If you’ve purchased a piece of consumer electronics in the last few years, there’s an excellent chance that you were forced to use some proprietary application (likely on a mobile device) to unlock its full functionality. It’s a depressing reality of modern technology, and unless you’re willing to roll your own hardware, it can be […]
Not every programmer likes creating GUI code. Most hacker types don’t mind a command line interface, but very few ordinary users appreciate them. However, if you write command line programs in Python, Gooey can help. By leveraging some Python features and a common Python idiom, you can convert a command line program into a GUI […]
Some sentences have more than meets the eye, and we’re not talking about interpretive nonsense. Rather, some sentences may contain up to four paragraphs’ worth of hidden text, invisible to readers. Thanks to Zero Width Obfuscation, it is possible to use Zero Width Characters – Unicode characters that are invisible even when you try to […]
Many languages feature a random number generator library for help with tasks like rolling a die or flipping a coin. Why, you may ask, is this necessary when humans are perfectly capable of randomly coming up with values? [ex-punctis] was curious about the same quandary and decided to code up an experiment to test the […]
Finding a good apartment is a lot of work and includes searching websites for available places and then cross-referencing with a list of characteristics. This can take hours, days or even months but in a world where cars drive themselves, it is possible to use machine learning in your hunt. [veesot] lives in a city […]
There are many ways to attach a project to the Internet, and a plethora of Internet-based services that can handle talking to hardware. But probably the most ubiquitous of Internet protocols for the average Joe or Jane is the web browser, and one of the most accessible of programming environments lies within it. If only […]
It wasn’t long ago that we introduced you to a web site, the Godbolt compiler explorer, that allows the visitor to compile code using a slew of compilers and compare their output. We suspect some number of readers said, “Wow! I can use that!”, while perhaps everyone else said, “Huh?” Well if you were in […]
[Sandro Magi] noted that the async/await idiom has become more prevalent in programming recently. According to him, he first encountered it in C# but has found examples of it in JavaScript and Rust, too. The idea is simple: allow a function to return but come back later to complete something that takes a long time. […]
Working in a theater or night club often requires a specialized set of technical skills that you might not instantly think about. Sure, the audio system needs to be set up and managed but the lighting system is often actively managed as well. For simple setups, this is usually not too difficult to learn. With […]
We don’t know what normal people argue about, but we know we spend a lot of time arguing about the best microcontroller, which editor is the best, and what language or compiler does the best job. The problem with all those compilers is getting them loaded and digging into the generated code. If you too […]