So I’ve been interviewed by Laura Czajkowski on my experience and role as a MongoDB Master. The interview actually covers more angles than that and I guess that, if you really don’t have anything better to do, you might even want to check it out. How did you get involved in open source? I’ve been an avid developer delivering desktop applications in the .NET/MSSQL closed source ecosystem for so many years that open source wasn’t even on my radar. ...

Another Eve release is out and I’m particularly proud about it since it brings full Python 3.3 support (among other things). Check out the relevant blog post: Eve 0.0.9 is out!

Bret Victor on Vimeo.

Did you check for a virus on your system? You must have the wrong version. It’s a third party application issue. That code was written by the last guy. Programming Excuses. We’ve all been there.

The guys at Mailgun are taking a very interesting approach at the ever-lasting problem of proper Email validation: Given an arbitrary address this service validates address based off syntax checks (RFC defined grammar), DNS validation, spell checks, and if available, Email ServiceProvider (ESP) specific local-part grammar. They’re relying on formal grammar and not on regex like the rest of us, which is perhaps the more intriguing aspect of the project. Being Email Service Providers themselves they have good knowledge of most ESPs local-part grammars (the left side of the @ symbol) so when there is a match, they’re validating local-parts too. ...

Most significant features are probably the native support for MongoDB write concern settings, new event hooks allowing for transformation of documents before they are sent to clients, increased handling of both pagination and CORS, and the native validation of float data types. Get it on PyPI, go straight to the source code or more likely, visit the project homepage. ...

In ORM is an anti-pattern Laurie Voss concentrates everything I’ve been saying on the ORM plague in all these years. If your project really does not need any relational data features, then ORM will work perfectly for you, but then you have a different problem: you’re using the wrong datastore. The overhead of a relational datastore is enormous; this is a large part of why NoSQL data stores are so much faster. If your data is relational, however, that overhead is worth it: your database does not merely store your data, it represents your data and can answer questions about it on the basis of the relations captured, far more efficiently than you could in procedural code. ...

I’m just back from the MongoDB Masters Summit hosted by 10Gen in New York City. In just a couple days I was given the opportunity to meet and share knowledge (and fun!) with amazingly talented minds coming from all over the world. I’m back with literally dozen new ideas opportunities and concepts, on which I’ll need to elaborate a little bit. While I cannot comment on the many things the smart minds at 10Gen are working on, rest assured that the future of MongoDB is looking great and brighter than ever. ...

Domani sarò al primo meeting romagnolo del #MUG MongoDB User Group organizzato da 10Gen (azienda dietro a MongoDB), Byte-Code e Ideato. Parlerò di MongoDB usato come backend per una REST WEB API. L’evento si svolgerà in serata a Cesena, è gratuito, e ci sono ancora posti disponibili. Se ci siete passate a salutarmi.

La Open Source Report Card è un’iniziativa divertente. E’ difficile resistere al richiamo dell’ego… soprattutto quand’è smisurato. Nicola is a champion Pythonista (one of the top 11% most active Python users) who loves pushing code. Nicola is a nine-to-fiver who seems to work best in the mid-afternoon.