Author Archives: Dan York

About Dan York

Just a guy in Vermont trying to connect all the dots...

Video Book Review: Pragmatic Guide to Git

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pragmaticguidetogit.jpeg

Last night I recorded a new episode of my Emerging Tech Talk video podcast (as part of my One Day of Content Creation) where I reviewed the Pragmatic Guide to Git written by Travis Swicegood and published by Pragmatic Programmers in November 2010.

As I note in the video embedded below, I found the book quite useful as a reference and a solid intro to git for people who may have experience with other version control systems and want to come up to speed with git. It is not a tutorial on version control systems, so if you have no experience with VCS’s, you’ll need to read some other book first. (Or watch my earlier ETT episode where I explain version control systems.)

Enjoy the review…

In full disclosure:

  1. O’Reilly sent me a copy of this book to review, but I would have purchased it anyway since I have a passionate interest in git.
  2. The links to Amazon.com above use my affiliate code and so if you actually buy the book I will receive a tiny amount of money.

Python heading up O’Reilly’s recent book promotion?

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oreillybooks.jpgTwo days ago, Tim O’Reilly published an interesting post around the books people chose as part of O’Reilly’s Cyber-Monday deal. What I found interesting was the number of books all about…

python!

Given that I’ve been programming now and then in python for over 10+ years, I just found it both interesting and pleasing to see that python is still growing in interest. Google has certainly driven much of that interest in recent years with AppEngine, but Tim O’Reilly points to “data science” as a new driver:

… while Python has a large following in data science. It’s particularly interesting, and important, that using Python to collect data from sensors (“Real World Instrumentation with Python”) made it onto the list.

Very cool to see!

P.S. I agree with Tim that the list is a very interesting view into what programmers (who buy from O’Reilly) are interested in…

VoiceXML for Web Developers – a tutorial series

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VoiceXML

Over on the Voxeo Developers Corner blog today, I published a post about a series of tutorial articles we have there:

Want to learn VoiceXML? Check out our “VoiceXML for Web Developers” series…

We’re planning to pick the series back up and continue writing about some of the interesting apps you can build using VoiceXML. (And if you have no idea what VoiceXML is about, you can check out www.vxml.org in addition to this tutorial.)

For those of us who enjoy working in XML, there are some rather powerful dialog-driven applications you can create using VXML. Stay tuned for more!

Using Git Submodules (to build a USB key distro, in this case)

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As noted previously, I’m a huge fan of git and an avid user of Github. Given that, I appreciate learning new ways to do cool things with git. Here was a new one to me – using git “submodules” to build a package consisting of other git repositories. In this case, Adam Kalsey wrote about how he used the “git submodule” command to package up a number of different components for a USB key drive.

The key point is: each of the components remains in its OWN git repository – yet the overall “package” is ALSO under git revision control.

This is cool to me as I’ve wanted to do something similar in the past – I’ve now added “git submodule” to my internal “git toolbox” list. Looking forward to trying it out at some point.

Want to see what I’m working on? Follow me on Github…

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github.jpgIf you want to track what I’m working on for programming projects these days, the best place to go is my Github account at:

http://github.com/danyork

If you are also a Github user (and accounts are free), you can simply “follow” me so that my updates appear in your Github “News Feed”. Or, you can simply go back to that page from time to time. 🙂

I am a big fan of the Git version control system and I do use git for pretty much all my coding projects right now… and generally link all the public projects into Github.

Welcome to Code.DanYork.com!

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Welcome!  You’ve found your way to yet-another-blog maintained by Dan York. When I recently did a count, I actively write on about 14 different blogs, most of which I list here.

So why start yet another place to write?

Well, the simple answer is that I want some place to write about programming, open source software, git, Tropo and so much more.  Unfortunately that doesn’t really fit in with my main blogs of Disruptive Telephony, Disruptive Conversations or my main DanYork.com.  I do have sites like Voxeo Developers Corner and the Tropo Blog where I can – and will – be writing… but those sites are targeted more toward services from Voxeo, the company I work for.  I want a place to write about development in general.

I sort of have that now with my Advogato account, but Advogato is pretty much the same system it was six years ago… no comments, no auto-posting to Twitter or Facebook… I want to write about coding in a more modern CMS.

So I’m here… and odds are that I’ll be importing this feed back into Advogato. 🙂

I’m still tweaking the site… messing around with the theme and CSS… so it will change.  Stay tuned for more…