Talk Python To Me

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#566: State of the art in Python 2026 Oct 17, 2026

Show notes

Which of your Python tools would you still pick if you started fresh today? For a long time, the answer was easy. The stack felt settled. AI has reopened almost every one of those choices. Some tools got faster. Others got replaced outright. On this episode, a panel takes stock of the state of the art in Python for 2026. Calvin Hendryx-Parker is CTO and co-founder of Six Feet Up. Pat Decker works in DevOps at Hibu. Reuven Lerner has trained Python developers for 15 years. Sydney Runkle does product management for open source at LangChain. One of them barely opens an editor anymore. Listen in to hear the surprising replacement.
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#565: Tachyon, Python 3.15's Built-in Sampling Profiler Oct 02, 2026

Show notes

Do you know what's actually slow in your Python app? Or are you guessing? Until now, profiling Python meant a tracing profiler that made your code 2 to 3 times slower. Or a third-party tool that broke with every new release. Python 3.15 fixes that. It ships Tachyon, a sampling profiler built into the standard library. It attaches to live production apps with almost zero overhead. My guests are Pablo Galindo Salgado, CPython core developer and Steering Council member, and László Kiss Kollár from Bloomberg's Python infrastructure team. Their first prototype ran at two samples a second. Now it does over a million hz. And it lands in Python 3.15 this October.
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Python in Production
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#564: EVE Online Departs for Python 3 Sep 22, 2026

Show notes

Every ship in EVE Online eventually undocks and leaves the station. This time, it's the whole game. EVE has run on Python 2 since it launched in 2003, all 2.4 million lines of it, on a custom Stackless interpreter that stopped at 3.8 and was archived last year. Destination: Python 3.12. The route runs through 6,500 lines of division that decide who wins a fight, and 100 gigabytes of pickled Python objects that have to survive the jump intact. Kristinn Sigurbergsson was on this show ten years ago. He's back, with Jamie Bannister, who is flying the EVE Online migration right now, and Thomas Dähling, who took EVE Frontier through first. In EVE, a destroyed ship is gone for good. There are no do-overs, and the universe has to stay online the whole way.
Episode sponsors
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Links from the show

Guests
Jamie Bannister: linkedin.com
Thomas Dähling: linkedin.com
Kristinn Sigurbergsson: linkedin.com
EVE Online: www.eveonline.com
EVE Frontier: evefrontier.com
2.4 million lines of Python: www.eveonline.com
Example of graphics, ships walk-through: www.youtube.com
Stackless: www.stackless.com
futurize: python-future.org
blue: github.com
Dev blog on the Frontier upgrade: evefrontier.com
Upgrading CARBON to Python 3: www.youtube.com
carbon-scheduler: github.com
Scheduling in Carbon: Leaving Stackless Python Behind: www.youtube.com
All of Carbon is on GitHub now: github.com
did a whole course: training.talkpython.fm
Trade Wars BBS (Wikipedia): en.wikipedia.org
TW 3002 - TradeWars 2002, reimagined as a modern browser game: www.reddit.com
Watch this episode on YouTube: youtube.com
Episode #564 deep-dive: talkpython.fm/564
Episode transcripts: talkpython.fm
Theme Song: Developer Rap
🥁 Served in a Flask 🎸: talkpython.fm/flasksong
---== Don't be a stranger ==---
YouTube: youtube.com/@talkpython
Bluesky: @talkpython.fm
Mastodon: @talkpython@fosstodon.org
X.com: @talkpython
Michael on Bluesky: @mkennedy.codes
Michael on Mastodon: @mkennedy@fosstodon.org
Michael on X.com: @mkennedy

