Python Bytes

By Michael Kennedy and Brian Okken

Python Bytes is a weekly podcast hosted by Michael Kennedy and Brian Okken. The show is a short discussion on the headlines and noteworthy news in the Python, developer, and data science space.... more

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The podcast currently has 677 episodes available.

Python Bytes episodes:

March 09, 2026#472 Monorepos
Topics covered in this episode:
Setting up a Python monorepo with uv workspaces
cattrs: Flexible Object Serialization and Validation
Learning to program in the AI age
VS Code extension for FastAPI and friends
Extras
Joke
Watch on YouTube
About the show
Sponsored by us! Support our work through:
Our courses at Talk Python Training
The Complete pytest Course
Patreon Supporters
Connect with the hosts
Michael: @[email protected] / @mkennedy.codes (bsky)
Brian: @[email protected] / @brianokken.bsky.social
Show: @[email protected] / @pythonbytes.fm (bsky)
Join us on YouTube at pythonbytes.fm/live to be part of the audience. Usually Monday at 11am PT. Older video versions available there too.
Finally, if you want an artisanal, hand-crafted digest of every week of the show notes in email form? Add your name and email to our friends of the show list, we'll never share it.
Brian #1: Setting up a Python monorepo with uv workspaces
Dennis Traub
The 3 things
Give the Root a Distinct Name
Use workspace = true for Inter-Package Deps
Use importlib Mode for pytest
Michael #2: cattrs: Flexible Object Serialization and Validation
cattrs is a Swiss Army knife for (un)structuring and validating data in Python.
A natural alternative/follow on from DataClass Wizard
Converts to ←→ from dictionaries
cattrs also focuses on functional composition and not coupling your data model to its serialization and validation rules.
When you’re handed unstructured data (by your network, file system, database, …), cattrs helps to convert this data into trustworthy structured data.
Batteries Included: cattrs comes with pre-configured converters for a number of serialization libraries, including JSON (standard library, orjson, UltraJSON), msgpack, cbor2, bson, PyYAML, tomlkit and msgspec (supports only JSON at this time).
Brian #3: Learning to program in the AI age
Jose Blanca
“I teach a couple of introductory Python courses and I've been thinking about which advice to give to my students, that are studying how to program for the first time. I have collected my ideas in these blog posts”
Why learning to program is as useful as ever, even with powerful AI tools available.
How to use AI as a tutor rather than a shortcut, and why practice remains the key to real understanding.
What the real learning objectives are: mental models, managing complexity, and thinking like a software developer.
Michael #4: VS Code extension for FastAPI and friends
Enhances the FastAPI development experience in Visual Studio Code
Path Operation Explorer: Provides a hierarchical tree view of all FastAPI routes in your application.
Search for routes: Use the Command Palette and quickly search for routes by path, method, or name.
CodeLens links appear above HTTP client calls like client.get('/items'), letting you jump directly to the matching route definition.
Deploy your application directly to FastAPI Cloud from the status bar with zero config.
View real-time logs from your FastAPI Cloud deployed applications directly within VS Code.
Install from Marketplace.
Extras
Brian:
Guido van Rossum interviews key Python developers from the first 25 years
Interview with Brett Cannon
Interview with Thomas Wouters
Michael:
IntelliJ IDEA: The Documentary | An origin story video
Cursor Joined the ACP Registry and Is Now Live in Your JetBrains IDE
What hyper-personal software looks like
I’m doing in-person training again (limited scope):
On-site, hands-on AI engineering enablement for software teams with Michael
Joke: Saas is dead
...more
29min
March 02, 2026#471 The ORM pattern of 2026?
Topics covered in this episode:
Raw+DC: The ORM pattern of 2026?
pytest-check releases
Dataclass Wizard
SQLiteo - “native macOS SQLite browser built for normal people”
Extras
Joke
Watch on YouTube
About the show
Sponsored by us! Support our work through:
Our courses at Talk Python Training
The Complete pytest Course
Patreon Supporters
Connect with the hosts
Michael: @[email protected] / @mkennedy.codes (bsky)
Brian: @[email protected] / @brianokken.bsky.social
Show: @[email protected] / @pythonbytes.fm (bsky)
Join us on YouTube at pythonbytes.fm/live to be part of the audience. Usually Monday at 11am PT. Older video versions available there too.
