Front Range Pythoneers: Bowling Code Kata

For the November meeting of Front Range Pythoneers we did a bowling code kata. We worked as a group on the projector, but I also worked on my own version on my laptop. Here’s my code, which was fun to write. It’s a single file which contains its test cases and can be run on the command line or imported:

import unittest

class Frame(object):
    def __init__(self, tenth=False):
        self.rolls = []
        self.tenth = tenth

    def full(self):
        if len(self.rolls) >= self.max_rolls():
            return True
        if self.tenth:
            has_special = all([roll in ('X', '/') for roll in self.rolls])
            return len(self.rolls) == 2 and not has_special
        else:
            return self.strike()

    def roll(self, score):
        if self.full():
            raise RuntimeError('attempted to record a roll on a full frame')
        self.rolls.append(score)

    def pins(self):
        if len(self.rolls) == 0:
            return 0
        if self.strike() or self.spare():
            return 10
        else:
            return sum([int(roll) for roll in self.rolls])

    def first_roll_pins(self):
        if len(self.rolls) == 0:
            return 0
        elif self.rolls[0] == 'X':
            return 10
        else:
            return int(self.rolls[0])

    def score(self, subsequent_frames):
        if self.tenth:
            return self.tenth_frame_score()

        score = self.pins()
        if self.strike():
            score += sum([frame.pins() for frame in subsequent_frames])
        elif self.spare():
            if len(subsequent_frames) > 0:
                score += subsequent_frames[0].first_roll_pins()
        return score

    def tenth_frame_score(self):
        return min(Game(''.join(self.rolls)).score(), 40)

    def strike(self):
        return len(self.rolls) > 0 and self.rolls[0] == 'X'

    def spare(self):
        return len(self.rolls) > 0 and self.rolls[-1] == '/'

    def max_rolls(self):
        return 3 if self.tenth else 2

class Game(object):
    def __init__(self, roll_scores=''):
        self.frames = []
        for score in roll_scores:
            self.roll(score)

    def roll(self, score):
        if len(self.frames) == 0 or self.frames[-1].full():
            tenth = len(self.frames) == 9
            self.frames.append(Frame(tenth))
        self.frames[-1].roll(score)

    def score(self):
        return sum(self.frame_scores())

    def frame_scores(self):
        frame_scores = []
        for frame_index in xrange(len(self.frames)):
            frame = self.frames[frame_index]
            subsequent_frames = []
            if frame.strike() or frame.spare():
                subsequent_frames = self.frames[frame_index+1:]
                added_frames = 1
                if frame.strike() and len(subsequent_frames) > 0:
                    added_frames = 2 if subsequent_frames[0].strike() else 1
                subsequent_frames = subsequent_frames[:added_frames]
            frame_scores.append(frame.score(subsequent_frames))
        return frame_scores

class GameTest(unittest.TestCase):
    def test_initial_strike(self):
        self.assertEqual(Game('X').score(), 10)

    def test_two_strikes(self):
        self.assertEqual(Game('XX').score(), 20+10)

    def test_three_strikes(self):
        self.assertEqual(Game('XXX').score(), 30+20+10)

    def test_strike_spare_strike(self):
        self.assertEqual(Game('X9/X').score(), 20+20+10)

    def test_strike_strike_spare(self):
        self.assertEqual(Game('XX9/').score(), 30+20+10)
        self.assertEqual(Game('XX9/71').score(), 30+20+17+8)

    def test_perfect_game(self):
        game = Game('X'*12)
        self.assertEqual(len(game.frames), 10)
        self.assertEqual(game.score(), 300)

    def test_made_up_game(self):
        game = Game('X907/818/X70070/72')
        self.assertEqual(len(game.frames), 10)
        self.assertEqual(game.score(), 132)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    unittest.main()

I think that the tenth frame calculation is incorrect. My limited understanding of bowling slowed me down a fair bit. I got an object system that I’m fairly happy with, though!

