Category Archives: Python

Testing Python

Professionally I started work using C++ and from there started to go more and more into Java and from there, without leaving it, moving more and more to Python. One of the things I discovered with Python was how little there was on structuring compared to Java. The other thing I found was that I found less information on possibilities for testing than in the Java world.

Percival’s book Test-Driven Development with Python has been an excellent help to getting fast on track using more than basic possibilities for proper testing in this language. A great thing this book does is to help you get a Django project up and running.

Take a look at the book’s site here. It is really good.

Natural Language Processing with TensorFlow by Ganegadara

I actually started to read this book last year. I went through most of it and experimented a lot but had no time to write. I finally read the last chapter, which I had somehow put off. All in all, it is a useful book on using TensorFlow for NLP.

It offers a good exploration of what Word2Vec is. It goes on to CNNs first with image recognition and then with sentence classification, then it does a good initial cover of LSTMS and finally it touches very briefly some trends.

I think I would have skipped the NLP introduction, but then I have worked on NLP almost all of my life. Ganegadara should not have gone so long on WordNet etc. As much as it was an usual tool, it still might be, a paragraph would have been enough.

It was a pity the last part, the one I left until now on trends, was so short but then the technology and even the basics on what deep learning is about are changing so fast!

Another Pac(k)t

OK, terrible pun. I was not inspired. Anyway: I am going through Natural Language Processing with TensorFlow by Ganegedera and although I find Packt books often are published in a bit of a rush, this seems to present a neat introduction to Tensorflow as related to NLP. There are some simplifications on NLP and all, but it does present a good introduction to TensorFlow in this area.

 

Lecturas de septiembre

Dos libros muy diferentes han ocupado algunas horas de mi tiempo libre en las últimas semanas. Uno es un libro de ciencia popular en español, El Ojo Desnudo. En esta publicación Antonio Martínez Ron nos da un buen paseo por un sinnúmero de investigaciones realizadas sobre el ojo y la visión. Hay de todo un poco. Es uno de esos libros de ciencia general que lo pone a pensar a uno en muchas cosas distintas que se nos atisban de repente muy interrelacionadas.

El otro libro, del lado puramente técnico, es Fluent in Python. Está concebido para aquellos que ya dominan este idioma de programación y quieren adentrarse más en tal o cual punto. Está muy bien escrito.