Python

I have to thank Fluent Python for all of these tips and trick with Python.

You can implement dunder methods to make an object feel more Pythonic.

• Things like __repr__, __str__, __format__, __bytes__, __abs__, __bool__, __hash__, and __eq__.

You can extend the Format Specification Mini-language.

• There’s already quite a bit you can do with what is given to you. I think it’s cool that you can add new format specifications or I bet even override the standard ones.

You can make properties of an object read only.

• I think the code for doing this looks really slick.

• There’s a convention that any variable name that starts with an underscore is private in Python. But that’s just a Python people thing.

• So in your constructor, you would store any parameters as private variables. Then make a getter with the name of the variable, sans underscore. Decorate it with a @property - which I think is to mainly mark it as a getter? - and this makes the variables read only unless you really know what Python is doing.

Emacs

You can find and replace across multiple files.

• I found this thing called dired. It was a little hard to use because the version of Emacs I’m running had a different function bound to the keyboard shortcut used in the docs.

  • Here’s what I did:

  M-x find-dired
  <pick the directory you want to search in>
  Run find (with args): -name "*.json*"
  t  # To select all files from the previous command
  M-x dired-do-find-regexp-and-replace
  <find regex>
  <replace regex>
  

• I have Projectile installed in Emacs, so I could use the projectile-replace function to find and replace strings. I believe that the directory it looks in is the current project. Projectile defines any git repo as a project, so that shoulc cover like 90% of my use cases.

You can save multiple buffers at a time.

• The previous sentence is a bit misleading because you still have to save them one after another; though there is a key that saves them all.

• I used C-x s and it prompted me in the minibuffer for each file that needed to be saved.

• I believe that C-x s ! will save all with no prompt.

QMK

The mouse keys are pretty simple to use.

• There are four navigation keys, five mouse buttons, and four scrolling keys.

• There are also three “set acceleration” buttons, but I’m not sure I noticed a difference in the acceleration when I was testing it.

Thoughts

I don’t know how often I’ll use that “read-only” trick in my day to day work. I still think it’s a good pattern to know though. I’m a little surprised there isn’t some syntatic sugar to do it all in one step though. Or maybe that’s just the lazy part of me speaking.

Since I use Emacs all day, every day, it’s exciting to constantly be learning these little refinements to my workflow. I wonder how long it’ll be until I start twaeak every little thing to work how I want it to work.

Speaking of tweaking things, I decided to not tweak my keyboard this week. Instead, I just wanted to look into this feature: Mouse Keys. I think it’s a neat idea, I doubt it’s super practical, but it’ll raise some eyebrows when people see me crudely controlling my mouse from my keyboard.