Where should you use an ellipsis in Python? How does it behave as a placeholder in a script, project, or stub file? What are the next goals for the Faster CPython project? This week on the show, Christopher Trudeau is here, bringing another batch of PyCoder’s Weekly articles and projects.

We talk about a Real Python article that covers when you should use an ellipsis in Python. We discuss the similarities with the pass keyword and how it’s used for type hints within stub files.

Christopher shares resources covering the goals of the Faster CPython project. We’re on the cusp of the release of Python 3.11, but the project keeps moving forward as they look at ways to continue speeding up Python.

We share several other articles and projects from the Python community, including a news roundup, alternatives for hosting Python-based applications, ways to create custom Python strings, a discussion about aging programmers, a structural diff that understands syntax, and a project for refurbishing and modernizing Python codebases.

Course Spotlight: Providing Multiple Constructors in Your Python Classes

In this video course, you’ll learn how to provide multiple constructors in your Python classes. To this end, you’ll learn different techniques, such as checking argument types, using default argument values, writing class methods, and implementing single-dispatch methods.

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Have you used a memory profiler to gauge the performance of your Python application? Maybe you’re using it to troubleshoot memory issues when loading a large data science project. What could running a profiler show you about a codebase you’re learning? This week on the show, Pablo Galindo Salgado returns to talk about Memray, a powerful tracing memory profiler.

Pablo developed Memray while working at Bloomberg to track memory allocations beyond Python code into native extensions and the interpreter itself. It’s a compelling tool that provides fine-grain reports to help you understand where memory is used.

Pablo shares the reporting that Memray provides, including live mode, flame graphs, and a pytest plug-in. We also discuss how a tracing memory profiler can help you understand a new codebase.

He walks through how he developed the first prototype internally and eventually moved the project into open source. This is the first part of my conversation with Pablo. In a couple of weeks, you’ll get the second part, where we talk about Python guilds inside large companies and his work as the release manager for Python 3.10 and 3.11.

Course Spotlight: SQLite and SQLAlchemy in Python: Moving Your Data Beyond Flat Files

In this video course, you’ll learn how to store and retrieve data using Python, SQLite, and SQLAlchemy as well as with flat files. Using SQLite with Python brings with it the additional benefit of accessing data with SQL. By adding SQLAlchemy, you can work with data in terms of objects and methods.

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Have you ever used code to help explain a topic? How can Python scripts be used to understand the intricacies of access control? This week on the show, Christopher Trudeau is here, bringing another batch of PyCoder’s Weekly articles and projects.

Christopher talks about an article that explores the evolution of access control by reimplementing the concepts with Python scripts. The experiment moves across the various access forms, starting with control lists, roles, and attributes, then ending with purpose-based access control (PBAC).

We also cover a post about how to create dangerous pickles. We discuss where malicious code can hide within the serialization process and how decompiling code can be an education tool.

We share several other articles and projects from the Python community, including command line interface (CLI) creation with argparse, HTML and CSS for Python developers, a Python packaging user survey, a visual Python Tkinter GUI creator, a PyScript-based data visualization cookbook, and a project for writing functional test helpers in Django.

Course Spotlight: Serializing Objects With the Python pickle Module

In this course, you’ll learn how you can use the Python pickle module to convert your objects into a stream of bytes that can be saved to a disk or sent over a network. You’ll also learn the security implications of using this process on objects from an untrusted source.

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Are you interested in using Python in an industry outside of software development? Would adding a few custom software tools increase efficiency and make your coworkers’ jobs easier? This week on the show, Josh Burnett talks about using Python as a mechanical engineer.

I met Josh at PyCon US 2022 in Salt Lake City, which he attended for the first time with several coworkers. He suggested we do an episode to shed some light on ways that Python is being used professionally by people who aren’t primarily programming for a living.

Josh works as a mechanical engineer for an equipment manufacturer, where he needs to perform repetitive tasks and generate copious logs. He explains how he moved his team away from MATLAB and toward Python.

We discuss his progression from writing scripts to developing packages and eventually hosting his work on PyPI. He also shares his explorations with CircuitPython for personal and professional projects.

Course Spotlight: Building Python Project Documentation With MkDocs

In this video course, you’ll learn how to build professional documentation for a Python package using MkDocs and mkdocstrings. These tools allow you to generate nice-looking and modern documentation from Markdown files and, more importantly, from your code’s docstrings.

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Have you thought the standard output from Matplotlib is a bit generic looking? Would you like a quick way to add style and consistency to your data visualizations? This week on the show, Christopher Trudeau is here, bringing another batch of PyCoder’s Weekly articles and projects.

We cover an article about the magic of creating style sheets for Matplotlib. You can quickly customize plots and graphs with a single line of code. We share additional resources for you to try out new styles and learn what parameters are customizable.

Christopher covers an article about using async for web development in Python. The creation of Python generators inspired the development of async functionality. He discusses recent changes and async additions within Python web frameworks.

We cover several other articles and projects from the Python community, including how to install a pre-release version of Python, cache in Python with lru_cache, and get better at debugging, along with suggestions of libraries that deserve attention, a Python library for creating mathematical animations, and an extremely fast Python linter that’s written in Rust.

