What I learned today

Remote debugging with python and visual studio Code In terminal install debugpy into your environment with something like     python -m pip install debugpy Create a visual studio launch configuration and add following to it following (or just use vs code create configuraiton button to easily create it choose type Python and select from the list, 'Remote attach') { "name" : "Python: Remote Attach" , "type" : "python" , "request" : "attach" , "port" : 5678 , "host" : "localhost" , "pathMappings" : [{ "localRoot" : "${workspaceFolder}" , "remoteRoot" : "." }] }, Run this in the command line to start a debugging server with your script runner python3 -m debugpy --listen 1.2.3.4:5678 --wait-for-client Yourscript.py Now run the launch configuration from vs code to attach to this debugger

This need is incredibly common and useful, and hopefully will save you a lot of time when doing server side calls from your UI application (or even non UI clients like NodeJS applications) Example here is to send a POST request to an endoint /api/item/new (which will create a new item in the database). We will just assume tbhe backend is already setup (it's not relevant to this article). All we need to know is that we can do a POST /api/item/new and send it form data with two pieces of info     name, filter So, if you have a node.js application (I was using Vue-cli generated project, but it does not matter), install 'axios' (a most popular tool to make server calls these days) npm i axios --save OR yarn add axios (my preferred method) Now, in your service JS file (which is generally when I keep all my api calls) do something like this createNew ( name , filter ) { let formData = new FormData (); formData . append ( "name" , ...

Today I learned something about Javascript that surprised me. No wonder I had been writing some really awful code, because I had not grasped many such oddities of my favorite language. Let me share with you a few oddities of Javascript as a language, which probably gives way too much leverage to a developer in my opinion. Location of opening braces What do you think the following will do? function func() { return { name: "AGuy" }; } console.log(func().name); You are probably guessing right, it will print AGuy on the Firebug (or other console) How about this: function func() { return { name: "AGuy" }; } console.log(func().name); The same output right? Nope. You get this! func() is undefined console.log(func().name); WTH? Why is that, just because I moved the brace to a new line? Java would have happily accepted this sort of daredevilry. It turns out Javascript inserts a semicolon if I don't put a brace on the same line, so t...