Everything related to software development.
Build runners, which compile and package your software, are often implemented using Docker containers. However, you cannot use Docker if you need a Windows or macOS build runner. This article presents how to create Windows and macOS build runners as virtual machines using Vagrant. While the instantiation of a build VM is fully automated, it … Read more
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
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 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 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 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
This posts presents my open source Android app named Stop It! which lets you create bookmarks for audio tracks you play with third party Android audio players, e.g. music or podcast apps. Introduction Bookmarks are a well-known concept from real (or virtual) books, and web sites. You have certainly used them thousands of times already. … Read more
Updated 2022-09-18 to reflect that Docker for Desktop and Virtualbox can co-exist on Windows, because Hyper-V is no longer a requirement for Docker for Desktop. Vagrant is a tool that automatically downloads and configures virtual machines, according to a recipe file. Docker does something similar, but can achieve better performance in specific situations. This article … Read more
Vagrant is a tool that automatically downloads and configures virtual machines, according to a recipe file. Typically, the base image is downloaded from the Vagrant Cloud, a repository of user-submitted boxes. This article explains how to create a Vagrant box, which is necessary if there is no appropriate box on Vagrant Cloud, or if you … Read more
Vagrant is a tool that automatically downloads and configures virtual machines, according to a recipe file. It is similar to Docker, but with extended support for different, virtualized operating systems. Use cases include setting up virtual test beds, or CI build machines. This article provides an introduction to Vagrant’s concepts and how it works, as … Read more