#390: Coding in a Castle

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Brian #1: Joining Strings in Python: A"Huh" Moment

Veronica Berglyd Olsen
Standard solution to “read lines from a file, do some filtering, create a multiline string”:
f = open("input_file.txt")filtered_text = "\n".join(x for x in f if not x.startswith("#"))
This uses a generator, file reading, and passes the generator to join.
Another approach is to add brackets and pass that generator to a list comprehension:
f = open("input_file.txt")filtered_text = "\n".join([x for x in f if not x.startswith("#")])
At first glance, this seems to just be extra typing, but it’s actually faster by 16% on CPython due to the implementation of .join() doing 2 passes on input if passed a generator.
- From Trey Hunner: “I do know that it’s not possible to do 2 passes over a generator (since it’d be exhausted after the first pass) so from my understanding, the generator version requires an extra step of storing all the items in a list first.”

Michael #2: 10 hard-to-swallow truths they won't tell you about software engineer job

College will not prepare you for the job
You will rarely get greenfield projects
Nobody gives a BLANK about your clean code
You will sometimes work with incompetent people
Get used to being in meetings for hours
They will ask you for estimates a lot of times
Bugs will be your arch-enemy for life
Uncertainty will be your toxic friend
It will be almost impossible to disconnect from your job
You will profit more from good soft skills than from good technical skills

Brian #3: My thoughts on Python in Excel

Felix Zumstein
Interesting take on one person’s experience with trying Python in Excel.
“We wanted an alternative to VBA, but got an alternative to the Excel formula language”
“Python runs in the cloud on Azure Container Instances and not inside Excel.”
“DataFrames are great, but so are NumPy arrays and lists.”
… lots of other interesting takaways.

Michael #4: Extra, extra, extra