Tag Archives: work

Two indexing tricks with PostgreSQL

Posted on June 11, 2016 by ejrh

I would like to share two indexing tricks I stumbled upon earlier this year. They are useful when changing the schema for large tables. Context Our database schema seemed rather inefficient: We were using 8-byte bigint types for small integer … Continue reading →

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More thoughts on version control

Posted on September 22, 2012 by ejrh

The shadow of Git has lately begun to loom over my programming habits. It has actually become the principal version control system at work, with most active projects migrated to it from ClearCase, Mercurial, CVS, etc. And recent collaborative programming … Continue reading →

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Curious line-endings in FTP

Posted on July 26, 2012 by ejrh

Whilst hurriedly implementing basic FTP support in a program that’s due in a couple of days, I ran into a strange phenomenon: Retrieving ftp://login:password@server/data.csv, a multiline text file, will return the file intact. Retrieving ftp://login:password@server/data.dat, another multiline text file, won’t: … Continue reading →

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Is software “engineering” ?

Posted on July 19, 2012 by ejrh

(TL;DR – Yes, but it isn’t architecture.) This question, and the subject of vocational nomenclature in general, has been grinding my gears for ages, and deserves a rant of its own. Sometimes it is difficult to know what to call … Continue reading →

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Call graphs in Python

Posted on December 23, 2011 by ejrh

As a guide to program structure, and hopefully an aid to refactoring.

Posted in Programming | Tagged , , , | 7 Comments

Sanity checking price formats

Posted on July 9, 2011 by ejrh

Why string operations should not be done using floating point.

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