Resolve SSH Host Name

~/.ssh/config let''s you give meanigful names to hosts/ips. But sometimes you want the reverse lookup - what''s the ip of web1? Here''s a little Python script that does that.

EDIT: EAFP > LBYL

Archlinux Install Steps (on VirtualBox)

My favorite Linux distro for using under VirtualBox is Archlinux with XFCE window manager. It''s light, fast and has all the latest shiny new toys (just the way I like it :).

I found myself setting up VMs to try things out and wrote down the steps I use, this is a trimmed down version of the Installation part in the Archlinux beginners guide.

Be a Better Developer by Coding in Four Different Types of Lauguages

I like programming languages and find out that every time I learn a new language it improves my coding in the other ones as well. I learn new ways of doing things, different ways of thinking and it's great.

I usually tell new developers they need to write a (small) project in at least four types of languages - mainstream (procedural/OO), functional, logic based and assembly. Each of these types will give you a different way of solving problems and enrich your programming experience by and order of magnitude.

Here are my recommendations for each category.

Main Stream

By "main stream" I mean procedural/OO languages. There are tons of these and its up to what you're working with currently (though it might be a good excuse to learn a new language). I'm a Python expert, but pick anything - Go, JavaScript, Ruby, C, C++, Java, C# ...

(Yeah - I know they differ a lot. But thinking in most of them is probably the same. The main difference will probably be dynamic vs static typing).

Functional

Many choices here as well. Personally I like the Lisp family of languages, mostly Clojure and Scheme but you can check out a Common Lisp implementation (I think SBCL leads the pack currently), Haskell, ML and others.

Logic Based

If you haven't done logic programming - it'll blow your mind! It's a totally different way of thinking. Prolog is the main language, one free implementation is SWI but there are others as well.

Assembly

Learning assembly will give you a better understanding on how computers work and what are the abstractions other programming languages do for you. I recommend picking one that targets the machine you're working on.

Add That Trailing Comma

Lets say you wrote this simple code and at first things were going well.

Then after a while a friend came in and did a little fix.

But things started falling apart, after a lot of digging in - you find this.

Python will join two string together in this case, not what you wanted. Always leave a trailing comma.

Couple more things:

• As Dave Cheney pointed out, using this practice has the nice effect that one line change shows as one line change in the diff since you don''t have to add a comma to the previous line.
• Go probably learned from Python and made trailing comma mandatory.
• You can see more Python "gotchas" here.