January 2025

When I first wrote about Heimdallr, I saw it as a project which was going to be written in Python using Django. I have been using both PHP and Python since their initial releases, but something made that pairing stand out.  First, outside of it using colons with indention to indicate code blocks, I have liked the ecosystem with stronger typing like C/C++, whereas PHP was weaker in its typing.

This is a bit of a continuation of this article, where I talk about Jenkins, Drupal and CI/CD.  In this case, I am not talking about Drupal, but about a Python/Django project I have been working on to track job applications rather than using a Google spreadsheet, which was getting a bit unweildy with hundreds of rows. This project is up on GitHub, here, and I will be referring to this project through part of this article.

I have been using jQuery DataTables for some years now, and have yet to find anything better. With its ability to produce tables with AJAX, built in sorting, filtering and more, I have used it to display datasets of over a million records. The problem comes when writing the backend code to create the DataTable and handle the AJAX requests. Recently, I started writing a Django application to track my job applications, since the spreadsheet was getting unwieldy with hundreds of rows. But unlike using PHP and Zend Framework, I have a ways to go.

When it comes to computer programmers and even computer aficionados, there are a number of things which are subject to debate, and at times, these can almost approach a religious holy war given the right individuals. Examples of some of these include "PC" vs. "Mac", "Windows" vs. "*NIX", "vi" vs. "emacs" and more. So it is of no surprise that even within testing, and specifically unit testing, there are some areas were competing  ideas can cause similar reactions.