We're back from our summer hiatus (actually scheduled for the first time ever instead of accidentally happening!)

In this week's episode, Bart takes on the task of explaining the philosophy behind why having a framework for software development is useful and even crucial as projects get bigger and more complex. We chose this topic because the XKPasswd project has already started using a framework called Model View Controller. We get the barest understanding of MVC in this explanation from Bart, and the next episode of Programming By Stealth will be the wonderful Helma van der Linden explaining the details of her implementation of MVC for the XKPasswd project. In the first episode of its kind, I won't be the only student in the class - Bart and I will be learning together.

You can find Bart's fabulous tutorial shownotes at pbs.bartificer.net.

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In this Tidbit version of Programming By Stealth, Bart Busschots interviews Mattias Wadman, one of the maintainers of the jq project. This was great fun as we just finished learning jq in Programming By Stealth.

Read an unedited, auto-generated transcript with chapter marks: PBS_2024_08_06

You can find out more about Mattias & the various projects he is working on at the links below:

• Follow Mattias on Mastodon: @wader@fosstodon.org

• Mattias’ GitHub Profile which hosts some notable jq-related projects:

  • fq for querying binary files with the jq language: github.com/wader/fq

    • A list of presentations about fq — github.com/…
    • The fork of the Go version of jq that powers fq — github.com/…

  • The language definition file for adding jq support to IDEs like VS Code: github.com/wader/jq-lsp

  • jq implemented in jq: github.com/wader/jqjq

• Some notable jq commits & files mentioned during the interview:

  • The very first commit in Haskel
  • The switch to C
  • jq’s main function which is written in jq — https://github.com/…

• A version of jq implemented in Go: github.com/itchyny/gojq

• A version of jq implemented in Rust by Michael Färber: github.com/01mf02/jaq

  • Michael’s formal specification of the jq language — github.com/…
  • The “Denotational Semantics and a Fast Interpreter for jq” academic paper by Michael

In this special tidbit installment of Programming By Stealth, Helma van der Linden joins Allison to walk through how she solved a real-world problem using jq. The problem to be solved was a need to analyze the installed applications on her Intel-based Mac before migrating to her new Apple Silicon Mac.

She used a built-in Terminal command to access System Information to create a JSON file, and then used a series of jq filters to remove data she didn't need, and format what she kept into human-readable form. Helma walks us through every step of the way as she built up her jq script file to massage the data to her needs.

At the end Allison explains how to take Helma's final CSV output and analyze the data in a spreadsheet using a pivot table.

You can find _Helma's_ fabulous tutorial shownotes at pbs.bartificer.net.

Read an unedited, auto-generated transcript with chapter marks: PBS_2024_07_20

Join our Slack at podfeet.com/slack and look for the #pbs channel, and check out our pbs-student GitHub Organization. It's by invitation only but all you have to do is ask Allison!