Finally, if you want an artisanal, hand-crafted digest of every week of the show notes in email form? Add your name and email to our friends of the show list, we'll never share it.
Michael #1: Raw+DC: The ORM pattern of 2026?
ORMs/ODMs provide great support and abstractions for developers
They are not the native language of agentic AI
Raw queries are trained 100x+ more than standard ORMs
Using raw queries at the data access optimizes for AI coding
Returning some sort of object mapped to the data optimizes for type safety and devs
Brian #2: pytest-check releases
3 merged pull requests
8 closed issues
at one point got to 0 PR’s and 1 enhancement request
Now back to 2 issues and 1 PR, but activity means it’s still alive and being used. so cool
Check out changelog for all mods
A lot of changes around supporting mypy
I’ve decided to NOT have the examples be fully --strict as I find it reduces readability
See tox.ini for explanation
But src is --strict clean now, so user tests can be --strict clean.
Michael #3: Dataclass Wizard
Simple, elegant wizarding tools for Python’s dataclasses.
Features
🚀 Fast — code-generated loaders and dumpers
🪶 Lightweight — pure Python, minimal dependencies
🧠 Typed — powered by Python type hints
🧙 Flexible — JSON, YAML, TOML, and environment variables
🧪 Reliable — battle-tested with extensive test coverage
No Inheritance Needed
Brian #4: SQLiteo - “native macOS SQLite browser built for normal people”
Adam Hill
This is a fun tool, built by someone I trust.
That trust part is something I’m thinking about a lot in these days of dev+agent built tools
Some notes on my thoughts when evaluating
I know mac rules around installing .dmg files not from the apple store are picky.
And I like that
But I’m ok with the override when something comes from a dev I trust
The contributors are all Adam
I’m still not sure how I feel about letting agents do commits in repos
There’s “AGENTS” folder and markdown files in the project for agents, so Ad
Extras
Michael:
PyTV Python Unplugged This Week
IBM Crashes 11% in 4 Hours - $24 Billion Wiped Out After Anthropic's Claude Code Threatens the Entire COBOL Consulting Industry
Loving my 40” ultrawide monitor more every day
Updatest for updating all the mac things
Ice has Thawed out (mac menubar app)
Joke: House is read-only!
...more
40min
February 23, 2026#470 A Jolting Episode
Topics covered in this episode:
Better Python tests with inline-snapshot
jolt Battery intelligence for your laptop
Markdown code formatting with ruff
act - run your GitHub actions locally
Extras
Joke
Watch on YouTube
About the show
Sponsored by us! Support our work through:
Our courses at Talk Python Training
The Complete pytest Course
Patreon Supporters
Connect with the hosts
Michael: @[email protected] / @mkennedy.codes (bsky)
Brian: @[email protected] / @brianokken.bsky.social
Show: @[email protected] / @pythonbytes.fm (bsky)
Join us on YouTube at pythonbytes.fm/live to be part of the audience. Usually Monday at 11am PT. Older video versions available there too.
Finally, if you want an artisanal, hand-crafted digest of every week of the show notes in email form? Add your name and email to our friends of the show list, we'll never share it.
Brian #1: Better Python tests with inline-snapshot
Alex Hall, on Pydantic blog
Great for testing complex data structures
Allows you to write a test like this:
from inline_snapshot import snapshot
def test_user_creation():
user = create_user(id=123, name="test_user")
assert user.dict() == snapshot({})
Then run pytest --inline-snapshot=fix
And the library updates the test source code to look like this:
def test_user_creation():
user = create_user(id=123, name="test_user")
assert user.dict() == snapshot({
"id": 123,
"name": "test_user",
"status": "active"
})
Now, when you run the code without “fix” the collected data is used for comparison
Awesome to be able to visually inspect the test data right there in the test code.
Projects mentioned
inline-snapshot
pytest-examples
syrupy
dirty-equals
executing
Michael #2: jolt Battery intelligence for your laptop
Support for both macOS and Linux
Battery Status — Charge percentage, time remaining, health, and cycle count
Power Monitoring — System power draw with CPU/GPU breakdown
Process Tracking — Processes sorted by energy impact with color-coded severity
Historical Graphs — Track battery and power trends over time
Themes — 10+ built-in themes with dark/light auto-detection
Background Daemon — Collect historical data even when the TUI isn't running
Process Management — Kill energy-hungry processes directly
Brian #3: Markdown code formatting with ruff
Suggested by Matthias Schoettle
ruff can now format code within markdown files
Will format valid Python code in code blocks marked with python, py, python3 or py3.
