Notices by Greg Wilson (gvwilson@mastodon.social)

I am looking for empirical research on undergraduate internship programs in the software industry: not just "here's how we run ours" experience reports, but quantitative or qualitative of outcomes, of different approaches to organizing and running such programs, etc. Pointers would be greatly appreciated - https://third-bit.com/ for my contact info. Thanks in advance.

A genuine gift for Postgres users (and those who should be using it but aren't): https://challahscript.com/what_i_wish_someone_told_me_about_postgres

Fang et al 2024: "Weak Ties Explain Open Source Innovation" <https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.05646> "…weak ties (reflecting low-intensity, infrequent interactions) act as bridges and connect people to different social circles…do [they] facilitate creativity in software in similar ways?" This paper's answer is "yes", and that "the diversity of projects in which developers engage correlates positively with [future] innovativeness…whereas the volume of interactions exerts minimal influence" #nwit

where do you look to find calls for participation in upcoming industry-oriented tech conferences? specifically looking for ones related to big data, data viz, diversity in tech, open source - I used to know a couple of aggregators but signal-to-noise has dropped off. thx

I know it's only November, but I'd like to make a request: if you are buying toys for kids in the next couple of months, and think you might have old ones that you want to clear out, please consider donating them before the holidays rather than after. Shelters and charities always get a glut of donations in January, but they'd be more useful to the families who need them now rather than then. Thank you.

Ontario to effectively bar international students from medical schools starting in 2026 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/medical-schools-ontario-international-students-1.7363389 (this at a time when over 10% of Ontarians don't have a family doctor)

I think some people believe in AI because they miss living in a demon-haunted world. They want spirits to placate and gods to supplicate, and if those gods demand sacrifice, well, better dark gods than none. Iä! Iä! Ph'nglui mglw'nafh GenAI Sand Hill Road wgah'nagl fhtagn!

What did you do today that you cared about?

People, people - when I say, "I have so many Git repos that I've written a script to update them all," and you say, "Hey, here are some tools that already exist to do that and more," it's like me saying, "I have this really recurring dream about pinecones, dental floss, and bus drivers," and having you reply, "Cool, the PDFBD community has a website and several Discord channels, come join us."

"In the future we won't need programmers - just people who can describe to a computer precisely what they want it to do." (original source unknown)

When the signal came, there was nothing subtle about it: every radio telescope on the planet redlined. First primes, then simple arithmetic, then basic vocabulary, each burst richer than the one before.
Finally humanity received the most complex message yet. Thousands of researchers and ad hoc internet communities raced to decode it.
"Are you crabs yet?"
Hesitantly, humanity replied, "No."
"Oh," came the reply. "Sorry to bother you."
Silence followed.

I have now rewritten two projects to use the PyPika query builder (https://pypika.readthedocs.io/) instead of an object-relational mapper, and the query builder approach had many fewer WTF moments. Caveat: they are small projects with relatively simple data models (a dozen to a couple of dozen tables, no need for recursive queries) and I haven't had to maintain the code through schema changes yet.

The average human being is about 733 farts in size. (66 L per person / 90 ml per fart) You're welcome, and good night.

Wendorff's "Politics in Software Development" contains a lot of useful nuggets, but I'm struggling to find an explanatory arc (the teaching equivalent of a story line), and the author has somehow managed to make a fascinating and contentious subject feel a bit dull. ☆☆

Once more with feeling: I am _not_ a "thought leader". I am at best a thought recycler, and most days I'm more of a thought raccoon.

This just in from the Ministry of Subtle Bugs:

def f():
print("false")
return False

result = all(func() for func in [f, f, f])
print("just comprehension", result)

only prints 'false' once before printing "just comprehension", but

result = all(list(func() for func in [f, f, f]))
print("with list", result)

prints 'false' three times before printing "with list". I understand why, but damn, this one was hard to spot.

@eaton thanks - do you have any pointers to open-access lessons that demonstrate this approach for security and/or devops, preferably designed for one-day workshops?

I have tried twice to put together a hands-on full-day "security for data scientists" tutorial but am finding it just as hard as a "systems programming/devops for data scientists" tutorial: the topics are so scattered and disjoint, and require so much random background knowledge, that the material doesn't hang together and will probably just frustrate participants. I would be very grateful for pointers to open-access lessons on either topic that actually work - thanks in advance.

Prediction #1: the Republicans will use every legal trick they can think of to prevent Harris (or anyone else) from using the $90M that Biden has raised.
Prediction #2: thanks to their 40-year focus on politicizing the judiciary, they will succeed.

iNaturalist is looking for a Head of Engineering https://app.beapplied.com/apply/gotyyjtuxa must be US-based, and the "technical expertise" section reads like "please know everything", but if you care about conservation and open science, this is a chance to make the world a slightly better place.