Scott Chamberlain

In February this year I wroute about how many parameters functions should have, looking at some other languages, with a detailed look at R. On a related topic …  As I work on many R packages that are API clients for various web services, I began wondering: What is the best way to deal with API routes that have a lot of parameters?

API client design: how to deal with lots of parameters?

notes to self for next job hunt (some of which may be generally useful): don’t apply to general tech companies anymore for many reasons. heard back from very very few but that may be b/c I don’t know many people at general tech companies never been able to get through interviews; they’re presumably looking for computer science grads (not me) most of their missions are probably not stuff I’d be happy about at the end of the day.

Job searching notes

I recently had a use case at work where I wanted to check that file paths given in a Python script actually existed. These paths were in various GitHub repositories, so all I had to do was pull out the paths and check if they exist on GitHub. There were a few catches though.

Python, ast, and redbaron

My parents just found this email they had printed out from me from May 19, 2006, when I was 26. I chatted about some family stuff, then had this rambling string of weird thoughts below. I thought others might appreciate a good cringe - or cringy laugh - at my expense. It’s especially funny because I’m most def an atheist. I don’t know, those Tucson sunsets really are transformative.

Weird thoughts

I was working on a work task last week, and needed to filter out one instance of a class from a list of class instances. No matter how you do this speed doesn’t matter too much if you’re doing this operation once or a few times. However, I this operation needs to be done about 100K times each time the script runs - so speed definitely does matter in this case.

List comprehension vs. filter vs. key lookup

taxizedb arose from pain in using taxize when dealing with large amounts of data in a single request or doing a lot of requests of any data size. taxize works with remote data sources on the web, so there’s a number of issues that can slow the response down: internet speed, server response speed (was a response already cached or not; or do they even use caching), etc.

taxizedb: an update

I worked on a refactor of an R package at work the other day. Here’s some notes about that after doing the work. This IS NOT a best practices post - it’s just a collection of thoughts. For context, the package is an API client.

Refactoring notes

This blog is now using Hugo. Important - if you subscribe to the RSS for this blog you likely have to delete/remove the old one and add the new RSS link.

Moved to Hugo

I wrote the other day about overcoming an issue with Shiny. Another issue I ran into concurrently was about file inputs. The issue was that file inputs (i.e., shiny::fileInput) was difficult to clear.

Shiny file inputs

I recently opened an issue in a repository for a package I’m working on to think about potential footguns and how to avoid them. That word “footguns” got me thinking;

Avoiding the word footgun(s)

I’ve been working on an inherited Shiny app at work for the past few months. One of the many frustrating things about Shiny lately has been around buttons. Well, it wasn’t really about buttons, but that’s where it started. I noticed that a number of buttons - some having file inputs, some having text inputs - did not trigger every time, and I expected them to trigger every time no matter what.

Shiny button weirdness

TL;DR  In 6 months (end of November 2022) the CRAN Checks API https://cranchecks.info/ will be gone You can still get badges at https://badges.cranchecks.info You can use the new badges like: [![cran checks](https://badges.cranchecks.info/worst/dplyr.svg)](https://cran.r-project.org/web/checks/check_results_dplyr.html)  Find more details at https://github.com/sckott/cchecksbadges Sunsetting the CRAN Checks API   If you contribute an R package to

CRAN Checks API and Badges

It’s been interesting switching jobs with respect to programming languages. I used to write 95% R - now I write 95% Python.  I have been using Python for many years, but not seriously or getting paid either. I’ve learned alot in the first 6 months.  Some Python things learned: Functions and methods   I used to think functions and methods were the same thing. But during the last 6 months I learned that functions and methods are not the same.

Notes on Python

Soooo, my last job at Deck was amazing. I loved it. I was doing data engineer stuff there, mostly maintaining infrastructure for data pipelines. Everyone was great and the mission was amazing: helping Democrats win. Yet the company was shut down about a month ago, sending me on another job search, the 3rd since early/mid 2021.

Working at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center

You’ve experienced an HTTP redirect (or URL redirect, or URL forwarding) even if you haven’t noticed. We all use browsers (I assume, since you are reading this), either on a phone or laptop/desktop computer. Browsers don’t show all the HTTP requests going on in the background, some of which are redirects.

Mocking HTTP redirects

\  Code is often arranged in packages for any given language. Packages are often cataloged in a package registry of some kind: NPM for node, crates.io for Rust, etc. For R, that registry is either CRAN or Bioconductor (for the most part).  CRAN has the concept of an archived package.

stories behind archived packages

Recology

## TL;DR

1.  In 6 months (end of November 2022) the CRAN Checks API <https://cranchecks.info/> will be gone
2.  You can still get badges at <https://badges.cranchecks.info>
3.  You can use the new badges like:

::: {.language-markdown .highlighter-rouge}
::: highlight
``` highlight
[![cran checks](https://badges.cranchecks.info/worst/dplyr.svg)](https://cran.r-project.org/web/checks/check_results_dplyr.html)
```
:::
:::

Find more details at <https://github.com/sckott/cchecksbadges>

## Sunsetting the CRAN Checks API

If you contribute an R package to [CRAN](https://cloud.r-project.org/), you may use badges from the CRAN checks API at <https://cranchecks.info/>. The CRAN Checks API has been operating [since about September 2017](https://recology.info/2017/09/cranchecks-api/) (I think).

The API has a number of routes, but really people only use the badges.

Given this usage pattern, and not wanting to pay for a server anymore, I've decided to make the badges available on a static endpoint that doesn't cost me anything. There are costs of course - but they're on Github and Netlify (thanks y'all!).

## The new static site version

The static site is created using GitHub Actions.

For a static site you need to create files for any route you want to support - so the code for the static site creates 19 routes x No. of CRAN packages = approx. 360,000 svg files.

The badges will be updated once a day - the same schedule as the API.

I had to use Netlify because Github pages (as far as I know) doesn't provide ssl certs for custom domains and my domain host doesn't provide free Lets Encrypt certs - whereas Netlify does.

Some example routes you can look at

<https://badges.cranchecks.info/summary/taxize.svg> <https://badges.cranchecks.info/worst/dplyr.svg> <https://badges.cranchecks.info/flavor/r-devel-linux-x86_64-fedora-clang/DT.svg>

If you find any issues with the badges at <https://badges.cranchecks.info> [open an issue](https://github.com/sckott/cchecksbadges/issues).
