Python is a powerful programming language with extensive library support. But what does one do when needing to integrate with a platform-specific C or C++ component that has no native Python support? There are two options: completely rewrite the functionality in Python, or create a Python extension. Either option can be painful and prone to errors. Enter Cython. It’s like the peanut butter and the jelly to the extension sandwich. (more…)
I am privileged to say that over the last four years, I mentored a group of high school students wanting to experience STEM in a hands on way. The mission: create a robot in six weeks. The challenge: complete on time, under budget, and with a team who may not know one another. Sound familiar? (more…)
So, I’m working on a side project (as one does), and reach the point in development where I need to be able to take a tree of objects that all share a common base class and persist them to and from disk.
I prefer using plain text files to binary (for a bunch of different reasons, most of them enumerated in the original The Pragmatic Programmer book), so the problem really boils down to:
At runtime, I need to be able to convert a string containing the name of a class into a pointer to an object of the corresponding C++ class.
If you do like I did, and go to the shelf to see what the old Gang of Four Design Patterns book has to say on the matter, maybe you’d have been underwhelmed, too. (more…)
You’re curious about how SnapChat can apply those stamps, you want to create an autonomous controller for your USB controlled Nerf missile launcher, or maybe you have an actual business need. Here is a simple formula to get started with OpenCV so that you can achieve your Computer Vision dreams. Cinder provides a great creative computing framework with a simple pattern of update and draw cycles. It already has support for OpenGL rendering, and it can easily support OpenCV.
A long time ago, asynchronous programming was an exotic practice. Not many people were doing it, and their code was punctuated with things like assembly language and processor interrupts. Less anciently, preemptive multitasking OS’s made asynchronous programming more accessible, albeit often still with arcane and unnatural boilerplate, not to mention hazards of sharing mutable data.
Today asynchronous programming is mainstream — more than that, it’s a firm expectation of polished software for desktop, mobile, and web. The tools for asynchronous programming have gotten better, even as far as adding syntactic sugar, which async/await certainly is. (more…)
