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  We've probably all seen it, and probably all done it: throwing asterisks at new learners: https://nedbatchelder.com/blog/202609/expert_asterisks

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  In the #Python Discord, someone was trying to understand how Python code is executed without ever being turned into native CPU instructions. So I wrote a full implementation of a tiny programming language: compiled to bytecodes that get interpreted. 300 lines of Python. https://nedbatchelder.com/blog/202608/micro_language_implementation_calcium

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  My main use of LinkedIn is the games. https://www.linkedin.com/games (You can play them without seeing the rest of LinkedIn!) But I don't understand the stats at the end of Pinpoint. What does this mean?

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  My lightning talk from #PyConUs 2026: Silence is Golden (or, Pac-Man Time-Space duality) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VA3O7UxuZO4&t=872s (It's only 3m20s long)

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  Why would someone bother to clone coverage․py just to remove the message about Ukraine? Is this repo being published or used anywhere? https://github.com/Medved2k/coveragepy_no_slogan 4 commits ahead (https://github.com/coveragepy/coveragepy/compare/main...Medved2k:coveragepy_no_slogan:main), 141 commits behind.

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  Simple #Python advice: "I only need one" isn't a reason to avoid a class. "I'll only call it once" isn't a reason to avoid a function.

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  Very cool. https://www.andrewt.net/dithered-qr-codes/

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  Python packages should explicitly declare their version support with PyPI classifiers. https://pyreadiness.org/3.13/ lists 90 packages that don't declare support for 3.13, when many of those packages do support it. It's not hard to do, and it helps people understand what they can count on.

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  Something I've never seen before: an fi ligature hyphenated into an oddly wide f and a dotless i: #typography (This is in Firefox using CSS hyphenation settings.)

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  Because someone in the #Python Discord was asking about structuring tests alongside their project code, I added a bit of test structure to my pkgsample explainer: https://github.com/nedbat/pkgsample

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  A toy BASIC interpreter, written in #python: https://nedbatchelder.com/blog/202607/acidica

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  So many of these reasons are why I keep a website. (1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 12, 14, 15, 16, 25, 27, 28, 29, etc) https://bellkiosk.website/blog/reasons-to-website.html

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  More amazingness: this font renders bracketed text as working QR codes: https://qr.jim.sh/

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  Virtual environments in #python should have been called project environments.

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  When thinking about #Python lists vs tuples: lists can be varying lengths and the elements will be treated the same. Tuples are namedtuples without the names. https://nedbatchelder.com/blog/201608/lists_vs_tuples

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  A great thing about Special Olympics: they have a word for my son and others with disabilities like him: "Athlete".

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  Serious risk: I will talk about #Boston history well above most peoples' tolerance. https://nedbatchelder.com/blog/202606/franklins_parents_grave

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  RE: https://cosocial.ca/@timbray/116681311879653314 This probably explains why @codecov cancelled their (tiny) GitHub sponsorship of coverage․py today...

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  RE: https://mastodon.social/@djrrb/116686054571839496 It is very impressive to see how forms can be drastically altered to fit a (very extreme) design aesthetic, and still be legible to readers of the language.

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  Today's (well, all week's) UI frustration: why doesn't What's App stay scrolled to the bottom of a chat? And focus the input box! What else would I want to do 99% of the time!?

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  Today might be a day to trot out a paraphrase of Charles Schultz: I love community, it's people I can't stand.

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  Some people have a hard time focusing on the technical content of a project: https://github.com/coveragepy/coveragepy/issues/2169: "Remove politically related text from README.md to improve enterprise adoption"

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  Who is bringing juggling props to #PyCon? (Other than me)

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  Sometimes when I see programming experts trying to help new learners I imagine what would happen if we were a driving school: "The gas pedal makes the car go, right?" "Well, only if the engine is started, and not if you are out of gas, and not if the car is in neutral, and not if the car is parked against a wall, and not if the parking brake is on, and it shouldn't be called a gas pedal in an electric car, and, and, and...."

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  Python 1.0.0, released 31 years ago today: https://groups.google.com/g/comp.lang.misc/c/_QUzdEGFwCo/m/KIFdu0-Dv7sJ --> Tired of decyphering the Perl code you wrote last week? --> Frustrated with Bourne shell syntax? --> Spent too much time staring at core dumps lately? Maybe you should try Python, the next generation object-oriented scripting and prototyping language, with a *readable* syntax. Python has been used by hundreds of happy users all over the world during the...

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  "The background radiation of the internet" https://arman-bd.hashnode.dev/i-left-port-22-open-on-the-internet-for-54-days-here-s-who-showed-up

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  Judging from questions by new learners, a big thing they need to learn is the real world is not like school: https://nedbatchelder.com/blog/202604/school_is_artificial

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  I wrote a Sphinx extension to remove over-linked references in the Python docs. It was fun and turned out well: https://nedbatchelder.com/blog/202604/linklint

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  To prompt LLMs successfully it seems you need redundant details, escalating emphasis and other forms of repetition. This goes against the well-know DRY principle (Don't Repeat Yourself). So instead remember CLAMMY: Claude Loses All Memory Mid-Yap.

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  Just noticed that Google summarizes my blog post from yesterday as "DarkLight Something wrong? © Copyright 2026, Ned Batchelder", that is, the useless words from the footer of the page. I can suppress that snippet with a "data-nosnippet" attribute, but it can only be on <div> <span> or <section> tags: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/robots-meta-tag#data-nosnippet-attr I already use the nic...