Also recognizes pyi as Python type stub files.
Includes the ability to turn off formatting with comment [HTML_REMOVED] , [HTML_REMOVED] blocks.
Requires preview mode
[tool.ruff.lint]
preview = true
Michael #4: act - run your GitHub actions locally
Run your GitHub Actions locally! Why would you want to do this? Two reasons:
Fast Feedback - Rather than having to commit/push every time you want to test out the changes you are making to your .github/workflows/ files (or for any changes to embedded GitHub actions), you can use act to run the actions locally. The environment variables and filesystem are all configured to match what GitHub provides.
Local Task Runner - I love make. However, I also hate repeating myself. With act, you can use the GitHub Actions defined in your .github/workflows/ to replace your Makefile!
When you run act it reads in your GitHub Actions from .github/workflows/ and determines the set of actions that need to be run.
Uses the Docker API to either pull or build the necessary images, as defined in your workflow files and finally determines the execution path based on the dependencies that were defined.
Once it has the execution path, it then uses the Docker API to run containers for each action based on the images prepared earlier.
The environment variables and filesystem are all configured to match what GitHub provides.
Extras
Michael:
Winter is coming: Frozendict accepted
Django ORM stand-alone
Command Book app announcement post
Joke: Plug ‘n Paste
...more
26min
February 09, 2026#469 Commands, out of the terminal
Topics covered in this episode:
Command Book App
uvx.sh: Install Python tools without uv or Python
Ending 15 years of subprocess polling
monty: A minimal, secure Python interpreter written in Rust for use by AI
Extras
Joke
Watch on YouTube
About the show
Sponsored by us! Support our work through:
Our courses at Talk Python Training
The Complete pytest Course
Patreon Supporters
Connect with the hosts
Michael: @[email protected] / @mkennedy.codes (bsky)
Brian: @[email protected] / @brianokken.bsky.social
Show: @[email protected] / @pythonbytes.fm (bsky)
Join us on YouTube at pythonbytes.fm/live to be part of the audience. Usually Monday at 10am PT. Older video versions available there too.
Finally, if you want an artisanal, hand-crafted digest of every week of the show notes in email form? Add your name and email to our friends of the show list, we'll never share it.
Michael #1: Command Book App
New app from Michael
Command Book App is a native macOS app for developers, data scientists, AI enthusiasts and more.
This is a tool I've been using lately to help build Talk Python, Python Bytes, Talk Python Training, and many more applications.
It's a bit like advanced terminal commands or complex shell aliases, but hosted outside of your terminal. This leaves the terminal there for interactive commands, exploration, short actions.
Command Book manages commands like "tail this log while I'm developing the app", "Run the dev web server with true auto-reload", and even "Run MongoDB in Docker with exactly the settings I need"
I'd love it if you gave it a look, shared it with your team, and send me feedback.
Has a free version and paid version.
Build with Swift and Swift UI
Check it out at https://commandbookapp.com
Brian #2: uvx.sh: Install Python tools without uv or Python
Tim Hopper
Michael #3: Ending 15 years of subprocess polling
by Giampaolo Rodola
The standard library's subprocess module has relied on a busy-loop polling approach since the timeout parameter was added to Popen.wait() in Python 3.3, around 15 years ago
The problem with busy-polling
CPU wake-ups: even with exponential backoff (starting at 0.1ms, capping at 40ms), the system constantly wakes up to check process status, wasting CPU cycles and draining batteries.
Latency: there's always a gap between when a process actually terminates and when you detect it.
Scalability: monitoring many processes simultaneously magnifies all of the above.
+ L1/L2 CPU cache invalidations
It’s interesting to note that waiting via poll() (or kqueue()) puts the process into the exact same sleeping state as a plain time.sleep() call. From the kernel's perspective, both are interruptible sleeps.
Here is the merged PR for this change.
Brian #4: monty: A minimal, secure Python interpreter written in Rust for use by AI
Samuel Colvin and others at Pydantic
Still experimental
“Monty avoids the cost, latency, complexity and general faff of using a full container based sandbox for running LLM generated code. “
“Instead, it lets you safely run Python code written by an LLM embedded in your agent, with startup times measured in single digit microseconds not hundreds of milliseconds.”
