Do you understand how a hash table works? What if you could learn about building one while practicing test-driven development? What are best practices when designing a REST API? This week on the show, Christopher Trudeau is here, and he’s brought another batch of PyCoder’s Weekly articles and projects.

We talk about the recent Real Python article “Build a Hash Table in Python With TDD.” The tutorial shows how to implement a hash table prototype from scratch in Python. It also provides a hands-on crash course in test-driven development.

Christopher shares an article on designing REST APIs and provides some of his own best practices. We cover authentication implementation, good naming conventions, versioned APIs, and ways to specify dates.

We cover several other articles and projects from the Python community, including a news roundup, a PEP on removing dead batteries from the standard library, a comparison of the Python list vs tuple, a guide to writing user-friendly CLIs in Python, just enough Cython to be useful, a cross-platform TUI and ASCII animation package, and code for running black on Python code blocks in documentation files.

Course Spotlight: Command Line Interfaces in Python

Command-line arguments are the key to converting your programs into useful and enticing tools that are ready to be used in the terminal of your operating system. In this course, you’ll learn their origins, standards, and basics, and how to implement them in your program.

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