Python

From template tag to hydrated component

A React island inside a Django page needs three things: a template tag that records rather than renders, one batched call to a render sidecar, and a browser that hydrates only the IDs the server named. Shared state then lives outside React, in a small store or the URL.

Server actions aren't a React feature

Server actions look like React compiler magic, but underneath they are a name mapped to a function behind one endpoint. You can build the same shape in Django, call it from React or a plain HTML form, and keep validation at the boundary.

When Sentry eats your transactions

Sentry silently drops transactions that blow past its span and payload limits, so the heaviest background jobs are exactly the ones missing from your dashboard. Capping span count and truncating span descriptions on bytes brings them back.

Python as the new Latin

I used to teach people to code. And looking back, I was teaching students to write it by hand while the tools that write it for them were getting better every single month. So what should a coding classroom actually look like now?

Bootstrapping a birding database using GenAI (Part 2)

Part 2 of the article about Mossie, when it was faced with scaling to include every bird in the world, complete with photos, sounds, and icons.

Bootstrapping a birding database using GenAI (Part 1)

A small birding app with 300 manually entered species faced an ambitious challenge: scale to include every bird in the world, complete with photos, sounds, and icons. This article explores how the team used GenAI to bootstrap a comprehensive birding database from scratch.

Taming a Python: don't let the snake bite

Adapting to a new tech stack is all about mindset. Switching from PHP to Python was an eye-opener. Package management confusion, unexpected paradigms, and a lack of encapsulation made for an interesting challenge. Embracing constraints is the secret to growth.

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