why = WHY_NOT; (Posts about programming)

Code folding with Regions in Python using Kate

Svedrin — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 21:30:11 GMT

I once again ended up having to edit a somewhat large Python file. Since I don’t believe in Clean Code’s methodology of splitting things up into thousands of micro-functions and then having to pass tons of variables around as arguments all the time, I’m actually happy with that. Also it’s kinda what code folding was invented for. Unfortunately I usually don’t find it all that helpful, because it doesn’t fold the way I want it to.

I like what C# does with #region and #endregion, where you can freely define a section of code to be folded away, exactly how it makes sense to you the human, who this feature is designed for, rather than the machine that gets to execute the code and thinks in different patterns than you do.

So, I found a way to enable Kate to do this in Python. Here’s how.

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Unit tests in bash

Svedrin — Sun, 15 Mar 2020 20:53:41 GMT

I yesterday ported the tear-down part of MicroFW from Python back to Bash. (It was just unhappy in Python.) In doing so, I tested it by uploading it to my server, running it and seeing what happens. This is obviously unsatisfactory, but since the script runs a bunch of iptables calls and the like, how am I supposed to test it? This integrates pretty deeply into the system, no way of mocking that, right?

Well, yes way: You just need to shamelessly abuse the function keyword…

Awesome threading using nurseries

Svedrin — Tue, 02 Jul 2019 13:01:22 GMT

I wrote about a nice threading pattern using Queues for synchronization a while ago. In the meantime, I’ve stumbled across Trio and I loved their concept of nurseries, which is basically a wrapper around the threads-and-queues concept that also makes sure that threads are properly joined and do not run out of control.

So today I ran across a case where I’d have to query large chunks of data from two systems in parallel, that I would then have to compare and merge into a third data set. Thus I needed a way to start two threads, return stuff from them to the main thread, and join them back together. A nursery came to mind, because it does just that. So that’s what I used, and here’s the code for it!

Cross-compiling Rust programs for Raspbian

Svedrin — Tue, 02 Jan 2018 16:48:51 GMT

I just figured out how to cross-compile Rust programs for Raspberry Pis running Rasbian Stretch. Host system is an amd64 laptop running Debian unstable.

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Rust, meet Python

Svedrin — Mon, 13 Nov 2017 21:06:07 GMT

Out of mere curiousity, I wanted to try out bindgen to generate a Rust interface to a C library. So I ran it against libpython, not really expecting that it would work, but you don't know until you tried, right? The fun part is: It does work, after defeating a few errors.

Bash Script Coding Rules

Svedrin — Tue, 01 Aug 2017 18:41:30 GMT

I've been thinking about writing a Bash linter sometime. I don't know when exactly this'll happen, but here are the rules I'd like to see enforced by such a linter. These are also the rules I tend to follow when writing bash scripts, and I found that it improves both readability and stability.

Error handling is not an excuse for goto

Svedrin — Sun, 05 Mar 2017 21:24:13 GMT

In discussions about the infamous goto statement, people frequently point out that it's okay to use goto for error handling. The argument usually goes that without goto, you'd have to repeat your error handling code for each and every error condition that can occur, which would suck more than using goto. Both is wrong.

PROBLEM: gc Concurrent Mark Sweep in fire fighting mode

Svedrin — Mon, 30 Nov 2015 12:47:57 GMT

Ever since I deployed Zabbix in our local network, I've been sporadically receiving notifications about the Java garbage collector being in fire fighting mode. Unfortunately, Google isn't all too helpful about what that means. Here's how I understand it currently.

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User-friendly GIT CLI

Svedrin — Wed, 04 Nov 2015 09:21:31 GMT

How to get a user-friendly GIT CLI:

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Building a storage abstraction layer

Svedrin — Sun, 02 Mar 2014 20:29:18 GMT

During the development process for the next version of openATTIC, we have come across the problem that our previous design — which had been pretty straightforward — was being challenged by the fact that there are lots of ways to architect a storage system, and using filesystems on top of LVM logical volumes shared by CIFS, NFS or FTP was just one of those.