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how rails depends on treetop, and how I found that out

I’m working on a project where I think I’ll be using a parser library so I’ve been looking at the options. One thing I’ve noticed is that treetop is installed when Rails is installed. I didn’t know why, though, so I looked around.

First I looked at the Gemfile.lock. Had I known the format I would have found out my answer more quickly. I didn’t, though, and so when I found my first result for treetop, I stopped. It showed treetop below specs in the hierarchy.

GEM
  remote: http://rubygems.org/
  specs:
    # ...snip...
    thor (0.14.6)
    tilt (1.3.3)
    treetop (1.4.10)
      polyglot
      polyglot (>= 0.3.1)
    tzinfo (0.3.30)
    uglifier (1.0.3)

The next thing I did was run find . -iname '*.treetop' in ~/.rbenv. It found the following results:

(mbp) ~/.rbenv/versions/1.9.2-p290 $ find . -iname '*.treetop'
./lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/erector-0.8.3/lib/erector/erect/rhtml.treetop
./lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/mail-2.3.0/lib/mail/parsers/address_lists.treetop
./lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/mail-2.3.0/lib/mail/parsers/content_disposition.treetop
./lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/mail-2.3.0/lib/mail/parsers/content_location.treetop
./lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/mail-2.3.0/lib/mail/parsers/content_transfer_encoding.treetop
./lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/mail-2.3.0/lib/mail/parsers/content_type.treetop
./lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/mail-2.3.0/lib/mail/parsers/date_time.treetop
./lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/mail-2.3.0/lib/mail/parsers/envelope_from.treetop
./lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/mail-2.3.0/lib/mail/parsers/message_ids.treetop
./lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/mail-2.3.0/lib/mail/parsers/mime_version.treetop
./lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/mail-2.3.0/lib/mail/parsers/phrase_lists.treetop
./lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/mail-2.3.0/lib/mail/parsers/received.treetop
./lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/mail-2.3.0/lib/mail/parsers/rfc2045.treetop
./lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/mail-2.3.0/lib/mail/parsers/rfc2822.treetop
./lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/mail-2.3.0/lib/mail/parsers/rfc2822_obsolete.treetop
./lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/treetop-1.4.10/examples/lambda_calculus/arithmetic.treetop
./lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/treetop-1.4.10/examples/lambda_calculus/lambda_calculus.treetop
./lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/treetop-1.4.10/lib/treetop/compiler/metagrammar.treetop
./lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/treetop-1.4.10/spec/compiler/test_grammar.treetop
./lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/treetop-1.4.10/spec/compiler/test_grammar_do.treetop
./lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/treetop-1.4.10/spec/composition/a.treetop
./lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/treetop-1.4.10/spec/composition/b.treetop
./lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/treetop-1.4.10/spec/composition/c.treetop
./lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/treetop-1.4.10/spec/composition/d.treetop
./lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/treetop-1.4.10/spec/composition/f.treetop
./lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/treetop-1.4.10/spec/composition/subfolder/e_includes_c.treetop
(mbp) ~/.rbenv/versions/1.9.2-p290 $

Aha, so there are numerous treetop files in actionmailer! I have my answer. Seems like a good use of a parser, plus those may be worth using as examples.

Then I took another look at a Gemfile.lock from a rails project, and saw that it was plainly listed there. I just didn’t see it and didn’t keep looking after I found one.

GEM
  remote: http://rubygems.org/
  specs:
    XMLCanonicalizer (1.0.1)
      log4r (>= 1.0.4)
    actionmailer (3.1.1)
      actionpack (= 3.1.1)
      mail (~> 2.3.0)
  # ...snip...

I noticed something: Gemfile.lock doesn’t show an arbitrarily nested hierarchy; instead it shows a list of gems and their dependencies, where the list of gems includes all gems. Then, separately at the end of the file, it shows the top-level gems from the Gemfile.

To see a deeply nested, a graph could be constructed from the Gemfile.lock, using the two nesting levels under specs as an adjacency list.

