Eve v2.2.1 was just released on PyPI. It is a minor upgrade, but it includes a remarkable performance increase contributed by Alexander Urieles. Also, thanks to Svante Bengtson and Pablo Parada for their help with this release.

From Corezzo, a short hiking loop along the park’s oldest mule tracks. The Serra Pass mule track is one of the most fascinating in the entire Casentino territory, if only for the tangible memory of the millions of feet that have trodden, traveled, and worn it down over the centuries. It connected – and still connects – the upper Savio valley with that of Corsalone, branching off from the Romagna valley floor near the Gualchiere (about 2 km south of Bagno di Romagna) and climbing up the Nasseto ridge to reach the summit ridge at a pass that isn’t exactly low (1,150 m), but evidently “convenient” for other reasons, given that its use is documented as early as prehistoric times and experienced an intense period with medieval pilgrimages directed to Rome and later to La Verna. ...

I went hiking in my beloved Foreste Casentinesi National Park a few weeks ago. This trip has been on my radar for a long time, a circular tour of incomparable beauty among wild environments like very few others in the area. Among the many ways to reach the La Lama, it is undoubtedly the best way to visit the ancient forests surrounding the beautiful, partly marshy plateau between rocky crags. The initial detour to Mount Penna is motivated by the rare panoramic view, perhaps the most beautiful in the entire park, as if from a wide-open balcony overlooking the sea of forests below. ...

I just released FatturaElettronica .NET v3.6.3. Since version 3.6.1, the project has added English to the list of supported languages. The latest release improves English support, aligning it with the official translation. Michael Mairegger contributed this improvement. The Fattura Elettronica open-source project allows for the validation and de/serialization of electronic invoices that adhere to the standard defined by the Italian Revenue Agency.

I presented at .NET Conf Rome 2025 yesterday, and it went very well, or at least that was my impression. I enjoyed myself, and the reception seemed great, from the organizers, the other speakers (most of whom are fellow MVPs), and the audience. But the kicker was just before the session when, at the coffee break, an attendant approached me to shake hands and tell me he had known me for a long time because he discovered and used Eve in a research project he was working on years ago. As I recall, he had attended one of my Eve sessions at EuroPython, maybe in Berlin in 2014. As is often the case, he had no immediate need for my project and shelved it as “interesting, and cool that it’s by an Italian author, but I don’t need really it”. Then, a couple of years later, in a time of need, he recalled that little presentation of mine, and, long story short, Eve ended up being adopted by a big, unnamed corp or research institute. I thanked him from the bottom of my heart and told him it was worth preparing for the talk, waking up at 4 am and travelling to Rome to meet him and hear his story. It’s moments like this that make it all worth it. Also, hearing such a Python story at a .NET event was unexpected. ...

Verlyn Flieger on the late addition of Tolkien’s most iconic characters: Hobbits were no part of Tolkien’s original plan. They entered rather late and through a side door, as the unexpected central characters in a children’s story, The Hobbit which Tolkien invented for his own children but which found an immediate and lasting worldwide audience. And of which The Lord of the Rings was the commissioned, longed-awaited and trebly successful sequel. ...

Anders Hejlsberg is a legend in my field, with Turbo Pascal, Delphi, C#, and TypeScript in his palmares. This week, he announced a rewrite of the TypeScript compiler, leading to a stunning 10x performance boost. This remarkable achievement is due to two main factors: the adoption of Go for the compiler and the Language Server Protocol and the high parallelism that Go enables. Previously, the compiler itself was in TypeScript, which severely hindered performance. ...

It’s raining a lot these days, and during my early morning walk, I see many earthworms popping out of the ground and filling the sidewalks and the streets. I observed this behaviour many times in similarly wet conditions. So I asked Claude: Why do earthworms appear on wet roads? When it rains heavily, streets fill with earthworms for several reasons: Earthworms breathe through their skin, which must remain moist. During heavy rainfall, their underground tunnels flood, forcing them to surface to avoid drowning. ...

One of the most essential practices for maintaining the long-term quality of computer code is to write automated tests that ensure the program continues to act as expected, even when other people (including your future self) muck with it. – Evan Miller (via)

I just watched an incredible interview with legendary tennis coach Darren Cahill, now coaching Jannick Sinner. The interview is outstanding and worth watching; Cahill is remarkable and a great communicator. In the final part, they’re talking about Jannick when Cahill drops an incredible Jannick quote: Don’t worry about criticism from someone you wouldn’t take advice from. That’s profound for a boy who’s just 23 years of age.