Extras
Brian:
Expertise is the art of ignoring - Kevin Renskers
You don’t need to master the language. You need to master your slice.
Learning everything up front is wasted effort.
Experience changes what you pay attention to.
I hate fish - Rands (Michael Lopp)
Really about productivity systems
And a nice process for dealing with email
Michael:
Talk Python now has a CLI
New essay: It's not vibe coding - Agentic engineering
GitHub is having a day
Python 3.14.3 and 3.13.12 are available
Wall Street just lost $285 billion because of 13 markdown files
Joke: Silence, current side project!
...more
34min
February 03, 2026#468 A bolt of Django
Topics covered in this episode:
django-bolt: Faster than FastAPI, but with Django ORM, Django Admin, and Django packages
pyleak
More Django (three articles)
Datastar
Extras
Joke
Watch on YouTube
About the show
Sponsored by us! Support our work through:
Our courses at Talk Python Training
The Complete pytest Course
Patreon Supporters
Connect with the hosts
Michael: @[email protected] / @mkennedy.codes (bsky)
Brian: @[email protected] / @brianokken.bsky.social
Show: @[email protected] / @pythonbytes.fm (bsky)
Join us on YouTube at pythonbytes.fm/live to be part of the audience. Usually Monday at 11am PT. Older video versions available there too.
Finally, if you want an artisanal, hand-crafted digest of every week of the show notes in email form? Add your name and email to our friends of the show list, we'll never share it.
Brian #1: django-bolt : Faster than FastAPI, but with Django ORM, Django Admin, and Django packages
Farhan Ali Raza
High-Performance Fully Typed API Framework for Django
Inspired by DRF, FastAPI, Litestar, and Robyn
Django-Bolt docs
Interview with Farhan on Django Chat Podcast
And a walkthrough video
Michael #2: pyleak
Detect leaked asyncio tasks, threads, and event loop blocking with stack trace in Python. Inspired by goleak.
Has patterns for
Context managers
decorators
Checks for
Unawaited asyncio tasks
Threads
Blocking of an asyncio loop
Includes a pytest plugin so you can do @pytest.mark.no_leaks
Brian #3: More Django (three articles)
Migrating From Celery to Django Tasks
Paul Taylor
Nice intro of how easy it is to get started with Django Tasks
Some notes on starting to use Django
Julia Evans
A handful of reasons why Django is a great choice for a web framework
less magic than Rails
a built-in admin
nice ORM
automatic migrations
nice docs
you can use sqlite in production
built in email
The definitive guide to using Django with SQLite in production
I’m gonna have to study this a bit.
The conclusion states one of the benefits is “reduced complexity”, but, it still seems like quite a bit to me.
Michael #4: Datastar
Sent to us by Forrest Lanier
Lots of work by Chris May
Out on Talk Python soon.
Official Datastar Python SDK
Datastar is a little like HTMX, but
The single source of truth is your server
Events can be sent from server automatically (using SSE)
e.g
yield SSE.patch_elements(
f"""{(#HTML#)}{datetime.now().isoformat()}"""
)
Why I switched from HTMX to Datastar article
Extras
Brian:
Django Chat: Inverting the Testing Pyramid - Brian Okken
Quite a fun interview
PEP 686 – Make UTF-8 mode default
Now with status “Final” and slated for Python 3.15
Michael:
Prayson Daniel’s Paper tracker
Ice Cubes (open source Mastodon client for macOS)
Rumdl for PyCharm, et. al
cURL Gets Rid of Its Bug Bounty Program Over AI Slop Overrun
Python Developers Survey 2026
Joke: Pushed to prod
...more
31min
January 26, 2026#467 Toads in my AI
Topics covered in this episode:
GreyNoise IP Check
tprof: a targeting profiler
TOAD is out
Extras
Joke
Watch on YouTube
About the show
Sponsored by us! Support our work through:
Our courses at Talk Python Training
The Complete pytest Course
Patreon Supporters
Connect with the hosts
Michael: @[email protected] / @mkennedy.codes (bsky)
Brian: @[email protected] / @brianokken.bsky.social
Show: @[email protected] / @pythonbytes.fm (bsky)
Join us on YouTube at pythonbytes.fm/live to be part of the audience. Usually Monday at 11am PT. Older video versions available there too.
Finally, if you want an artisanal, hand-crafted digest of every week of the show notes in email form? Add your name and email to our friends of the show list, we'll never share it.
