Would you like a simple command to launch your Python programs using the newest version of the language installed on your machine? This week on the show, we continue our conversation with Brett Cannon. Brett discusses his project, the Python Launcher for Unix.

We dive into Brett’s workflow to set up projects, virtual environments, and prepare for distribution. He shares some of the tools he employs and reasons for keeping things simple.

We also talk about PEP 665, which specifies a file format to list an application’s Python package installation requirements. Brett shares why he co-authored the PEP and a bit of the community’s reaction. It leads to a deeper conversation about going beyond ‘requirements.txt’ to lock files.

Course Spotlight: Data Visualization Interfaces in Python With Dash

In this course, you’ll learn how to build a dashboard using Python and Dash. Dash is a framework for building data visualization interfaces. It helps data scientists build fully interactive web applications quickly.

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A year ago, we had Brett Cannon on the show to discuss his blog series about unravelling Python’s syntactic sugar. Brett has written 15 more entries in the series, and he returns to the show this week to continue our conversation. We dive into unravelling ‘async’ and ‘await’ statements and their relationship with Python’s generators.

While working through the series, he has uncovered some issues lying under the surface of CPython. We discuss a couple of these discoveries and how the core developers resolved them.

Brett was recently re-elected to the Python Steering Council, and he talks about how the current direction of the council is shifting. We also discuss how Brett uses Twitter polls to gauge community sentiment and factors it into development decisions.

This conversation covered so many topics that we split it into two episodes. Next week’s episode will continue our discussion.

Course Spotlight: Speed Up Python With Concurrency

Learn what concurrency means in Python and why you might want to use it. You’ll see a simple, non-concurrent approach and then look into why you’d want threading, asyncio, or multiprocessing.

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It’s been a year of change at Real Python! The Real Python team has written, edited, curated, illustrated, and produced a mountain of Python articles this year. We also added many new members to the team, updated the site’s features, and created new styles of tutorials and projects.

Two members of the Real Python team join us this week, Martin Breuss and Sadie Parker. We wanted to share a year-end wrap-up with a collection of articles and step-by-step projects that showcase what our team created this year.

Sadie and Martin help to shepherd articles through the multi-stage editing process. Along with the rest of the team, they make sure these resources impart crucial Python knowledge and provide a thorough didactic experience.

We hope you enjoy this review! Programming note, there won’t be an episode next week, but we will be back in January and look forward to bringing you a year full of great guests, articles, and topics.

Course Spotlight: Using Pygame to Build an Asteroids Game in Python

In this course, you’ll learn the basics of creating powerful web applications with In this course, you’ll build a clone of the Asteroids game in Python using Pygame. Step by step, you’ll add images, input handling, game logic, sounds, and text to your program.

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The Python community continually grows, with many users coming from different languages and backgrounds. This week on the show, we talk with developer Hugh Tipping about his Python journey. Hugh is also a member of the Real Python community.

Hugh has a background in programming C and Perl and started to use Python in a cyber security job. He explains the way he used Python to search for malware. Hugh provides some suggestions for security packages and tools.

Recently Hugh has been working with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and using the Boto3 library to automate services and manage credentials. We also discuss his affinity for test-driven development and the use of pytest.

Course Spotlight: Host Your Django Project on Heroku

In this course, you’ll learn how to host your Django project in the cloud for free and with little hassle. You’ll use Heroku, which takes the burden of infrastructure management off your shoulders.

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Are you ready to break open the first days of puzzles from the annual Advent of Code challenge? Advent of Code is an advent calendar of twenty-five programming puzzles published each December. Practicing solving puzzles is a great way to build your Python skills. This week on the show, we have previous guest and Real Python author Geir Arne Hjelle to discuss his recent article titled, “Advent of Code: Solving Your Puzzles With Python.”

We discuss the history of this online Advent calendar and the creator Eric Wastl. Geir Arne covers techniques to help you organize your code and test when solving the puzzles. He shares additional Python tools for parsing text, managing puzzle data, and visualizing your program output. We also talk about even more places you can practice solving programming puzzles.

Course Spotlight: Regular Expressions and Building Regexes in Python

In this course, you’ll learn how to perform more complex string pattern matching using regular expressions, or regexes, in Python. You’ll also explore more advanced regex tools and techniques that are available in Python.

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There seem to be three kinds of Python developers: those unaware of type hints or have no opinion, ones that embrace them, and others who have an allergic reaction at the mention of them. Python is famously a dynamically typed language, but there are advantages to adding type hints to your code. This week on the show, we have Luciano Ramalho to discuss his recent talk titled, “Type hints, protocols, and good sense.”

