Tech-Reader.blog

  Retrying Flaky API Calls in Python # python # coding # programming # softwaredevelopment Problem You're making a request to an external API, but sometimes the server is busy or the network is slow. Instead of getting a response, your program crashes with a connection error. You want to make your program more resilient by automatically trying the request again a few times before giving up. Clarifying the Issue Many services are not 100% reliable. A single failed request doesn't always mean the service is down; it could be a temporary issue. Beginners often just let the program crash on the first failure. In production, this can lead to data pipelines failing or applications becoming unresponsive. Why It Matters Imagine you're running a script that processes 10,000 items, and you need to send each one to an external service. If the API flakes out for just a second, your entire script fails, and you have to start all over. This isn't just frustrating; it's a huge was...

  The Day My Boss Asked Me to Explain My "Clever" Code # python # coding # programming # softwaredevelopment A story about writing code for humans, not just computers Hi, I'm Maya. I was three months into my first real Python job when Marcus, my tech lead, pulled up a chair next to my desk. "Hey, can you walk me through this?" He pointed at my screen. My stomach dropped. It was the data processing module I'd submitted for code review the day before. I'd been particularly proud of it. The entire validation pipeline fit into a single line. validate = ( lambda check : check ( check ))( lambda check : lambda data : True if not data else ( data [ 0 ]. isvalid () and check ( check )( data [ 1 :]))) "It's a recursive validator," I explained, feeling my confidence waver as I watched his expression. "It goes through the dataset and checks each item. All in one lambda. No function definitions needed." Marcus was q...

  The Unpacking Ceremony: Multiple Assignment and Tuple Magic # python # coding # programming # softwaredevelopment Timothy had mastered the immutability of tuples, but Margaret had saved the most elegant lesson for last. She led him to a ceremonial chamber where tuples could be "unpacked"—their contents distributed into separate variables in a single graceful operation. The Basic Unpacking Ritual Margaret demonstrated the fundamental ceremony with a simple example: book_record = ( " 1984 " , " George Orwell " , 328 ) # Traditional approach - one at a time title = book_record [ 0 ] author = book_record [ 1 ] page_count = book_record [ 2 ] # Unpacking - all at once title , author , page_count = book_record Timothy watched in amazement as the tuple's three values flowed simultaneously into three separate variables. No indexing, no separate assignments—just a clean parallel distribution. "The structure matches on both sides,...