2019

The generation born between 1985-95 has more or less seen the technology evolution from the fron seat. The advent of internet, landline giving up its place to mobile phones, more desk jobs than the labour intensive work. Through this journey, the lifestyle got altered to a large extent. Some of the changes are just an improvemnt to our life, while some or controversial in nature. I call them controversial as harmful effects are neither proved nor denied by scientific community.

My primary source of Python and Python related news was/is Python podcast, since 2016. In 2018, I came to know about Pycon taking place in Cleveland, OH. Dan Bader’s vlog on PyCon ‘18 was another pull factor towards the PyCon. Due to the ticket pricing I couldn’t make it to it. In H2 of 2018, I returned to India, and was looking forward to attend PyConIndia, which should be affordable.

PyConIndia ‘19 is taking place in Chennai, which happened to be my second home. There can’t be anymore reason to miss the conference. The ticket booking opened for PyConIndia on one fine day. Then I did booked a ticket, sadly couldn’t book the early bird ticket.

Variables

In Python, the variables are assigned with the type based on the content.

string_variable = 'some text'
int_variable = 33
print(type(string_variable), type(int_variable))

And, these variables are allowed to change in a program.

In Rust, the variables can either be mutable or immutable. By default, the variables are immutable.

Mutable - Values are allowed to change Immutable - Values are not allowed to change

fn main() {
let default_variable = 2;
println!("The value in default_variable is {}",{default_variable});

default_variable = 3;
//Here, the code will fail.
//Because we tried to modify the immutable variable

println!("The new value in default_variable is {}",{default_variable});

}

This is where Shadowing comes into picture.

What is rustup, rustc & rustdoc ?

rustup- Used to update the latest Rust version. rustc filename.rs - Used to compile rust source code. rustdoc - Rust documentation is generated from this command. This can generate documentation from markdown files. Also, it show the Rustbook opens in browser when called as rustup docs

Project initialization After installing Rust, we should initialize a project using Cargo cargo init project_path - This will create a project folder of below file structure.

Podcasts. That’s how I got introduced to the Rust language.

In one of the PythonBytes episode I heard about the PyOxidizer for the first time. Basically, it uses Rust to bundle Python code into an executable code. There is already quite a number of modules to convert code into an executable file. According to Michael Kennedy, the Git repo is so active, that made me to explore what the PyOxidizer is made of. Surprise, Surprise! Its made an amalgamation of Rust and Python, in 80-20 ratio.

The social media is made of several bubbles. The bubbles, each of us build around us, with like minded people. With the bubble is well constructed, we live and slowly start believing it is the reflection of the actual world.

This is what happened to me in recent times. There is some negative news keep getting shared to me via whatsapp, twitter or facebook. The negativity comes in the form of political corruption to pedophilia. Slowly and steadily I started believing we are living in place where humanity turned extinct.

Podcast is a audio show, could be anythingranging from interviews to discussions to story telling. The Podcasts became a thing with the iPods. Even the term itself derived from the Apple’s gadget. Off late, with the arrival of 3^rd party apps, more people from Android are attracted, along with the Apple users.

In Apple, iTunes enables us to listen to Podcast. Google released their own app very recently and the customization is very limited. However, there are tons of apps available through the Podcast producers or third parties.

We all know the Climate change is real and happening now. This is a threat to the Human species. Yes, it’s a threat to the species not the entire planet. Why not we as a species cannot survive this? The nature will adapt to the changes. But, the new earth will no way close to the one we have now. Also, we got deviated from the natural evolution. Our life became sophisticated, without the necessary infrastructure we will kill ourself in the name of depression. So, we have to fight the Climatic changes.

While browsing through Raspberry Pi’s sub in Reddit, I came across Pi-hole.

Pi-hole is an interesting project, claims to be black hole of Ads. I guess the pi in the name refers to Raspberry Pi. As my Pi3 was lying in the corner unused, I went for the Pi-hole installation. Before continuing further on the experience, we need to discuss why the ads are bothering?

What’s wrong with ads?

I agree the ads are the revenue source of websites. They are good as long as they don’t obstruct the usage, but do they? If not, we wouldn’t have went for browser level Ad blockers in first place. Having an Ad blocker in browser works good. But, this may impact performance of the browser. There are news that claims Google may break the working of Ad blockers in Chrome. The situation of smartphones are mush worse. Especially, in Android. There are no regulation, even in the popular apps, the Ads are placed in every available real estate. The expectation is to hijack your attention when you accidentally touch these spaces. There are apps which can protect you from ads, you’ve to sideload them, but sideloading an app is not a safe option.

I’m working in a corporate firm which employs 100K+ employees. As do with any organization of such a magnitude, there are certain rules & policies which cannot be breached. In most of the occasions, the policies really help us navigate without much of the issue. Yet, there are situations which impedes our progress.

The impedement I felt was merging PDF files. What’s there to worry about, you may wonder. In our org, we have some version of Adobe Reader to view PDFs. Eventhough I’m not a big fan of Adobe, there are no alternatives in my workplace that I know of, at least. The version of Reader I’m allowed to use doesn’t allow me to Merge PDFs. Ironically, it’s necessary to merge the files while submitting the PDFs for various official purpose.