Michael #1: GreyNoise IP Check
GreyNoise watches the internet's background radiation—the constant storm of scanners, bots, and probes hitting every IP address on Earth.
Is your computer sending out bot or other bad-actor traffic? What about the myriad of devices and IoT things on your local IP?
Heads up: If your IP has recently changed, it might not be you (false positive).
Brian #2: tprof: a targeting profiler
Adam Johnson
Intro blog post: Python: introducing tprof, a targeting profiler
Michael #3: TOAD is out
Toad is a unified experience for AI in the terminal
Front-end for AI tools such as OpenHands, Claude Code, Gemini CLI, and many more.
Better TUI experience (e.g. @ for file context uses fuzzy search and dropdowns)
Better prompt input (mouse, keyboard, even colored code and markdown blocks)
Terminal within terminals (for TUI support)
Brian #4: FastAPI adds Contribution Guidelines around AI usage
Docs commit: Add contribution instructions about LLM generated code and comments and automated tools for PRs
Docs section: Development - Contributing : Automated Code and AI
Great inspiration and example of how to deal with this for popular open source projects
“If the human effort put in a PR, e.g. writing LLM prompts, is less than the effort we would need to put to review it, please don't submit the PR.”
With sections on
Closing Automated and AI PRs
Human Effort Denial of Service
Use Tools Wisely
Extras
Brian:
Apparently Digg is back and there’s a Python Community there
Why light-weight websites may one day save your life - Marijke LuttekesHome
Michael:
Blog posts about Talk Python AI Integrations
Announcing Talk Python AI Integrations on Talk Python’s Blog
Blocking AI crawlers might be a bad idea on Michael’s Blog
Already using the compile flag for faster app startup on the containers:
RUN --mount=type=cache,target=/root/.cache uv pip install --compile-bytecode --python /venv/bin/python
I think it’s speeding startup by about 1s / container.
Biggest prompt yet? 72 pages, 11, 000
Joke: A date
via From Pat Decker
...more
32min
January 19, 2026#466 PSF Lands $1.5 million
Topics covered in this episode:
Better Django management commands with django-click and django-typer
PSF Lands a $1.5 million sponsorship from Anthropic
How uv got so fast
PyView Web Framework
Extras
Joke
Watch on YouTube
About the show
Sponsored by us! Support our work through:
Our courses at Talk Python Training
The Complete pytest Course
Patreon Supporters
Connect with the hosts
Michael: @[email protected] / @mkennedy.codes (bsky)
Brian: @[email protected] / @brianokken.bsky.social
Show: @[email protected] / @pythonbytes.fm (bsky)
Join us on YouTube at pythonbytes.fm/live to be part of the audience. Usually Monday at 11am PT. Older video versions available there too.
Finally, if you want an artisanal, hand-crafted digest of every week of the show notes in email form? Add your name and email to our friends of the show list, we'll never share it.
Brian #1: Better Django management commands with django-click and django-typer
Lacy Henschel
Extend Django manage.py commands for your own project, for things like
data operations
API integrations
complex data transformations
development and debugging
Extending is built into Django, but it looks easier, less code, and more fun with either django-click or django-typer, two projects supported through Django Commons
Michael #2: PSF Lands a $1.5 million sponsorship from Anthropic
Anthropic is partnering with the Python Software Foundation in a landmark funding commitment to support both security initiatives and the PSF's core work.
The funds will enable new automated tools for proactively reviewing all packages uploaded to PyPI, moving beyond the current reactive-only review process.
The PSF plans to build a new dataset of known malware for capability analysis
The investment will sustain programs like the Developer in Residence initiative, community grants, and infrastructure like PyPI.
Brian #3: How uv got so fast
Andrew Nesbitt
It’s not just be cause “it’s written in Rust”.
Recent-ish standards, PEPs 518 (2016), 517 (2017), 621 (2020), and 658 (2022) made many uv design decisions possible
And uv drops many backwards compatible decisions kept by pip.
Dropping functionality speeds things up.
“Speed comes from elimination. Every code path you don’t have is a code path you don’t wait for.”
Some of what uv does could be implemented in pip. Some cannot.
Andrew discusses different speedups, why they could be done in Python also, or why they cannot.
I read this article out of interest. But it gives me lots of ideas for tools that could be written faster just with Python by making design and support decisions that eliminate whole workflows.
