Articles

PlantUML tutorial

PlantUML tutorial to create diagrams as code

PlantUML is one of the most feature-complete tools that lets you create diagrams as code, using plain text. It supports UML diagrams and beyond, and has a large ecosystem. In this basic PlantUML tutorial I present an introduction on what PlantUML is and how to learn it. I go into detail about the very useful … Read more

plain text diagrams

Plain text diagrams – the best diagrams as code tools

Storing documentation as plain text in version control has numerous advantages, such as the ability to understand changes by diffing, or having documentation next to your code. Since documentation contains text and images, this article explains how diagrams can also be written as plain text, which a generator then converts to graphics. I discuss the … Read more

plain text documentation

Plain text documentation in version control – the 3 best markup languages

Writing technical project documentation using proprietary formats like Word, Google Docs or Confluence has numerous disadvantages. Plain text documentation, committed to a VCS like Git, can overcome these disadvantages. This article presents the markup languages Markdown, Asciidoc and reStructured Text used for plain text documentation files, how they compare, and which tools exist to render … Read more

marshmallow vs. pydantic

marshmallow vs. pydantic – Python’s 2 best libraries for data serialization and validation

Data (de-) serialization is about converting between raw data items and instances of your Python classes, in order to transmit or store data. A typical example is the conversion between a Python object and its JSON string representation. This article discusses the two stand-alone frameworks marshmallow and Pydantic, which handle the conversion as well as … Read more

Static Python type hints – advantages and drawbacks

While Python is a dynamically typed language, it is possible to add type hints to your code. This makes code more readable and allows for static analyzers to check your code for type errors, e.g. during development or in a CI pipeline. This article discusses the advantages and drawbacks of static Python type hints in … Read more

SQlite and Python caveats

Python and SQLite caveats

SQLite is a popular, relational database that you embed into your application. Python comes with official bindings to SQLite. This article examines caveats of using SQLite in Python. It demonstrates problems different versions of linked SQLite libraries can cause, how datetime objects are not properly stored, and how you need to be extra careful when … Read more

SQlite performance tuning

SQLite performance tuning

SQLite is a popular, relational database that you embed into your application. With an increasing amount of data in your database, you need to apply SQLite performance tuning. This article discusses indices and its pitfalls, the use of the query planner, the Write-Ahead-Logging (WAL) journal mode and increasing the cache size. It also elaborates on … Read more

SQlite traps and pitfalls

SQLite traps and pitfalls

SQLite is a popular, relational database that you embed into your application. However, there are many traps and pitfalls you should avoid. This article discusses several pitfalls (and how to avoid them), such as the use of ORMs, how to reclaim disk space, minding the maximum number of query variables, column data types and how … Read more