Alex Gaynor is a software resilience engineer focused on building reliable, secure systems across government, industry, and open source. He writes about software security, serialization, benchmarks, and the economics of open-source infrastructure.
121 articles from this blog
A developer plans to migrate from Blogspot to a self-built Django blog with features like reST support and Disqus comments.
A positive review of the Python Essential Reference book, highlighting its coverage of syntax, libraries, and debugging tools.
Argues against including jQuery in Django's admin interface to keep contribution accessible and avoid endorsing a single JavaScript toolkit.
The author argues that programming language syntax is critically important for code readability and developer productivity, using Go and Scheme as examples.
A critical analysis of the Go programming language's design choices, focusing on syntax, lack of generics, and overhyped features like goroutines.
Analyzing Django's error messages by replicating common typos from a Rails tutorial comparison to see how helpful they are for debugging.
An update on the progress and remaining challenges for implementing multiple database support in the Django web framework.
A developer's personal thank you to the essential desktop software and web services that power his daily work and life.
Explains an Unladen Swallow optimization for CPython, replacing METH_O/NOARGS with METH_FIXED to speed up calls to built-in functions with fixed arguments.
A developer explains their Python workflow using pip, virtualenv, and virtualenvwrapper to manage project dependencies and isolated environments.
Introduces django-kickass-templatetags, a library offering an object-based syntax for defining Django template tags to reduce boilerplate code.
A PyCon program committee member reflects on the talk selection process, reviewer biases, and shares excitement for upcoming conference talks.
A technical deep dive into refactoring Django's ManyToManyField to eliminate raw SQL and improve code structure for multi-database support.
Explores two key JIT compiler optimizations in Google's Unladen Swallow project for Python, focusing on type feedback and specialized function calls.
An introduction to Unladen Swallow, a Google-funded project to speed up CPython using a JIT compiler built on LLVM.
A blogger announces a month-long daily blogging challenge focusing on advanced Django, HTTP push tech, and some political content.
Explains how optimizing compilers allow programmers to write clean, maintainable code without sacrificing performance, using examples like inlining and constant propagation.
Announcing the release of Django-filter 0.5, featuring a package name change to django_filters and new filter features.
Announcing pyvcs .2 release with new Subversion and Bazaar backends, plus bug fixes for the Mercurial backend.
Announcing pyvcs and django-vcs, open-source tools for abstracting and web-browsing version control systems, plus plans for a new Django project.