Michael #4: PyView Web Framework
PyView brings the Phoenix LiveView paradigm to Python
Recently interviewed Larry on Talk Python
Build dynamic, real-time web applications using server-rendered HTML
Check out the examples.
See the Maps demo for some real magic
How does this possibly work? See the LiveView Lifecycle.
Extras
Brian:
Upgrade Django, has a great discussion of how to upgrade version by version and why you might want to do that instead of just jumping ahead to the latest version. And also who might want to save time by leapfrogging
Also has all the versions and dates of release and end of support.
The Lean TDD book 1st draft is done.
Now available through both pythontest and LeanPub
I set it as 80% done because of future drafts planned.
I’m working through a few submitted suggestions. Not much feedback, so the 2nd pass might be fast and mostly my own modifications. It’s possible.
I’m re-reading it myself and already am disappointed with page 1 of the introduction. I gotta make it pop more. I’ll work on that.
Trying to decide how many suggestions around using AI I should include.
It’s not mentioned in the book yet, but I think I need to incorporate some discussion around it.
Michael:
Python: What’s Coming in 2026
Python Bytes rewritten in Quart + async (very similar to Talk Python’s journey)
Added a proper MCP server at Talk Python To Me (you don’t need a formal MCP framework btw)
Example one: latest-episodes-mcp.png
Example two: which-episodes-mcp.webp
Implmented /llms.txt for Talk Python To Me (see talkpython.fm/llms.txt )
Joke: Reverse Superman
...more
42min
January 12, 2026#465 Stack Overflow is Cooked
Topics covered in this episode:
port-killer
How we made Python's packaging library 3x faster
CodSpeed
Extras
Joke
Watch on YouTube
About the show
Sponsored by us! Support our work through:
Our courses at Talk Python Training
The Complete pytest Course
Patreon Supporters
Connect with the hosts
Michael: @[email protected] / @mkennedy.codes (bsky)
Brian: @[email protected] / @brianokken.bsky.social
Show: @[email protected] / @pythonbytes.fm (bsky)
Join us on YouTube at pythonbytes.fm/live to be part of the audience. Usually Monday at 11am PT. Older video versions available there too.
Finally, if you want an artisanal, hand-crafted digest of every week of the show notes in email form? Add your name and email to our friends of the show list, we'll never share it.
Michael #1: port-killer
A powerful cross-platform port management tool for developers.
Monitor ports, manage Kubernetes port forwards, integrate Cloudflare Tunnels, and kill processes with one click.
Features:
🔍 Auto-discovers all listening TCP ports
⚡ One-click process termination (graceful + force kill)
🔄 Auto-refresh with configurable interval
🔎 Search and filter by port number or process name
⭐ Favorites for quick access to important ports
👁️ Watched ports with notifications
📂 Smart categorization (Web Server, Database, Development, System)
Brian #2: How we made Python's packaging library 3x faster
Henry Schreiner
Some very cool graphs demonstrating some benchmark data.
And then details about how various speedups
each being 2-37% faster
the total adding up to about 3x speedup, or shaving 2/3 of the time.
These also include nice write-ups about why the speedups were chosen.
If you are trying to speed up part of your system, this would be good article to check out.
Michael #3: AI’s Impact on dev companies
On TailwindCSS: via Simon
Tailwind is growing faster than ever and is bigger than it has ever been
Its revenue is down close to 80%.
75% of the people on our engineering team lost their jobs here yesterday because of the brutal impact AI has had on our business.
“We had 6 months left”
Listen to the founder: “A Morning Walk”
Super insightful video: Tailwind is in DEEP trouble
On Stack Overflow: See video.
SO was founded around 2009, first month had 3,749 questions
December, SO had 3,862 questions asked
Most of its live it had 200,000 questions per month
That is a 53x drop!
Brian #4: CodSpeed
“CodSpeed integrates into dev and CI workflows to measure performance, detect regressions, and enable actionable optimizations.”
Noticed it while looking through the GitHub workflows for FastAPI
Free for small teams and open-source projects
Easy to integrate with Python by marking tests with @pytest.mark.benchmark
They’ve releases a GitHub action to incorporate benchmarking in CI workflows
Extras
Brian:
Part 2 of Lean TDD released this morning, “Lean TDD Practices”, which has 9 mini chapters.
Michael:
Our Docker build just broke because of the supply chain techniques from last week (that’s a good thing!). Not a real issue, but really did catch an open CVE.
