software engineering – Chad Dotson

Working with bytes in Python 3

By chad January 14, 2019Programming, Software EngineeringNo Comments

Background Sometimes you find yourself needing to work at the byte-level in an application you are working on. I feel that in Python there are not enough examples of how to do this. There is also a lot of potential to over-complicate the solution. This Example I plan to cover…

Thoughts On Team Communication

By chad July 4, 2017Doing Things Better, Software EngineeringNo Comments

Awhile back I had some thoughts on communication. If you've ever played World of Tanks Blitz you'd know that basically its a team of tanks against another team of tanks. With the pick up, fast paced nature communication is minimal at best (sometimes limited to a single "<<<<<<<<<" or ">>>>>>>>>"…

You're Too Close

By chad December 9, 2015Doing Things Better, Programming, TipsNo Comments

Have you encountered the following scenario? You are trying to solve a problem (or helping solve a problem) and know or at least think you know the solution. You are in the middle of implementing it when someone else looks at it and says, "why don't you do it this…

The Python "in" Operator – Theoretical vs Actual Time Complexity

By chad July 20, 2015Doing Things Better, Programming, Software Engineering, TipsNo Comments

Background Sometimes we may generate or retrieve a list, set or even dict when creating collection of things that we will be testing against. Theoretically a set, frozenset or dictionary should be the fastest (and equivalent) forms of storage for this operation. However, what I've found is that on some…

Not Invented Here, Not Written By Me, and Reinventing The Wheel

By chad May 17, 2015Doing Things Better, Key Concepts, Programming, Software EngineeringNo Comments

Not invented here and not written by me are both driving factors in reinventing the wheel when developing software. We limit ourselves if we do not build upon the achievements of others. - Chad Dotson Not Invented Here I'm sure everyone has encountered developers that would prefer to implement everything…

C-Style Unions And Python

By chad May 8, 2015ProgrammingNo Comments

So, you're creating a C Union (used to create a variant type) and writing it to a file, socket, etc and want to read that in Python. There are two ways to deal with this. Assume the following union definition in C typedef union { int i; unsigned int u;…

Becoming an Entrepreneur as a Software Engineer Vol 2

By chad March 29, 2015Programming, Software Engineering, WorkNo Comments

This is part two of my discussion and thoughts on seeking to become an entrepreneur as a software engineer. These are my current thoughts on the process and how to achieve my overall goals in becoming an entrepreneur. This entry centers on the belief that becoming an entrepreneur occurs in…

On Software Engineering

By chad March 23, 2015Hobbies, Key Concepts, Photography, Programming, Ramblings, Software EngineeringNo Comments

Spring Writing from the patio on a much deserved day off. What a day, sunny and 68 this 3rd day of spring. It sometimes makes it real hard to work inside in a windowless box. It's been a busy day of a different sort, but dang I could get used…

Becoming an Entrepreneur as a Software Engineer Vol 1

By chad October 5, 2014Programming, Software Engineering, WorkNo Comments

This is the first post in what I plan to be a series. In these posts, I will explore ideas in entrepreneurship. It's a given that working for yourself, while it brings many risks, can bring many rewards. I believe that it is one of the only ways to achieve…

Knowing When You've Wrote Crappy Code

By chad July 26, 2014Doing Things Better, Key Concepts, Programming, Software Engineering5 Comments

Note: This article was kicked off by one I read over at LosTechies. We write lots of code, statistically speaking some of it is what we'd deem as "crappy." If you're doing things right and progressing in your career and your understanding; your definition of "crappy code" should change over…