Course Spotlight: Python Debugging With pdb

In this hands-on course, you’ll learn the basics of using pdb, Python’s interactive source code debugger. pdb is a great tool for tracking down hard-to-find bugs, and it allows you to fix faulty code more quickly.

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Have you wanted to understand recursion and how to use it in Python? Are you familiar with the call stack and how it relates to tracebacks? This week on the show, Al Sweigart talks about his new book, “The Recursive Book of Recursion.”

Recursion is one of those concepts held as a tenet of high-level computer science priesthood. Al explains the fundamentals of writing recursive functions and a critical missing piece in understanding how they operate, the call stack. After completing his research, he concluded that it’s a technique that you should understand but rarely use.

He also shares the few cases where recursion is an appropriate solution. Along the way, we talk about directed acyclic graphs, solving mazes, exploring file trees, and creating fractal images.

Course Spotlight: Caching in Python With lru_cache

Caching is an essential optimization technique. In this video course, you’ll learn how to use Python’s @lru_cache decorator to cache the results of your functions using the LRU cache strategy. This is a powerful technique you can use to leverage the power of caching in your implementations.

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How does a code completion tool work? What is an Abstract Syntax Tree, and how is it created in Python? How does an AST help you write programs and projects that inspect and modify your Python code? This week on the show, Meredydd Luff, co-founder of Anvil, shares his PyCon talk, “Building a Python Code Completer.”

Meredydd talks about his experience building a code completion engine for the Anvil platform. The conversation leads us to discuss how Python parses the code that you type. We examine tokenization, abstract syntax trees, and how parsing has changed in Python.

We cover additional projects that you can explore once you have a tool that inspects the Python code you’re writing. Join us as we dive into multiple rabbit holes of research and exploration.

Course Spotlight: Python Assignment Expressions and Using the Walrus Operator

In this course, you’ll learn about assignment expressions and the walrus operator. The biggest change in Python 3.8 was the inclusion of the := operator, which you can use to assign variables in the middle of expressions. You’ll see several examples of how to take advantage of this feature.

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Have you attempted to set up a Python development environment on Windows before? Would it be helpful to have an easy-to-follow guide to get you started? This week on the show, Christopher Trudeau is here, bringing another batch of PyCoder’s Weekly articles and projects.

We talk about a Real Python tutorial that covers configuring a Windows coding environment. The guide contains valuable suggestions, best practices, and powerful coding tools. It also covers how to use a package manager, the new Windows Terminal, PowerShell Core, and a program to manage multiple versions of Python.

Christopher covers another Real Python tutorial about using TOML in Python. TOML is a configuration format for building and distributing your own packages. We discuss how TOML parsing will be added to Python’s standard library in version 3.11.

We cover several other articles and projects from the Python community, on topics including technical writing for developers, a news round-up, a farewell to obsolete Python libraries, uncommon uses of Python in commonly used libraries, a prettier ls, and a project for advanced hot reloading in Python.

Course Spotlight: Python Basics: Finding and Fixing Code Bugs

In this Python Basics video course, you’ll learn how to identify and fix logic errors, or bugs, in your Python code. You’ll use the built-in debugging tools in Python’s Integrated Development and Learning Environment to practice locating and resolving bugs in an example function.

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What’s the big breakthrough for Natural Language Processing (NLP) that has dramatically advanced machine learning into deep learning? What makes these transformer models unique, and what defines “attention?” This week on the show, Jodie Burchell, developer advocate for data science at JetBrains, continues our talk about how machine learning (ML) models understand and generate text.

This episode is a continuation of the conversation in episode #119. Jodie builds on the concepts of bag-of-words, word2vec, and simple embedding models. We talk about the breakthrough mechanism called “attention,” which allows for parallelization in building models.

We also discuss the two major transformer models, BERT and GPT3. Jodie continues to share multiple resources to help you continue exploring modeling and NLP with Python.

Course Spotlight: Building a Neural Network & Making Predictions With Python AI

In this step-by-step course, you’ll build a neural network from scratch as an introduction to the world of artificial intelligence (AI) in Python. You’ll learn how to train your neural network and make predictions based on a given dataset.

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Is there someone in your life you’d like to inspire to learn Python? Mission Encodeable is a website designed to teach people to code, built by two high-school students. This week on the show, Anna and Harry Wake talk about creating their site and motivating people to start coding.

We discuss why they decided to build the site. Anna and Harry initially felt that the site would be for other students but soon realized it could be helpful for anyone interested in starting to code in Python. We cover the project-based approach and how they implemented the interactive browser-based tool replit.com.

We talk about learning Python in the classroom and how they found additional books and tutorials to supplement their coding education. Anna and Harry also created a resource hub to help teachers take advantage of the site.

Course Spotlight: Rock, Paper, Scissors With Python: A Command Line Game

In this course, you’ll learn to program rock paper scissors in Python from scratch. You’ll learn how to take in user input, make the computer choose a random action, determine a winner, and split your code into functions.

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