Long passwords are bad now? ;)
Joke: Check out my app!
...more
36min
January 05, 2026#464 Malicious Package? No Build For You!
Topics covered in this episode:
ty: An extremely fast Python type checker and LSP
Python Supply Chain Security Made Easy
typing_extensions
MI6 chief: We'll be as fluent in Python as we are in Russian
Extras
Joke
Watch on YouTube
About the show
Connect with the hosts
Michael: @[email protected] / @mkennedy.codes (bsky)
Brian: @[email protected] / @brianokken.bsky.social
Show: @[email protected] / @pythonbytes.fm (bsky)
Join us on YouTube at pythonbytes.fm/live to be part of the audience. Usually Monday at 10am PT. Older video versions available there too.
Finally, if you want an artisanal, hand-crafted digest of every week of the show notes in email form? Add your name and email to our friends of the show list, we'll never share it.
Brian #1: ty: An extremely fast Python type checker and LSP
Charlie Marsh announced the Beta release of ty on Dec 16
“designed as an alternative to tools like mypy, Pyright, and Pylance.”
Extremely fast even from first run
Successive runs are incremental, only rerunning necessary computations as a user edits a file or function. This allows live updates.
Includes nice visual diagnostics much like color enhanced tracebacks
Extensive configuration control
Nice for if you want to gradually fix warnings from ty for a project
Also released a nice VSCode (or Cursor) extension
Check the docs. There are lots of features.
Also a note about disabling the default language server (or disabling ty’s language server) so you don’t have 2 running
Michael #2: Python Supply Chain Security Made Easy
We know about supply chain security issues, but what can you do?
Typosquatting (not great)
Github/PyPI account take-overs (very bad)
Enter pip-audit.
Run it in two ways:
Against your installed dependencies in current venv
As a proper unit test (so when running pytest or CI/CD).
Let others find out first, wait a week on all dependency updates: uv pip compile requirements.piptools --upgrade --output-file requirements.txt --exclude-newer "1 week"
Follow up article: DevOps Python Supply Chain Security
Create a dedicated Docker image for testing dependencies with pip-audit in isolation before installing them into your venv.
Run pip-compile / uv lock --upgrade to generate the new lock file
Test in a ephemeral pip-audit optimized Docker container
Only then if things pass, uv pip install / uv sync
Add a dedicated Docker image build step that fails the docker build step if a vulnerable package is found.
Brian #3: typing_extensions
Kind of a followup on the deprecation warning topic we were talking about in December.
prioinv on Mastodon notified us that the project typing-extensions includes it as part of the backport set.
The warnings.deprecated decorator is new to Python 3.13, but with typing-extensions, you can use it in previous versions.
But typing_extesions is way cooler than just that.
The module serves 2 purposes:
Enable use of new type system features on older Python versions.
Enable experimentation with type system features proposed in new PEPs before they are accepted and added to the typing module.
So cool.
There’s a lot of features here. I’m hoping it allows someone to use the latest typing syntax across multiple Python versions.
I’m “tentatively” excited. But I’m bracing for someone to tell me why it’s not a silver bullet.
Michael #4: MI6 chief: We'll be as fluent in Python as we are in Russian
"Advances in artificial intelligence, biotechnology and quantum computing are not only revolutionizing economies but rewriting the reality of conflict, as they 'converge' to create science fiction-like tools,” said new MI6 chief Blaise Metreweli.
She focused mainly on threats from Russia, the country is "testing us in the grey zone with tactics that are just below the threshold of war.”
This demands what she called "mastery of technology" across the service, with officers required to become "as comfortable with lines of code as we are with human sources, as fluent in Python as we are in multiple other languages."
Recruitment will target linguists, data scientists, engineers, and technologists alike.
Extras
Brian:
Next chapter of Lean TDD being released today, Finding Waste in TDD
Still going to attempt a Jan 31 deadline for first draft of book.
That really doesn’t seem like enough time, but I’m optimistic.
SteamDeck is not helping me find time to write
But I very much appreciate the gift from my fam
Send me game suggestions on Mastodon or Bluesky. I’d love to hear what you all are playing.
Michael:
Astral has announced the Beta release of ty, which they say they are "ready to recommend to motivated users for production use."
Blog post
Release page
Reuven Lerner has a video series on Pandas 3
Joke: Error Handling in the age of AI
Play on the inversion of JavaScript the Good Parts
...more
31min
December 22, 2025#463 2025 is @wrapped
Topics covered in this episode:
Has the cost of building software just dropped 90%?
