Introduction

We're going to explain a few things about Python's object model here. Python's object model (at least with regard to data) can be viewed as being similar to Java's and C#'s if one considers only those languages' "class types", which are reference types.

In this view, Python has …

Introduction

We're going to explain a few things about character codes and encodings here. Even though there is increasingly only Unicode and UTF-8 these days, beginning developers continue to have a hard time.

Links:
https://www.unicode.org
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/byte_order_mark
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ascii …

Introduction

We're going to roll our own hexdump program here. A hexdump program is a useful tool for a Python programmer. It allows one to learn about UTF-8 and other Unicode character encodings, examine input and output data, troubleshoot Python source code encoding, and so on.

Writing a hexdump program …

Introduction

We're going to roll our own HTML table generator here. Most programmers have had fun at least once in their lives manually writing HTML. Once the practice is mastered, however, it's not something they want to continue to do - they're content to let the front-end design people handle it …

Introduction

We're going to explain how to configure nano's key bindings here. A post about a simple text editor might seem unnecessary, but I still meet junior admins who only think about vim or emacs. But nano has its place - it's installed on just about every system I come across …

Introduction

Someone asked me the other day about how laser printers work and it started me thinking about just how far we've come from the days of traditional printing and typography. It's interesting to think about how it all evolved and where the terminology came from and I took some …