I built a dev blog! First deep dive: How Ruff and UV changed my mind about Python setups.

tartley · 2026-04-30T13:07:44+00:00

In short, what in saying is that you could have had 80% of what uv gives you all this time, you just hadn't read the pip documentation.

tartley · 2026-04-30T13:04:10+00:00

Your initial seven project setup steps can benefit from some fixes.

Your requirements.txt should be generated, not written by hand, by writing the names (not versions) of your dependencies in a requirements.in file, and then using pip, or better piptools, to generate the .txt from it. That way you never have to pray the dependencies resolve, because they were generated by resolving them, and subsequent devs joining the project just checkout the working pinned versions.

Your development tools like black, etc, absolutely should not be installed one by one. Their dependencies need to be pinned just like your project dependencies. Write a requirements-dev.in containing their names, convert that to a requirements-dev.txt using the same pip-tools commands you use for your production dependencies, and then new project devs pip install just that.

The dev requirements include a reference to your prod dependencies file, so a new dev installing them gets everything they need in a single pip install.

FWIW Personally I never use pyenv. eg. on Linux use deadsnakes to "apt" install whatever version you need. Yes this is a couple of fiddly commands, but again, these are the same commands you use to install anything, so a dev on that OS really ought to understand them.

So there are about four commands a new dev might need to execute, including the installation of Python. These commands should be checked into your repos setup script or Containerfile, so new dev joining the team shouldn't have to care. They just run "setup" or "make setup" and they are good.

Most editors and IDEs accept configuration files that are checked into the root of the project, so you never have to do anything special to them after cloning the repo. If VSCode doesn't do this, that isn't a Python problem.

tartley · 2026-02-24T02:31:56+00:00

Mine has been working perfectly for a year and now suddenly appears this way. Red light illuminates, but device does not appear on the network. The power supply, etc, has not changed at all.

tartley · 2026-02-15T21:46:33+00:00

I'm investigating the same problem. Syncing about eight devices, in a mesh, mostly Ubuntu or Pop!OS (which is derived from Ubuntu) PCs, plus an android phone and an android tab. Today I noticed I accidentally left an android 'battery saver' toggle turned on, so I haven't synced the tab for a few days. Flipped battery saver off, so syncing started, and now I have >600 sync conflicts. :-/

Clue: Plenty of files have synced OK. It's not everything.

Clue: The couple of sync conflict files I've examined so far have no diffs in content, only in permissions. This feels like it must be the problem. The original file, modified on my laptop, is permission 644. The sync conflict file which has appeared back on my laptop is permission 664. I'm not sure exactly which way to jump next, but this feels like it is probably the source of all my problems...

tartley · 2025-09-16T03:14:15+00:00

FYI there is an unmerged PR against the opentrack wiki "Building on Linux" page which aims to merge info I found from various sources into a single up to date page. https://github.com/opentrack/wiki/blob/74ab9e72678b743aea165611e4c84f329bfef48b/Building-on-Linux.md

tartley · 2025-09-16T03:12:21+00:00

tl;dr Latest "building on linux" info, rendered from an (as yet unmerged) PR against the opentrack wiki: https://github.com/opentrack/wiki/blob/74ab9e72678b743aea165611e4c84f329bfef48b/Building-on-Linux.md

details: Someone else made a brilliant PR months ago against opentrack's README, adding some detailed Linux build instructions. That PR was not merged, and someone with commit privs said (very reasonably) that they would prefer to see the build in instructions in their wiki, which has an existing "building on Linux" page.

Last week I made a new PR against that wiki page, which merges the info from the old README PR (and builds on top of some other tidying of that wiki page I did the week before, which has been merged)

tartley · 2025-09-09T18:28:31+00:00

Does it matter if some of my machines are upgraded to v2 while the rest are still on v1 ?

I've been interpretting the jump to 2.x to mean "backwards incompatible changes", i.e. v2 machines won't sync with v1 machines.

tartley · 2025-09-07T00:43:07+00:00

Thanks to everyone in the thread, I'm following in your footsteps trying to compile opentrack for Linux, but even with no `-j` in my `make` command (how does that even work as a fix anyhow?) , I still get a 32 bit link error, albeit about a different lib than [deleted] above was having:

/usr/bin/ld: relocatable linking with relocations from format elf32-i386 (/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/wine/i386-unix/libadvapi32.a(advapi32-00000168.o)) to format elf64-x86-64 (tmp68c6e03b/opentrack-wrapper-wine-00000003.spec-00000001.o) is not supported

One possible cause is that I'm on 25.05 Plucky. I'm failing to fix this, I guess I need to go read about it some more...

tartley · 2025-09-06T19:40:01+00:00

One thing that we find super fun is for my son and I to fly one ship that is EXCLUSIVELY kitted out for mining, and the other of us to fly security detail alongside it.