More on Deprecation Warnings
How FOSS Won and Why It Matters
Should I be looking for a GitHub alternative?
Extras
Joke
Watch on YouTube
About the show
Sponsored by us! Support our work through:
Our courses at Talk Python Training
The Complete pytest Course
Patreon Supporters
Connect with the hosts
Michael: @[email protected] / @mkennedy.codes (bsky)
Brian: @[email protected] / @brianokken.bsky.social
Show: @[email protected] / @pythonbytes.fm (bsky)
Join us on YouTube at pythonbytes.fm/live to be part of the audience. Usually Monday at 10am PT. Older video versions available there too.
Finally, if you want an artisanal, hand-crafted digest of every week of the show notes in email form? Add your name and email to our friends of the show list, we'll never share it.
HEADS UP: We are taking next week off, happy holiday everyone.
Michael #1: Has the cost of building software just dropped 90%?
by Martin Alderson
Agentic coding tools are collapsing “implementation time,” so the cost curve of shipping software may be shifting sharply
Recent programming advancements haven’t been that great of a true benefit: Cloud, TDD, microservices, complex frontends, Kubernetes, etc.
Agentic AI’s big savings are not just code generation, but coordination overhead reduction (fewer handoffs, fewer meetings, fewer blocks).
Thinking, product clarity, and domain decisions stay hard, while typing and scaffolding get cheap.
Is it the end of software dev? Not really, see Jevons paradox: when production gets cheaper, total demand can rise rather than spending simply falling. (Historically: the efficiency of coal use led to the increased consumption of coal)
Pushes back on “only good for greenfield” by arguing agents also help with legacy code comprehension and bug-fixing. I 100% agree. #Legacy code for the win.
Brian #2: More on Deprecation Warnings
How are people ignoring them?
yep, it’s right in the Python docs: -W ignore::DeprecationWarning
Don’t do that!
Perhaps the docs should give the example of emitting them only once
-W once::::DeprecationWarning
See also -X dev mode , which sets -W default and some other runtime checks
Don’t use warn, use the @warnings.deprecated decorator instead
Thanks John Hagen for pointing this out
Emits a warning
It’s understood by type checkers, so editors visually warn you
You can pass in your own custom UserWarning with category
mypy also has a command line option and setting for this
--enable-error-code deprecated
or in [tool.mypy] enable_error_code = ["deprecated"]
My recommendation
Use @deprecated
with your own custom warning
and test with pytest -W error
Michael #3: How FOSS Won and Why It Matters
by Thomas Depierre
Companies are not cheap, companies optimize cost control. They do this by making purchasing slow and painful.
FOSS is/was a major unlock hack to skip procurement, legal, etc.
Example is months to start using a paid “Add to calendar” widget!
It “works both ways”: the same bypass lowers the barrier for maintainers too, no need for a legal entity, lawyers, liability insurance, or sales motion.
Proposals that “fix FOSS” by reintroducing supply-chain style controls (he name-checks SBOMs and mandated processes) risk being rejected or gamed, because they restore the very friction FOSS sidesteps.
Brian #4: Should I be looking for a GitHub alternative?
Pricing changes for GitHub Actions
The self-hosted runner pricing change caused a kerfuffle.
It’s has been postponed
But… if you were to look around, maybe pay attention to
These 4 GitHub alternatives are just as good—or better
Codeburg, BitBucket, GitLab, Gitea
And a new-ish entry, Tangled
Extras
Brian:
End of year sale for The Complete pytest Course
Use code XMAS2025 for 50% off before Dec 31
Writing work on Lean TDD book on hold for holidays
Will pick up again in January
Michael:
PyCharm has better Ruff support now out of the box, via Daniel Molnar
This is from the release notes of 2025.3: "PyCharm 2025.3 expands its LSP integration with support for Ruff, ty, Pyright, and Pyrefly.”
If you check out the LSP section it will land you on this page and you can go to Ruff.
The Ruff doc site was also updated. Previously it was only available external tools and a third party plugin, this feels like a big step.
Fun quote I saw on ExTwitter: May your bug tracker be forever empty.
Joke:
Try/Catch/Stack Overflow
Create a super annoying linkedin profile - From Tim Kellogg, submitted by archtoad
...more
44min

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