Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »

Welcome to Software Development on Codidact!

Will you help us build our independent community of developers helping developers? We're small and trying to grow. We welcome questions about all aspects of software development, from design to code to QA and more. Got questions? Got answers? Got code you'd like someone to review? Please join us.

Posts by matthewsnyder‭

111 posts
86%
+11 −0
Q&A Git: How to clone only a few recent commits?

How do I clone the repository with only part of the history? For example, let's say I want to download only the last 5 commits out of thousands.

2 answers  ·  posted 1y ago by matthewsnyder‭  ·  last activity 1y ago by hkotsubo‭

Question git-clone
85%
+10 −0
Q&A What is the point of pipx?

Background Many Python programs now recommend installing with pipx, and there is a sense that you shouldn't install with pip anymore, you should use tools like pipx. Main Question However, what ...

3 answers  ·  posted 1y ago by matthewsnyder‭  ·  last activity 1y ago by tripleee‭

Question python-3 package
84%
+9 −0
Q&A grep AND search for multiple words in files

Between-lines relations are not easy to look for with grep, which is a line filter. You could use a regex that spans lines, but I find this annoying because of all the flags you have to set. Grep ...

posted 1y ago by matthewsnyder‭  ·  edited 1y ago by matthewsnyder‭

Answer
81%
+7 −0
Meta To transfer, or not to, that is the question: whether 'tis nobler to let it stay or to take arms against Stack Overflow's dominance of FAQ canonicals

Hi and welcome to the site. :) I think the idea of a canonical like the one you linked is great. A lot of newbies have too little understanding of their topic to identify common patterns. So they ...

posted 1y ago by matthewsnyder‭

Answer
80%
+6 −0
Meta Are code troubleshooting posts allowed?

These questions are very helpful to the person asking, and great for driving activity. I think it is good to allow these questions to be asked and to answer them. At the same time, they are not go...

posted 1y ago by matthewsnyder‭

Answer
80%
+6 −0
Q&A After git fetch, how to fast forward my branch?

I did git fetch to quickly get latest commits. I did this instead of git pull so I could deal with merge conflicts offline. But my repository is still stuck on the old commit, and now git pull fail...

2 answers  ·  posted 3mo ago by matthewsnyder‭  ·  last activity 2mo ago by Michael‭

Question git
80%
+6 −0
Q&A What is a reasonable minimum for making a FOSS project inviting to contributors?

I don't actually know the answer to this, but I'll post a provisional one while we wait for someone wiser than me to chime in. I think this is a small subset of the real answer. Don't forget the...

posted 7mo ago by matthewsnyder‭

Answer
80%
+6 −0
Q&A Why is git merge from rather than to?

Why does git merge take the source branch rather than the destination branch as a parameter? The most common merge case by far for me is "Okay, this branch looks good, let's merge it into branch X...

4 answers  ·  posted 1y ago by matthewsnyder‭  ·  last activity 1y ago by hkotsubo‭

80%
+6 −0
Meta Is software system design on topic here?

Is software system design on topic for the software development site? For what I mean by system design, consider the "system design interview" commonly held these days when recruiting software eng...

1 answer  ·  posted 7mo ago by matthewsnyder‭  ·  last activity 7mo ago by Lundin‭

Question discussion scope
77%
+5 −0
Q&A How can I git checkout the previous HEAD?

After switching to a different branch, git checkout - can move me back to the branch I came from. This is handy for times when I wonder "wait, what was that last branch again?" But this does not w...

1 answer  ·  posted 2mo ago by matthewsnyder‭  ·  last activity 2mo ago by hkotsubo‭

Question git
77%
+5 −0
Meta Where should I ask git questions?

Where should I ask questions about Git?

2 answers  ·  posted 3mo ago by matthewsnyder‭  ·  last activity 3mo ago by Monica Cellio‭

Question discussion
77%
+5 −0
Q&A Reinstall old Python libraries after update

Recently, Python updated from 3.11 to 3.12 and now all my libraries are gone. Actually they're in the old 3.11 site-packages, but now that python points to 3.12 those are not active. Every time I r...

3 answers  ·  posted 5mo ago by matthewsnyder‭  ·  last activity 4mo ago by Karl Knechtel‭

Question python-3
77%
+5 −0
Q&A How and where does Python code start running? How can I control that?

