Ian Bicking: a blog

All articles

1. About

   Hi, I’m Ian Bicking. I work at The Open Planning Project. I do lots of programming in Python. I keep a list of projects I participate in, though I don’t always update it. Lots of stuff in svn.colorstudy.com and svn.pythonpaste.org is written by me …

2. Javascript on the server AND the client is not a big deal

   All the cool kids love Node.js. I’ve used it a little, and it’s fine; I was able to do what I wanted to do, and it wasn’t particularly painful. It’s fun to use something new, and it’s relatively straight-forward to get started so it …

3. A Python Web Application Package and Format (we should make one)

   At PyCon there was an open space about deployment, and the idea of drop-in applications (Java-WAR-style).

   I generally get pessimistic about 80% solutions, and dropping in a WAR file feels like an 80% solution to me. I’ve used the Hudson/Jenkins installer (which I think is specifically …

4. My Unsolicited Advice For PyPy

   I think the most interesting work in programming languages right now is about the runtime, not syntax or even the languages themselves. Which places PyPy in an interesting position, as they have put a great deal of effort into abstracting out the concept of runtime from the language they are …

5. Git-as-sync, not source-control-as-deployment

   I don’t like systems that use git push for deployment (Heroku et al). Why? I do a lot of this:

   $ git push deploy
   ... realize I forgot a domain name ...
   $ git commit -m "fix domain name" -a ; git push deploy
   ... realize I didn't do something right with the database setup …

6. Python Application Package

   I’ve been thinking some more about deployment of Python web applications, and deployment in general (in part leading up to the Web Summit). And I’ve got an idea.

   I wrote about this about a year ago and recently revised some notes on a proposal but I’ve been …

7. Why doctest.js is better than Python’s doctest

   I’ve been trying, not too successfully I’m afraid, to get more people to use doctest.js. There’s probably a few reasons people don’t. They are all wrong! Doctest.js is the best!

   One issue in particular is that people (especially people in my Python-biased circles) are …