15 Monday Dec 2025
The previous post laid out the basics for creating windowing (GUI) apps in Python using the tkinter (Tk Interface) module. The module has been part of the standard library since Python versions 2.7 and 3.1.
In this post, as a small seasonal gift, I’ll start presenting a working GUI application — a script-driven pre-fix calculator with variables. Between the calculator code and its window code, there is too much for one post, so there will be (at least) a second part next week.
24 Monday Nov 2025
Posted in Fun, Interesting, Python
Python has included the Tk interface module (tkinter) since versions 2.7 and 3.1. The module is a binding to version 8.5 of the Tk GUI suite for making windowing applications. My first installed version of Python was 2.7, so I’ve been aware of the module for over ten years but never explored it.
At the beginning of this month, I decided to dive in. It led to an intense two-week bout of 12+ hour days, but I emerged with working apps (and my sanity). This post and ones to come document and share what I’ve learned.
17 Monday Nov 2025
Posted in Interesting, Python
The last two weeks I’ve been on a serious coding binge teaching myself Python’s Tk module. Once I wrap things up, I plan to publish a series of tutorial posts.
In the meantime, here’s a trick I learned recently that allows one to start with a series of data point and use those to (quickly!) generate a set of corresponding data points that are the derivative of the function implied in the first set. The trick uses something called the dual numbers.
20 Monday Oct 2025
Posted in Python
Last time I explored a number of useful Python decorators. The post was a revisit to a topic I first posted about five years ago [see Python Decorators, part 1 and Python Decorators, part 2]. Back then I didn’t really know what to do with decorators, but I could see they were useful.
Since then, I’ve found many applications for them, hence the revisit to the topic. In this post, we’ll continue looking at useful applications. If nothing else, they may provide some ideas for decorators of your own.
13 Monday Oct 2025
Posted in Python
I wrote about Python decorators five years ago. [See Python Decorators, part 1 and Python Decorators, part 2] At the time, they were new to me, and I hadn’t thought of good use cases for them. Or really, even just good ways to use them.
But that changed during the last five years as I’ve had occasions to actually use decorators in code. They are extremely handy in certain situations. Today’s post takes a more useful look at Python decorators.
29 Monday Sep 2025
Posted in Interesting, Python
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I’ve been working on an arbitrary-precision numeric class (in Python) that stores numbers in what amounts to base-256 — that is to say, in machine-native binary. It differs from the variable-length integers in Python by supporting fractions (and from Python’s Decimal number type by being binary).
It occurred to me I could implement multiplication with a lookup table rather than actually doing the math (at the CPU level, that may be what in fact is going on). So, I thought I’d compare the two implementations.
15 Monday Sep 2025
Posted in Interesting, Python
I have a suite of simple CGI webapps that run on my localhost Apache webserver. Long ago they were Perl scripts. These days they are Python scripts. However, in some areas, Python can be a moving target. Case in point, the cgi module and the FieldStorage dictionary object.
The module was deprecated since Python 3.11 and removed in Python 3.13. Which I just installed on my new laptop. Which broke all my webapps. Which forced me to update them. Which went fine except for one app using multipart form data. This post documents the changes and some new code I wrote.
25 Monday Aug 2025
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Recently I found myself dividing my attention between watching the Minnesota Twins lose yet another ballgame and goofing around with an idea that popped into my head for no reason I can name.
The idea turned out better than imagined in terms of capability given its design simplicity, so I thought I’d document it here. It’s not super useful as is, but those relatively new to Python might find it educational or otherwise helpful.
18 Monday Aug 2025
Posted in Python
This edition of Simple Tricks contains a random collection of bits and pieces. First, some cute bits from the interweb, then some more-or-less one-off bits I whipped up for a project and which were just barely useful enough to keep. (If for no other reason than to publish them here.)
I’ll end with a pair of simple Python functions, one to list the contents of an existing ZIP file, and one to create a new one from files in a subdirectory. The latter can be the basis for a more sophisticated archive function.
21 Monday Jul 2025
Simple Tricks #10 was about Python classes with a focus on the __new__ and __init__ built-in methods plus how to use them when extending Python’s built-in list, tuple, and dict classes.
In this edition of Simple Tricks, we’ll look at a number of possibly actually useful subclasses of Python’s dict class. Specifically, a “ticket” class, a “list of files” class, and an INI file class.
The Hard-Core Coder 