Python has several ways to make a program exit. exit should probably only be used to exit a Python REPL because it’s not safe to assume it’s defined. The sys.exit function is safe, but you might prefer to raise SystemExit instead because: they do the same thing and have the same interface sys.exit requires an additional import (import sys) sys.exit raises SystemExit without being explicit about the fact it raises an exception You can exit with a status code, such as raise SystemExit(0) or raise SystemExit(1)....

Sometimes it’s helpful to copy a Git repository directly from one machine to another without using a Git host like GitHub. If you can SSH into the machine(s) involved, you can use Bash’s rsync command. Rsync’s defaults aren’t great for copying repos for several reasons, but a Bash script can fix that. I named the script ,cp-repo (copy repo): ,cp-repo . staging:/home/chris/repos/url-shortener This copies the current directory (.) to /home/chris/repos/url-shortener in a machine named staging as defined in an SSH config file....

Just is a tool for defining and running custom commands for specific projects. Justfiles are often compared favorably to makefiles. If you’re new to Just, check out Just Programmer’s Manual. A command definition in a justfile (a recipe) usually contains code written in the system’s default shell language, but Just lets you choose from many other languages including Python! This is especially great because it allows more recipes to be cross-platform....

During the time I’ve been making browser extensions, I’ve learned about the amazing things they can do and how helpful they are, but also how dangerous they can be. Below are some examples of risks and ways to mitigate them. Some of the risks Even though browsers put limits on what extensions can do and require them to ask permission for some things, extensions can still do more than what most people expect....

Sometimes it’s helpful to give the terms “disposable” and “masked” two different meanings when referring to types of email addresses. Both disposable addresses and masked addresses are great at protecting you from spam and phishing emails. Instead of giving out your main address, you can give out ones that are temporary or easy to replace. Some email protection services have different sets of features: addresses with inboxes that are completely public addresses with private inboxes, but you only get access to a random address for a short time (say, 10 minutes) addresses that you keep access to as long as you want, and all emails they receive are automatically forwarded to your main address I’ll refer to the last of those as “masked addresses” and the others as “disposable addresses” even though Wikipedia’s page on disposable addresses doesn’t make a distinction between them....

Restic and Duplicati are both great for making backups of your computer’s files. I have experience with both. They’re mostly the same, but they have some differences that might be important depending on your needs. Similarities They’re the same in many ways, including: free open source versioning of backups choose specific files and folders to back up encryption compression deduplication verification scheduling of backups and retention (I now use Resticprofile for this) support for many storage locations (I happen to use Backblaze B2) Differences Setup Duplicati requires less technical skill to set up because its user interface is graphical....

When creating software, it’s common to deal with secrets like database passwords, API access tokens, etc. There are many ways to make secrets available to software. Below are notes on some of the ways. Threat Modeling might help you determine which way is best for what you are doing. Environment variables Putting secrets in environment variables (env vars) is very easy and might be fine if your setup is simple and otherwise very secure....

Using stored procedures instead of putting SQL statements directly into a service’s code can increase security. There are multiple reasons why. Reduced attack surface The main security benefit is that hackers will be more limited in what they can do if the database credentials they steal can only call stored procedures. As a demonstration, let’s say your data can only be accessed by stored procedures that each take a Discord user ID as input....

Discord bots run as web services that use Discord’s API. They listen for requests from Discord and send responses. They need their own databases if a way to persist data is necessary. However, some Discord bot features require saving some data about the bot in Discord’s servers, such as slash command names. Automated testing of Discord bots tends to be very limited or nonexistent since Discord has rate limits and is too complex to practically mock....

Some differences between pointers and references can be confusing, especially since there are several different definitions for those words. This can make it difficult to answer simple questions like “Does Golang have reference types?” (TLDR: most people and the official Go FAQ say that Go does have reference types.) Pointers In some languages like C++, pointers can point anywhere in memory. They can point to null, or to memory with data of the pointer’s type, or any other part of memory....