Oldest trick in the programming

Python logo

Before half-century, each bit inside of the computer was important. One of the most frequently used function was "swap".

Swap do the simple thing and you can say well I know. But in that time each operation and memory usage was important. So to have an efficient swap between 2 variables and not using third variables.

So trick goes like this:

A = A + B
B = A - B
A = A - B

Instead of:

TMP = A
A = B
B = TMP

Python code (tnx to Jovan Sh):

>>> a = 5
>>> b = 3
>>> (a, b) = (b, a)
>>> print a,b
3 5

With this approach at that time, programmers save a lot of memory usage.

Also, you can find all these tricks in the book Hacker's Delight

Twitter card - how to

Twitter card example Example without and with twitter card meta tags

Most of you using WordPress, Joomla - some kind of CMS and you get your own plugin for twitter card. From the internet: "A Twitter card is content designed to give users a rich media experience whenever tweets contain links to a site's content. Twitter has various card types to show content previews, play video, and increase traffic to sites."

Here summary how this looks like Twitter card optimized

So, most of you who are using some CMS are blessed with plugins and prepared solutions for most of the things that need it. Not me. I start learning trough pieces of each part for web sites from SEO to how to make web site faster(numb of pages, picture optimization, etc)

My simple solution for this was to add inside of head:

    <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary" />
    <meta name="twitter:site" content="@vladimircicovic" />
    <meta name="twitter:creator" content="@vladimircicovic" />
    <meta property="og:url" content="https://www.vladimircicovic.com/2020/05/why-is-serverless-important" />
    <meta property="og:title" content="Vladimir Cicovic Blog" />
    <meta property="og:description" content="Serverless short description with good, bad things" />
    <meta property="og:image" content="https://www.vladimircicovic.com/content/images/da4d8eec88e0ddf8ec2716bbf1f0f2b4.jpg" />

Hope this help someone and make them day !

How to start programming

Python programming

This would be a quick and short text with steps on how to reach a python master level.

  1. Start learning python
  2. learn the basic syntax and how to run
  3. Go to practice codewars and after reaching level 6 go to hackerrank
  4. Develop the first app (web or desktop GUI, does not matter) and continue to code real-world app
  5. Subscribe to Python maillist and review new PEP
  6. Watch PyCon Videos. Learn more and deep
  7. Sit in the corner of darkroom and code in your head complete 10k app
  8. Finally, you become Python Jedi
  9. Give back to the community

Python homemade geoip tool for IP information

Geoip

Logo of the company that offer geoip database

Let say you want to check 10000 IP to find a location, states, timezones, etc. So you can use command whois and automate and it would take some minutes. But what if you want to do faster, less then 1 second?

Build one CLI tool to check all IP but using the Maxmind geoip database.

First, we need to install:

virtualenv -p python3 .
source bin/activate
pip3 install python-geoip-python3
pip3 install python-geoip-geolite2

Then we could use ip.txt file with content:

8.8.8.8
1.2.4.8

And finally - the code that would help us to run this adventure:

import sys
from geoip import geolite2


if len(sys.argv) < 2:
    print("missing file with ip")
    exit(0)

filepath = sys.argv[1]

with open(filepath) as fp:
   line = "something"

   while line:
       line = fp.readline().strip()

       if not line:
            break

       match = geolite2.lookup(line)

       print(line + " " + match.country + " " + match.continent + " " + match.timezone + " " + str(match.location[0]) + " " + str(match.location[1]))

fp.close()

Output would be something like this:

python3 checkip.py ip.txt 
8.8.8.8 US NA America/Los_Angeles 37.386 -122.0838
1.2.4.8 CN AS None 35.0 105.0

One golden advice run update after some time for the geoip Maxmind database. you can also:

git clone https://github.com/vladimircicovic/python_geoip