Luciano was not a fan of type hints. He’s only recently come around to their potential with the introduction of protocols in PEP 544. Python has adopted a gradual type system that is optional at all levels. We discuss the advantages, pitfalls, and recent developments around type hinting in Python.

We also talk about the second edition of Luciano’s book Fluent Python. He researched type hints in-depth for the book, which led to his recent conference talks on the subject. He also shares his experience with adding opinionated asides to the book in a fun and unique way.

Course Spotlight: Python Type Checking

In this course, you’ll look at Python type checking. Traditionally, types have been handled by the Python interpreter in a flexible but implicit way. Recent versions of Python allow you to specify explicit type hints that can be used by different tools to help you develop your code more efficiently.

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Have you wanted to work with RSS feeds in Python? Maybe you’re looking for a new project to build for your portfolio that uses Django, unit tests, and custom commands. This week on the show, we have Real Python author Ricky White to talk about his recent step-by-step project titled, “Build a Content Aggregator in Python.”

Ricky has been authoring the Real Python interview series for several years and was formerly our Community Manager. He talks about what inspired him to create this project and the Python technology and libraries to build it. He also shares advice about adding tests to personal portfolio projects.

We start the show by discussing Python’s GIL (Global Interpreter Lock) and the efforts to potentially remove it in future versions of Python. This change could make a significant impact on Python code running on multi-core processors. We talk about two recent articles covering the developments.

Course Spotlight: Get Started With Django: Build a Portfolio App

In this course, you’ll learn the basics of creating powerful web applications with Django, a Python web framework. You’ll build a portfolio website to showcase your web development projects, complete with a fully functioning blog.

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Do you remember the One Laptop Per Child program? What went wrong, and what can we learn from the program’s failure? What are the potential pitfalls of charismatic technology, and how can we avoid them when introducing students to programming? This week on the show, former guest Al Sweigart and author Morgan Ames are here to talk about her book “The Charisma Machine - The Life, Death, and Legacy of One Laptop per Child.”

We discuss the OLPC program and how idealized visions of our programming backgrounds can become traps. Morgan explains how these utopian visions are still used to attempt to disrupt education. Along with this cautionary tale, we also talk about educational programs that are working and how entry points to programming are changing.

Course Spotlight: Using Pandas to Make a Gradebook in Python

With this course and Python project, you’ll build a script to calculate grades for a class using pandas. The script will quickly and accurately calculate grades from a variety of data sources. You’ll see examples of loading, merging, and saving data with pandas, as well as plotting some summary statistics.

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Are you getting the most out of the Django framework? It’s a powerful web framework if you’re not interested in reinventing the wheel. Django includes a useful template system with inheritance for composing reusable HTML. This week on the show, we have previous guest and Real Python author Christopher Trudeau to talk about his recent articles and courses about Django.

Christopher explains how Django templates help you avoid rewriting large portions of HTML for your web applications. His first article covers the built-in tags and filters provided by the framework. The second one dives into how customize and implement your own filters and tags. Christopher also talks about his process for choosing topics for articles and courses.

We start the episode by covering a recent article by CPython Developer in Residence, Łukasz Langa. We talked in a previous episode about his plan to study where all the Python core developer activity goes. He’s gathered several years of GitHub data, and we discuss the post.

Course Spotlight: Building With Django REST Framework

This course will get you ready to build with Django REST Framework. The Django REST framework (DRF) is a toolkit built on top of the Django web framework that reduces the amount of code you need to write to create REST interfaces.

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Have you wanted to generate PDFs from your Python project? Many of the current libraries require designing the document down at the pixel level. Would you be interested in a tool that lets you specify the page layout while it handles the specific details of laying out the text? This week on the show, we talk with Joris Schellekens about his library for creating and manipulating PDFs named borb.

borb is a pure Python library that can read, write and manipulate PDFs. You can use it to build fillable forms, invoices with attached data files, and multiple column document layouts. We discuss the extensive example repository Joris has created for the library.

Joris shares his background in working with PDFs. He talks about starting the project and the challenges he had to overcome. We also talk about licensing and maintaining an open-source library.

Course Spotlight: Writing Idiomatic Python

What are the programming idioms unique to Python? This course is a short overview for people coming from other languages and an introduction for beginners to the idiomatic practices within Python. You’ll cover truth values, looping, DRY principles, and the Zen of Python.

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