Kappa's Lair v6

Python Luck

Sun, 01 Aug 2021 15:20:52 -0700

For quite some time I was thinking that Python’s dominance as the main“scripting” general purpose programming language was temporary.

To clarify: “scripting” as in the language of automation as opposed toprogram creation. With “scripting” languages people make computers dostuff they need by writing code instead of using some application thatsolves their task because it was pre-programmed to do so.

Of course people create applications in Python too, that’s not thepoint. People don’t write scripts in Java. Controversially, peopledon’t write scripts in JavaScript very often these days either.

So back to the main point. I thought Python was merely the scriptinglanguage du jour, following the successes of Lisp scripting, Unixshell and Windows Batch scripting, Perl scripting, Ruby and PHPscripting. Python would be dominated by the next even more simple andpowerful something, I was imagining.

And then it struck me. Python didn’t overcome those previous scriptingtools. People keep scripting in Bash/Perl and Ruby if those are whatthey started with before Python. Python doesn’t actually provideenough upsides. What happened is that Python became the scripting toolfor new people who started scripting when Python had already becomethe natural choice for the task.

The beauty of the moment (and the luck of Python) is that these werethe last people who had not been scripting their work before. Allknowledge workers these days can write Python. Linguists, biologists,lawyers, bookkeepers, designers, project managers – they all can anddo code. Not very often, but Python is easy enough to not requirekeeping up.

What this means is that Python may very well be the last scriptinglanguage for quite some time. All the new languages will need to be somuch better to cause infrequently coding people to invest inswitching.

Python happened at the right time, that’s all.

Startup Emails

Sat, 03 Apr 2021 08:18:05 -0700

This happens every time. A startup is announced with a page and anemail collecting form. A month later the founders feel guiltyabout all those thousands of email addresses they have in the databaseand decide to write a uplifting, zero-content message to everyoneproviding “updates” on how the application is progressing towardslaunch in an unprecedented rate and will be able to serve thecustomers Real Soon Now™. An attention-deprived user receives theemail from bob@FooBaarGlobs.io, has no idea what that is and clicks“unsubscribe” or even worse, sends it to the Spam folder.

The startup team eats, drinks and breathes their work and cannotimagine that the early adopters they managed to reach before thelaunch have invested exactly 10 seconds into remembering whatFooBaarGlobs.io is.

Please, do mention what your company does in all your emails up untilyou become a household name.

Hugo on Azure

Sun, 28 Mar 2021 23:49:59 -0700

I’ve been spending some time learning the Azure stack. Traditionally,it is considered “the 3rd stack” after AWS and GCP. Google noticed AWSa little earlier than Microsoft, yes, but Azure is more than 3 timesbigger than GCPrevenue-wise.

Azure has good Linux and even FreeBSDsupport at this point andalso many high-level services (or resources) like static webapphosting with CDN integration and intelligent CI pipelines similar toGithub actions.

Hugo is one of the static website engines that have pre-defined buildrecipes when set up on “Azure Static Web App” which is the type of theresource I am using for this blog.

I will describe the process of launching a simple Hugo-powered blogon Azure step-by-step later. I’ve completed it myself just today andwant to spend several days looking at how it behaves and what thecosts are first.

Off we go

Sat, 27 Mar 2021 14:37:02 -0800

I am opening the sixth version of my personal blog Kappa’s Lair. I’llpost in English on various topics, both professional and not, not toooften.

My most active social account is on Freefeed — in Russian.

My old blog, also in Russian, was started in 2002.