WarGames Magazine Identified

On seeing WarGames for the first time in the 1980s, I wondered which magazine it was. Later, after seeing it on TV and on VHS/DVD, the same question kept nagging at me. I believed that I would one day get to the bottom of this matter. I correctly assumed that the magazine was a real world magazine with a fake advertisement added to it. Through some effort and persistence I finally achieved my goal on 2013-02-24 at 5:30pm. ...

December 29, 2013 · Nicola Iarocci

Why Good Programming Projects Go Bad

Fred Brooks wrote the software development classic The Mythical Man-Month almost 40 years ago. In this interview, Brooks explains why managers still make the same mistakes. via Why Good Programming Projects Go Bad.

December 29, 2013 · Nicola Iarocci

You Should Change Your Python Shell

If you write Python code, switching to IPython is the number one thing you can do to immediately improve your productivity. Bold words, I know. Let’s look at how IPython can make you a more productive programmer. via You Should Change Your Python Shell | GrokCode.

December 29, 2013 · Nicola Iarocci

Cerberus 0.5 is out (and it breaks stuff)

The new release changes the way validation errors are reported. Please note that these changes will also affect future releases of Eve, the Python REST API Framework. What we had before was basically a list of human-readable errors. Each item in the list, while perfectly fine for human reading, wasn’t really ideal for algorithmic parsing. Why would you want to parse the errors with an algorithm? A common case would be when your client is using business objects to represent API resources (think a client-side ORM), and would have a hard time binding validation errors to the objects themselves. ...

December 10, 2013 · Nicola Iarocci

On Why I Still Prefer Traditional Books to eBooks

I’ve been using a Kindle for a long time now, and I love it. But I keep buying paper books. Lots of them. Actually I buy a lot more books than ebooks and it doesn’t even stop there. Admittedly, I am guilty of repeatedly buying paper editions of ebooks I’ve read on the Kindle. For a very long time I’ve not been able to tell the precise reason why I keep going back to traditional books. It’s not about the reading experience or the sexiness of turning physical pages. Well of course that matters too, as I’ve always been kind of a book fetishist, but since the very beginning of my love-hate relationship with the Kindle I’ve always known there had to be something else, and I couldn’t pin it down. ...

December 2, 2013 · Nicola Iarocci

MongoDB and REST API go for a picnic (video and slides)

I had the opportunity to give my RESTful WeB APIs and MongoDB Go For A Picnic talk at both MongoTorino and NoSQL Day. The folks at PUG Friuli where so nice to record all the NoSQL Day sessions, so here you have it: the full length video of yours truly speaking to a fully packed room crowded with 120 very attentive attendees. Unfortunately audio is horrible and while all MongoTorino talks were in english, NoSQL Day was an italian-only event. The slide deck is in english however, and is available on both SpeakerDeck and SlideShare. ...

November 19, 2013 · Nicola Iarocci

We Are All Remote Workers

A little more than a year ago we closed our offices to become a fully distributed company. This story, which is still unfolding, has been the subject of my We Are All Remote Workers talk at RomagnaCamp 2013.

September 7, 2013 · Nicola Iarocci

My interview on being a MongoDB Master

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. ...

September 4, 2013 · Nicola Iarocci

Eve with Python 3.3 Support

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!

August 29, 2013 · Nicola Iarocci

The Future of Programming

Bret Victor on Vimeo.

July 31, 2013 · Nicola Iarocci