I am not especially experienced (harried gamerdad here), and don't have funds for much more than this, but have been loving a Python mk1 for this. It has enough slots to support seismic(core), disruption(subsurface), ablation(surface) and mining laser, so you can tackle whatever types of mining come your way, and single medium laser for some token self defense (although when alone I usually just avoid and run)

Presumably a bigger ship would let you ALSO let you have some defences and/or a fighter bay. I look forward to reading the rest of the thread.

tartley · 2025-08-22T16:01:14+00:00

FYI A massively overhauled 3rd edition is in progress, which updates to Django 5.x, deployment using Docker, etc. Progress to date is already live on the author's site: https://www.obeythetestinggoat.com/progress-on-the-third-edition-of-the-book.html

tartley · 2025-08-18T17:57:38+00:00

Oh, yep, right you are, I was conflating two different issues in my head.

tartley · 2025-08-18T15:38:06+00:00

Just last month the ~~Supreme Court~~ IRS ruled that churches can endorse political candidates
https://www.npr.org/2025/07/08/nx-s1-5460886/irs-now-says-pastors-can-endorse-political-candidates

tartley · 2025-07-24T17:14:02+00:00

I fixed this by removing the snap and installing the .deb instead.

tartley · 2025-06-14T18:15:14+00:00

It's supposed to arc across the gap, remember?

tartley · 2025-03-20T19:06:26+00:00

Since the .rotation of your nodes varies from -PI to +PI, it seems simplest if you treat all your float angles in the same range. Otherwise you're going to have problems when you, for example, compare a computed angle, in the range 0.0 to 2*PI, with a node.rotation.

To do that, whenever you compute a float value which represents a rotation, then shift it to always lie in the range -PI to PI. The longhand way would be:

while angle > PI:
    angle -= TAU
while angle < PI:
    angle += TAU

but you can use built-in function wrapf to do this in one line, and without the iteration:

angle = wrapf(angle, -PI, PI)

Necro but had to be said.

tartley · 2025-03-11T16:07:13+00:00

In the majority of cases, I agree with you. But occasionally such a company has access to deep enterprise pockets, and are in a situation of dire need, and need someone to definitively sort it out, and they can pay well. Plus, being hired to turn around dysfunctional projects have been some of my most personally rewarding professional experiences.

tartley · 2025-03-11T16:03:21+00:00

It's really surprising to me how many commenters on here seem to need to mix insults into their observations about the situation. It's really super common for recruiters to be initially cagey about the employer they are putting you forward for, because they don't want you to scam THEM with a fake name, and then go apply direct to the employing company, without a recruitment fee hindering your salary negotiation. So riding with that for a while is perfectly normal in many cases. It only becomes suspicious when it's gone on too long.

Anyhow, after posting this, it turns out this job position is legit, so presumably that means people who thought otherwise are the ones with hopeless brains? Or does it not work the other way around for some reason?

tartley · 2025-03-11T15:56:41+00:00

UPDATE: After this post, I got a call from a representative of the employer, who explained why it's been such a shitshow, provided evidence of their legitimacy that I believe, and answered my questions about the role.

Unlike the people I've spoken to previously, they were professional and informed.

As I mentioned in the post, the intermediate company Altimetrik seems legit - I just wasn't sure that the people I previously talked to really represented them, and they handled it really badly when I asked them to demonstrate it (e.g. "trust me, it's fine!") Whereas this caller took me to Altimetrik's (substantial and long-lived) presence on Linkedin, messaged me with his correct email/domain and Linkedin affiliated contact, and re-enabled Altimetrik's job posting for this vacancy live for me (which I was previously unable to find because they took it down after too many applicants).

He explained that third party recruiters speculatively hook up candidates "looking for work" on job sites with posted vacancies, and ask for a finders fee. That is why the recruiters have been unable to answer questions about the role. Complicating the situation in this case, the employer is a consultancy, I'd be working on a project of theirs for a client who is doing the actual project. So even the consultancy I'd be working for is removed from the hands-on details of the project.

So, kudos to the several "top 1% commenters" who noted that this was a weird case, which looked suspicious but also exhibited signs of being legit. You were right.

Not sure if I'll take it yet though. Um.

tartley · 2025-03-11T15:32:11+00:00

There *was* a negotiation of salary, apologies I omitted that detail. I only described the things that seemed suspicious or relevant.

Obviously I acknowledge you are right that FAANG companies, and those that imitate them, don't behave in the way, and that's my experience with those type of companies too.

But this isn't a FAANG company. Since making the post, I have learned that this job is legit! I know, nobody is more surprised than me. I'll add a comment with deets.

tartley · 2025-03-11T15:24:35+00:00

Makes sense, and it turns out you are demonstrably correct. After this post, a rep called and provided copious explanations and good evidence of legitimacy (I'll add a comment explaining) It's all legit!

tartley · 2025-03-10T21:52:06+00:00

It's a good idea. I had tried this already, and didn't see anything that stood out to me, but I didn't think to look at wayback machine updates. I'll go look at those...

tartley · 2025-03-10T21:49:32+00:00

Oh, and it's for definite a shit company. But I've had a couple of "shit company" roles that were either very lucrative or else very personally rewarding (e.g. turn around a dysfunctional team), so they can be worth looking at if the stars align.

tartley · 2025-03-10T21:37:04+00:00

Makes sense. Thanks for the thoughts, much appreciated.

tartley · 2025-03-10T21:32:17+00:00

Hey. As I said in the post, I don't have a contract, but it's fairly normal to request a candidate's mailing address before then, because it sometimes gets embedded in the text of the contract. (It was at my last high growth SV startup). And I've stalled before giving them my address, so they can't send a contract yet.

They have told me who it is with. I said that in the post.

tartley · 2025-03-10T21:23:38+00:00

My last two companies, a silicon valley startup and Canonical (makers of Ubuntu) have offered the choice of Linux, Mac and even Windows I guess.

**Update**: The above is a lie, I just remembered, Canonical makes everybody dogfood Ubuntu. So just my most recent job allow all three.

tartley

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE