PyCon UK 2023 Raw Notes

Notes on this year's PyCon UK conference held in Cardiff: talk highlights, quotes & thoughts. | Continue reading


@lukemerrett.com | 7 months ago

Building C4 Diagrams in Mermaid

Using MermaidJS to render C4 Diagrams in Markdown | Continue reading


@lukemerrett.com | 1 year ago

Mermaid Diagrams as Code in Notion

How to display lovely diagrams in Notion using Mermaid syntax | Continue reading


@lukemerrett.com | 2 years ago

When a Flask DB Upgrade Fails on a Batch of Scripts

What happens when 1 script in a "flask db upgrade" batch fails, how does the roll back behave? | Continue reading


@lukemerrett.com | 2 years ago

A Dive into Python Type Hints

An overview of typing hinting in Python, including Optional, Union, Protocol, TypeVar and Callable types. | Continue reading


@lukemerrett.com | 2 years ago

Different Merge Types in Git

Demystifying the difference between "Merge", "Fast Forward Merge", "Squash and Merge" and "Rebase and Merge" on Git | Continue reading


@lukemerrett.com | 2 years ago

C4, Diagrams as Code & Architectural Joy

This is a long form article showing the journey of how we gained value in usingC4 diagrams combined with Diagrams as Code when representing our team'sarchitecture. I wanted to go into detail about where we were coming from and theissues we saw in that approach, along with | Continue reading


@lukemerrett.com | 3 years ago

Record Types in C# 9.0

What are Record Types?Record Types are a popular feature of F#[https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/fsharp/language-reference/records],also commonly found in other functional languages, that have recently beenintroduced to C# in version 9.0[https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotne … | Continue reading


@lukemerrett.com | 3 years ago

Getting Things Done in Notion Using Tables

One of the key draws of Notion [https://www.notion.so/] is the flexibility itsTable functionality brings, acting as a combination of Trello, MS Access & aTo-Do-List all in one. Using this tool you can set up relatively complexworkflows across multiple views.To show off this featu … | Continue reading


@lukemerrett.com | 4 years ago

Building a Personal Highlights Tracker in Notion

Notion [https://www.notion.so] is a relatively new wiki tool that's been gaininga lot of traction lately, especially with task management geeks like myself.You can think of it initially like a web-based wiki (with desktop & mobileapps), it has a hierarchy of pages you can fill wi … | Continue reading


@lukemerrett.com | 5 years ago

F# Data Type Providers in .Net Core

As one of F#'s killer features; type providers have the ability to make rooms full of developers gasp when shown for the first time. Support has recently been added to the FSharp.Data library for .Net Standard 2.0, allowing us to use type providers for a range of | Continue reading


@lukemerrett.com | 5 years ago

Automating Pilot Health Checks with Holt-Winters & Graphite

Recently Netflix announced the release of Kayenta[https://medium.com/netflix-techblog/automated-canary-analysis-at-netflix-with-kayenta-3260bc7acc69]; an open source tool for automating canary analysis they use to ensure theirpilot deployments are healthy.This post outlines how y … | Continue reading


@lukemerrett.com | 6 years ago

Deploying Docker Containers with Azure Container Instances

For one of my upcoming blogposts I have been exploring options for hostingDocker containers in the cloud. Along the way I found that Azure ContainerInstances is a relatively straight foward, no nonsense approach if you're afterrapidly hosting an image without having to deal with … | Continue reading


@lukemerrett.com | 6 years ago

Timing a Function in F#

This can be useful for capturing how long an operation takes to execute, it also nicely demonstrates how generics operate in F#. Modified from the original version found in the F# Programming Wikibook open System.Diagnostics type TimedOperation = {millisecondsTaken:int64; returne … | Continue reading


@lukemerrett.com | 6 years ago

Environment Specific Configuration in DotNet Core

It's common to have different application configurations per environment (e.g:Dev, QA, Production) allowing us to switch between them at each stage.In older Web Applications this was usually done with Web Config Transformationsor Razor files, however the new ConfigurationBuilder … | Continue reading


@lukemerrett.com | 6 years ago

Behaviour Driven Unit Tests

> "If we change the implementation details, none of our tests should break" - IanCooperThis blog comes following a work chat around one of the best tech talks I'vewatched; TDD: Where Did It All Go Wrong [https://vimeo.com/68375232] by IanCooperStop me if you've heard | Continue reading


@lukemerrett.com | 7 years ago