The Latest Experiment

Ξ February 8th, 2009 | → 0 Comments |
Computer, Development |, , , |

The last post was so long ago that it’s hard to remember. Usually, the lack of posts comes associated with some huge amount of work. I could say that this is another example how my work takes to much of my own time, but that would not be completely true. In fact, I have been working long hours but the main reason for not having time to write is another…

I don’t see myself has a sysadmin, but I like to do my own experiments… like building a file sharing server (one that no one will hever use), having a wireless network in place (to be used once every month by a computer that could easily be connected using a wired connection) or mounting a home theater PC (an placing the old computer box in the living room and understanding that it really looks ugly and out-of-place).

No, this time it wasn’t one of “my crazy” projects. I just decided to learn a new language… I didn’t actually decided it! Let’s just say that Python started to grow on me. And front my point of view, Python is far better that bash script or perl or any other scripting language out there. With it you can do the simplest things, like inspecting some file’s content or you can do the most complex procedure (including, for example, DB access).

Book Cover
A friend talked about Python with me, and for someone with background in C/C++ and some bash script, Python turned out to be really (REALLY!) simple. I’ve been using it for a couple of months and I already converted all my ‘~/bin’ scripts to Python.

My real interest began after finding “Python for Unix and Linux System Administration” and reading this really hands-on and example based ‘introduction’.

More on my Python experiments, soon… (I hope!)

 

backtrace… up 1

Ξ March 13th, 2008 | → 0 Comments |
Computer, Software, Work |, , |

The themes presented in this blog are naturally evolving along with my day-by-day experiences. The last days (or should it be months) have been completely occupied with software developments tasks known as implementation, implementation, and more implementation… I must admit that C/C++ has become my second language.

Closely associated with source code production come the fine “art of debugging”. My favorite debugger is GDB (from The GNU Debugger Project).

Learning something new every day is somewhat of a life’s philosophy for me, and it is with big enthusiasm that I learn more about using GDB. The last example of a lesson learned was: how to use backtrace command to display the trace of the execution stack (which was not new to me), and navigate that same stack using the up and down commands and verifying the parameters passed to each function.

More details can be found in the Program Stack section of the GDB Quick Reference.