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The Five Megabyte Web Developer

In the last couple of years I’ve witnessed a disturbing trend: developers adopting free Heroku as their only means of hosting side projects. More disturbingly, I operated this way myself for a couple of years. (Yes, freemium can be a trap for customers just like it can be a trap for businesses.)

Heroku has five megabytes for database space, which often sounds like it ought to be enough when it isn’t. Want auditing and comments? Nah, that’ll take up too much space. Its single dyno free plan serves one request at a time. The next steps up are twenty dollars a month and five cents an hour for databases and dynos, respectively. These aren’t that expensive for a major project, but for several side projects it quickly adds up.

I realized this and switched back to running a VPS, this time on Zerigo, which I pay for annually. There is no limit to the number of apps I have. Concurrent requests are supported. They can use the same databases. Database backups are free and uncomplicated. I’m also happy to be outside of the cloud oligopoly that seems to be forming.

Besides that, it’s fun! I get to try niche language platforms. Node.js was building steam long before Heroku supported it, and it still doesn’t support websockets. It’s not hard to find, with a little thinking, other interesting platforms to try. How about Racket or Factor? Or setting up your own Lucene server, or a web server that uses the git command line tool? Those can’t (easily) be run with Heroku.

I find anecdotally that most developers don’t have their own websites or non-trivial side projects. I only have the first, but I can sense that my personal website is helping me prepare to launch non-trivial side projects. I’ve done very little work to set up this server, yet despite tweeting about it and having visitors and occasional commenters, it stays up. That gives me the confidence I need to launch something bigger.

My plea to other developers (and aspiring developers) out there is to draw parallels between programming and other creative works and find out how much you could responsibly be spending for hosting side projects, and then realize that there’s no reason you shouldn’t have at least a VPS.

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User Intent and Email Notifications

Today I read a great post that happens to be on a Posterous blog, and I wanted to send my kudos to the author. Feeling lazy, I clicked Posterous’ version of a Like button, which is a heart with a tooltip that says “Unlike this post” when I hover over it.

A few short minutes later, I saw a comment notification in my email inbox.

Posterous has this feature where people who leave comments receive notifications when people post additional comments. This way, people will see replies to their comments.

It does the same when people like posts, though. But the main reason for wanting to see comments doesn’t exist when people like posts. People generally do not reply to likes, though I admit I’ve seen it happen once or twice.

The lesson in this is that default actions software takes should be based on user intent, and that this is especially important when it’s a loud interaction like sending an email.

I’ll go further and say that this is one of the major pros to having threaded discussions in blog comments. DISQUS does this and they’re very wise to do it. They only send me email notifications when someone specifically replies to one of my comments. If I commented on Posterous posts nearly as often as I did on DISQUS widgets I’d have email notifications turned off for Posterous comments by now.

One final note: I posted a test comment without realizing it would get emailed instantly and that I didn’t know whether or not I can delete comments on Posterous (I can’t), and it got deleted soon afterward. Apparently the blog owner was close to his email. ;)

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Deleting from Chrome’s History

I wrote a script to delete URLs containing a string from Chrome’s history. It works for me. I don’t understand everything that it does, though, so it may have serious flaws. Use at your own risk.

# Removing history entries from Chrome that contain a search phrase
# Exit out of Chrome first
# Back up files and do this at your own risk

# gem install sqlite3 && gem install sequel

require 'sequel'

search_string = 'reddit'

# Delete history cache files
path = File.expand_path('~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default')
cache_dirs = Dir.entries(path).select {|dir| dir != 'History' && dir.index('History') == 0}.map {|dir| File.join path, dir}
cache_dirs.each {|dir| File.delete dir}

# Delete matching history from sqlite3
DB = Sequel.sqlite File.join(path, 'History')
matching_urls = DB[:urls].filter(:url.like("%#{search_string}%"))
puts %Q[Deleting #{matching_urls.count} urls matching "#{search_string}"]
matching_urls.delete

I really like sqlite and Sequel.

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