Going to a developer conference can be pretty intimidating when you’re not a professional programmer. The imposter syndrome of being the non-developer at the table can be substantial. But I think it can be useful for librarians who write code to attend these events. First of all, it is reassuring to see the issues that… Continue reading On developer conferences
Burn it all down
This week I rewrote SeeCollections, a data visualization application that I had originally built in 2015. The rewrite was sorely needed, for a couple of reasons: The original code was really bad. Which is to be expected; I was a beginner when I wrote it. The newer code is better. It’s clearer. It went from… Continue reading Burn it all down
What I learned from 52,080 tweets
A few weeks ago, over the course of 15 days, I gathered 52,080 tweets about learning to code. I did this with TCAT, the open source tool that our library uses for Twitter archiving. I gathered all tweets that matched any of three popular learn to code hashtags: #codenewbie, #learntocode and #100daysofcode. What I learned… Continue reading What I learned from 52,080 tweets
Making bots on Mastodon
I made a Mastodon bot this past weekend. It’s called Why, and it tries to answer the perennial question “Why?” with responses from public domain texts from Project Gutenberg. I built this for Mastodon, rather for Twitter, for a couple of reasons: I was curious about the Mastodon API and the tools that are available… Continue reading Making bots on Mastodon
Why Python is a good choice for academics
I’ve been thinking about the role of Python in higher education. There’s a lot going on in that space, and the TL;DR version of this post is that I think Python is a good language choice for academics. If you’d like to hear my reasons, I have three: Python has a wide range of possible… Continue reading Why Python is a good choice for academics
Highlighting new books for faculty
This post is co-written with Julia Furay. Thanks to the dedicated work of our acquisitions librarian, Prof. Julia Furay, the Kingsborough library buys a lot of interesting books throughout the academic year. Typically, these are displayed on the New Books shelf for about a week before they find their permanent homes upstairs in the library… Continue reading Highlighting new books for faculty
Teaching librarians to build Twitter bots
Robin Davis (@robincamille) and I are running a Twitter bot-making workshop next week at ALA Annual in New Orleans. We’ve run this workshop a couple of times before, and it’s always been a positive experience. It’s a great way to introduce people to Python while building something fun. Right now, I’m in the midst of… Continue reading Teaching librarians to build Twitter bots
Mapping libraries and archives on Mastodon
I’ve enjoyed being on Mastodon for the past year. It reminds me of how Twitter was in the early days. But Mastodon’s decentralized structure means that I find it hard to wrap my head around the entirety of the fediverse. For better or worse, I only see the parts that are adjacent to my instance.… Continue reading Mapping libraries and archives on Mastodon
The fictograph
APIs are useful for librarians. There are many things we can do with API data to benefit our libraries. But we don’t have to only make practical tools; we can also make things that are a bit silly. For example, I made a tool I’ve called the Fictograph, which lets you plot the awesomeness of… Continue reading The fictograph
A reason to like broken Python
Python developers often want their code to be “Pythonic”, usually meaning that they want what they write to be particularly suited to the idiom of the language. To the beginner, this usually seems like an obviously good idea, but so vague as to be hard to put into practice. To be honest, I often opt… Continue reading A reason to like broken Python
