About Archive Tag Cloud Translations RSS
  1. What Do Django People Search About?

    by Will Larson
    June 17, 2009 django

    Link to the search logs for Findjango. Obviously, not really that much data, but something.

    Comment by Will Larson on June 18, 2009

    Yahoo and Elsewhere were suggested queries on a tutorial and on the GitHub blog, respectively.

    Comment by arien on June 18, 2009

    Your counts are off. According to "grep -cE '\bdjango\b' queries.log" there are 858 queries with "django" as a keyword.

    import codecs
    import re
    
    word_re = re.compile(r'\w+', re.UNICODE)
    words = (word.lower() for line in codecs.open('queries.log', encoding='utf-8')
                          for word in word_re.findall(line))
    
    stats = {}
    for word in words:
        stats[word] = stats.get(word, 0) + 1
    
    # ... etc...
    

    Returns 861 occurences of "django". (Why not 858? "django" appears four times on one line.)

    Comment by Dougal Matthews on June 18, 2009

    Interesting post. Thanks for the data, doing a simple analysis here are the top 30 keywords:

    1. django: 803
    2. performance: 774
    3. test: 662
    4. elsewhere: 492
    5. yahoo: 468
    6. cache: 430
    7. expire: 404
    8. tutorial: 326
    9. pro: 325
    10. storage: 75
    11. design: 73
    12. admin: 72
    13. schedule: 71
    14. template: 69
    15. model: 68
    16. app: 65
    17. registration: 65
    18. engine: 62
    19. search: 50
    20. newsletter: 47
    21. cms: 41
    22. queryset: 41
    23. ajax: 40
    24. google: 39
    25. blog: 38
    26. forms: 35
    27. jquery: 33
    28. models: 32
    29. request: 27
    30. appengine: 24

    Django at #1 is no surprise but it is a bit like searching google for google.

    -2 is a bit odd. Looking at likes 1597 onwards explains why perfomance comes up so much. Although, it is commonly used all through the log, so maybe performance is a key concern/worry for people?

    -4 and #5 not really sure why elsewhere and yahoo are coming up so much?

    It'd be interesting to see this information against the useragent as I suspect some of the unusual things will be front annoying robots.

    Oh and FWIW;

    from string import punctuation
    from operator import itemgetter
    
    words = {}
    
    words_gen = (word.strip(punctuation).lower() for line in open("queries.log")
                                                 for word in line.split())
    for word in words_gen:
        words[word] = words.get(word, 0) + 1
    
    top_words = sorted(words.iteritems(), key=itemgetter(1), reverse=True)[:30]
    
    for word, frequency in top_words:
        print "%s: %d" % (word, frequency)
    
  2. YUI Dialogs, IE z-index and Tragedy

    by Will Larson
    June 16, 2009 fail YUI

    Yesterday I was confused by my own code--really really confused--for the first time in a very long time. Here is the story I unraveled.

  3. Feedback Loops in Software Development

    by Will Larson
    June 1, 2009 software engineering

    As become further and further embroiled in my current project cycle, I am starting to view everything in terms of feedback loops. Is the project working well? Feedback loops. The guy who is having trouble with implementing part of the system? Feedback loops. Effective communication between product manager and engineers? Feedback loops. Beyond merely being possible to view the world in terms of feedback loops, I've found it rather useful as well.

  4. Recycling Hacker Fear-Mongering

    by Will Larson
    May 31, 2009 news

    Recently President Obama and every publishing outfit that can convince their editors to publish words like "cyberwarrior" has been writing about nefarious hackers and the new elite soldiers tasked with combatting them. If only any of it was true.

  5. Skew, The Frontend Engineer's Misery

    by Will Larson
    April 28, 2009 software engineering

    A look at the frontend engineer's primary pain point: product skew. While skew impacts everyone, it beats on the frontend engineer early and frequently. Think frontend engineer's have the easy half of engineering? Well, let's talk about that.

    Comment by El Guapo on May 17, 2009

    The frustration I run into as a FE engineer is almost 100% attributable to the fact that I don't design what I have to implement.


    This is a HUGE factor. Especially so, when the designer has no concept of how the web works( think Print background ), the foibles of 27 different browsers, and an insane fixation on absolute, pixel-perfect rendering.

    I will second the other replies as well. A most spot-on article. Now I shall go and weep for the pain that is mine....

    Comment by David Mosher on April 29, 2009 Responding to Will Larson

    I work in a relatively small team (7 developers) and we still have these problems. Regardless of team size I think the common factor here is, as you put it Will, "[giving] the frontend team greater ownership of their product."

    The frustration I run into as a FE engineer is almost 100% attributable to the fact that I don't design what I have to implement.

    Comment by Will Larson on April 29, 2009 Responding to robert

    Why do you think that is? Are you working on a small team or within a small company? From the feedback I've gotten, these are common critiques by FE engineers in a certain kind of environment.