Files with .py extension are scripts. You run them with python myscript.py. Python is an imperative language, so executing a file will run each line one by one, starting from the top, and exit whe...

posted 6mo ago by matthewsnyder‭  ·  edited 4mo ago by Michael‭

Answer
77%
+5 −0
Q&A What is a reasonable minimum for making a FOSS project inviting to contributors?

A lot of people who maintain FOSS projects would like to get more contributions. What can the maintainer do to ensure that potential contributors are converted into actual contributors? There are...

2 answers  ·  posted 7mo ago by matthewsnyder‭  ·  last activity 5mo ago by Michael‭

77%
+5 −0
Q&A Are "strong passwords" at all meaningful?

The assumption of 1k attempts/s is wishful thinking, as is the idea that a hacker will go on mail.google.com and try to guess your login (they would get a captcha after like 5 failed attempts). Pa...

posted 9mo ago by matthewsnyder‭  ·  edited 6mo ago by matthewsnyder‭

Answer
77%
+5 −0
Q&A How can I schedule a later task in Python?

I want my CLI Python program to schedule a task, and then exit. After some times has passed (say 10 minutes) the task should execute. The task can be a Python method or a shell command, whatever i...

3 answers  ·  posted 1y ago by matthewsnyder‭  ·  last activity 1y ago by H_H‭

77%
+5 −0
Q&A Terms for types of functions with respect to side effects

Mathematically, the purpose of a function is to return an output. However, in a programming context functions often have side effects. It is even common to call functions for the side effects alone...

2 answers  ·  posted 1y ago by matthewsnyder‭  ·  last activity 1y ago by Lundin‭

77%
+5 −0
Q&A How to configure Python pip to look for packages in a private index first?

When I run pip install foo, pip looks for foo in PyPi. I want it to look for it first in a private repo, let's say pypi.bar.com. Only if foo cannot be found in pypi.bar.com, should pip then look f...

1 answer  ·  posted 1y ago by matthewsnyder‭  ·  last activity 1y ago by tripleee‭

Question python-3 pip
77%
+5 −0
Q&A When would one not want to return an interface?

I think the main reason to do this is when the interfaces fail to account for some subtlety of the contract between caller and implementation. For example, let's pretend for a moment that your use...

posted 1y ago by matthewsnyder‭  ·  edited 1y ago by matthewsnyder‭

Answer
75%
+4 −0
Q&A How to troubleshoot ModuleNotFoundError?

I ran some Python code and it crashed with ModuleNotFoundError. What is the general approach for dealing with these situations?

2 answers  ·  posted 9mo ago by matthewsnyder‭  ·  last activity 9mo ago by Karl Knechtel‭

Question import python-3
75%
+4 −0
Q&A Readable syntax for executing many callables with useful side effects

In Python, multiprocessing is easy to do if you follow a "list projection" paradigm. Say you want to take a list of inputs X and apply some function f to every x_i, such that y_i = f(x_i) and the y...

1 answer  ·  posted 1y ago by matthewsnyder‭  ·  last activity 1y ago by mr Tsjolder‭

75%
+4 −0
Meta How can Q&A sites coexist with LLMs?

My take on this: Q&A sites used to fill two distinct roles, but only one of these (the more boring one that doesn't matter anyway) is usurped by LLMs. The interesting one is not yet in danger o...

posted 1y ago by matthewsnyder‭

Answer
75%
+4 −0
Meta How can Q&A sites coexist with LLMs?

New LLMs like ChatGPT are now creating competition with Q&A sites like Codidact and StackOverflow. Moreover, this is parasitic: LLMs get "boosted" by Q&A sites because they can use them for...

1 answer  ·  posted 1y ago by matthewsnyder‭  ·  last activity 1y ago by matthewsnyder‭

Question discussion
75%
+4 −0
Q&A How do I pull new changes in git submodules?

I have a git repository with some submodules. When the submodule repos get new commits on the remote, how can I pull them all?

0 answers  ·  posted 1y ago by matthewsnyder‭

Question git git-submodule
75%
+4 −0
Meta How are software recommendations handled?

How are software recommendations handled on https://software.codidact.com/ ? https://outdoors.codidact.com/ has a "gear recommendations" section, so it seems like Codidact is open to the idea. I s...

1 answer  ·  posted 1y ago by matthewsnyder‭  ·  last activity 1y ago by Lundin‭

Question discussion