van Rees of Zest Software and Eric Steele of Salesforce presented the very first Keynote of the Conference titled "State of Plone".

Breaking boundaries: Plone as headless CMS by Víctor Fernández de Alba

Our colleague Víctor Fernández de Alba gave a presentation about the challenges faced by the Plone content management system in keeping up with modern frontend developments and the growing popularity of headless CMSs.

Breaking boundaries: Plone as headless CMS

https://2023.ploneconf.org/schedule/breaking-boundaries-plone-as-headless-cms

Day Two

Day Two was a informative Day, packed with interesting Talks, Panels and Presentations.

Volto Team Meeting

Panel: The Future of Search in Plone, 2023 Edition

Timo Stollenwerk, Sally Kleinfeldt, Tiberiu Ichim,, Eric Steele, Eric Bréhault, Rikupekka Oksanen, Érico Andrei and Guido Stevens hosted a very interesting Panel about the Future of Search Algorithms in Plone.

This panel provided a brief history and modern examples of Plone search, followed by a discussion of what improvements are needed - both from a marketing and technical perspective. This topic was first discussed at the 2011 conference and it was interesting to see how opinions had changed.

Alok Kumar : Is your Volto addon developer friendly ?

Meanwhile, kitconcept frontend developer Alok Kumar held a Presentation about what makes a developer friendly Volto Addon, and how we as a developer ourselfes can improve on the way we develop addons for Volto.

https://2023.ploneconf.org/schedule/is-your-volto-addon-developer-friendly

Rob Gietema : How to build a site using Nick

Later in the afternoon kitconcept developer Rob Gietema held an intriguing Talk about Nick, a headless CMS written in Node.js and how easy it is to build a website with it.

https://2023.ploneconf.org/schedule/how-to-build-a-site-using-nick

David Glick : Tales from a production Plone Cluster

Following Rob, kitconcept Employee David Glick shared some Details and Stories on hosting large Plone sites in a Docker Swarm Cluster.

https://2023.ploneconf.org/schedule/tales-from-a-production-plone-cluster

Érico Andrei : Unlocking the Power of plone.distribution : A Hands-On Guide

In this talk, Érico Andrei guided us through the feature-rich world of Plone Distributions.

https://2023.ploneconf.org/schedule/unlocking-the-power-of-plone-distribution-a-hands-on-guide

Local sport showcase and party

In the evening CodeSyntax organized a showcase of different local sports, including stone lifting, wood chopping and wood sawing. Timo represented kitconcept in this together with Phillip Bauer of Starzel. After that we concluded the day with cold drinks and Pinxos at the conference party.

Day 3

Day 3 was filled with quite technical presentations, providing Information on the Cutting Edge Technology Plone has to offer.

Fred van Dijk : How the Plone Foundation Ai.team manages its websites with CI/CD

On the third Day of the Plone Conference, kitconcept Employee Fred van Dijk shared the News on automating a plone Release and how to host and operate a small Docker Swarm cluster using Plone.

https://2023.ploneconf.org/schedule/how-the-plone-foundation-ai-team-manages-its-websites-with-ci-cd

Víctor Fernández de Alba : volto-light-theme: Volto Theming, Reimagined

After a quick coffee break Víctor Fernández de Alba shared the progress on the Volto-Light-Theme and its inner workings.

https://2023.ploneconf.org/schedule/volto-light-theme-volto-theming-in-2023

Timo Stollenwerk : How we built the Website for the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in less than six months

CEO Timo Stollenwerk indulged us in the Story of the Challenges of migrating large, goverment-owned websites into a Plone project.

https://2023.ploneconf.org/schedule/how-we-built-the-website-for-the-german-aerospace-center-dlr-in-less-than-six-months

Érico Andrei : Testing your Plone codebase with Pytest

A little later in the afternoon, Érico Andrei presented us with a better, improved way to test Plone codebases.

https://2023.ploneconf.org/schedule/testing-your-plone-codebase-with-pytest

Rohit Kumar : Workflow Manager with Volto

In his presentation Rohit Kumar shared the progress regarding implementing a visual workflow Manager in Volto.

https://2023.ploneconf.org/schedule/workflow-manager-in-volto

Summary

The kitconcept team continues to drive innovation in the Plone community. Volto is the default frontend for Plone 6 and dominated the topics during the conference. We are happy to be part of such an amazing community.

18 Oct 2023 3:00pm GMT