If you’ve ever encountered a latency-based bug or dealt with time zone differences, you understand just how frustrating managing time is. Every single time I’ve had to handle one of these issues I wanted to pull my hair out. …

The Linux filesystem is a unique and complex beast. This decades old system contains many hidden gems that you could spend a lifetime discovering. There are also a lot of unique idiosyncrasies to how things function. Luckily for us, these examples won’t take years to learn. Linux has the concept…

By now, many Python programmers have used the with statement. This statement leverages what is called a context manager. The special with syntax allows developers to manage resources more safely, and efficiently than other methods. If you’re working with external resources like files or network connections, using a context manager…

Learning one programming language is hard enough, learning multiple can be exhausting. Although many concepts are transferable between languages, there are still many syntax, style and core nuances to each one. While you could take the time to slowly perfect a new language, modern tools exist that lighten the load…

This week we’re going to take another journey through a handful of useful Python methods. These methods will arm you with the tools to wrangle and parse text better than ever. There is always a need to manipulate strings and other text in Python. Perhaps you’re stripping empty space, removing…

What would developers lives be like without Docker? We’d probably all be fumbling about installing dependencies on top of each other, pulling our hair out, and wreaking havoc. The software development world would be a fundamentally different place without Docker. This is why it’s important to know the basics not…

Troubleshooting tools can be simple, or highly complex. They can also be tiny, enormous and every size in between. Whether or not you need all that functionality in one place is debatable. …

Database administration has forever been a dark art. Perfecting efficient queries, and ensuring the smooth operation of a complex database has been a sizable undertaking for many years. Although enterprise database magic is still in high demand, there is a bustling community of projects attempting to make the database and…

Comparing files in a browser or on a desktop GUI is easy. You get a nice side-by-side set of windows with pretty colors to look at. But what happens on the command line? What if you need to compare files on a server that doesn’t even have a GUI installed? …