#563: Getting Started with Rust as Python Devs Sep 16, 2026

Show notes

Lint the entire CPython code base from scratch. It takes 0.3 seconds. Three blinks of an eye.
That is ruff, and it is written in Rust. So are Pydantic, Polars, uv, and Granian. Rust shows up in Python three ways: tools that happen to be Rust, libraries Python imports, and servers that run Python inside Rust. This is Rust for Python developers, not Rust experts.
Christopher Trudeau is back on Talk Python to discuss Rust and his latest course Up and Running with Rust. The core rule is that only one thing can own a value at a time. Pass it around freely in Python and the garbage collector cleans up. Do that in Rust and it will not compile.
Episode sponsors
Sentry Error Monitoring, Code talkpython26
Python in Production
Talk Python Courses

Links from the show

Up and Running with Rust course: training.talkpython.fm
Rust: rust-lang.org
pydantic: pydantic.dev
ruff: docs.astral.sh
granian: github.com
By example: doc.rust-lang.org
rust-lang.org: rust-lang.org
rustup.rs: rustup.rs
crates.io: crates.io
main.rs: main.rs
PyO3: github.com
https://github.com/ritwiktiwari/awesome-python-rs: github.com
ty: docs.astral.sh
pyrefly: pyrefly.org
uv: github.com
polars: pola.rs
Watch this episode on YouTube: youtube.com
Episode #563 deep-dive: talkpython.fm/563
Episode transcripts: talkpython.fm
Theme Song: Developer Rap
🥁 Served in a Flask 🎸: talkpython.fm/flasksong
---== Don't be a stranger ==---
YouTube: youtube.com/@talkpython
Bluesky: @talkpython.fm
Mastodon: @talkpython@fosstodon.org
X.com: @talkpython
Michael on Bluesky: @mkennedy.codes
Michael on Mastodon: @mkennedy@fosstodon.org
Michael on X.com: @mkennedy

#562: DuckLake: The Lakehouse That's Just SQL and Parquet Sep 10, 2026

Show notes

How many files does your query read before it reads any data? On some data lakes, you go through JSON and metadata files first, just to learn which Parquet files matter. DuckLake asks one SQL question instead. The metadata lives in a real database. The data stays in plain Parquet. That's the entire format.
Pedro Holanda joined DuckDB in 2018, when it was still a research prototype at CWI. He's the lead DuckLake developer. Guillermo Sanchez Dionis works on DuckLake and the new Quack protocol.
With Quack as the catalog, DuckLake handles 200 transactions a second under heavy contention. No other open table format comes close.
Episode sponsors
Six Feet Up
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#561: TonIO, a Multi-threaded Async Runtime for Python Sep 04, 2026

Show notes

How many cores does your machine have, 10, 18? Your async Python code uses just one of them. That isn't a bug in asyncio. That's the design, and optimizing event loops to be faster by 20% doesn't change it. So Giovanni Barillari started over. Joe is the creator of Granian, the Rust-based server that powers Talk Python. His new project is TonIO, an async runtime written from scratch for free-threaded Python. Real threads, a handful of primitives instead of asyncio's pile of them, and it flat out refuses to start if the GIL is on.
Episode sponsors
Sentry Error Monitoring, Code talkpython26
Python in Production
Talk Python Courses

Links from the show

Guest
Giovanni Barillari: github.com
Granian: github.com
Hyper: github.com
Free threaded Python: docs.python.org
Sort of: labs.quansight.org
did a whole course: training.talkpython.fm
uvloop: github.com
rloop: github.com
TonIO: github.com
your EuroPython 2026 talk: www.youtube.com
Michael's Cutting Python Web App Memory Over 31% Article: mkennedy.codes
Watch this episode on YouTube: youtube.com
Episode #561 deep-dive: talkpython.fm/561
Episode transcripts: talkpython.fm
Theme Song: Developer Rap
🥁 Served in a Flask 🎸: talkpython.fm/flasksong
---== Don't be a stranger ==---
YouTube: youtube.com/@talkpython
Bluesky: @talkpython.fm
Mastodon: @talkpython@fosstodon.org
X.com: @talkpython
Michael on Bluesky: @mkennedy.codes
Michael on Mastodon: @mkennedy@fosstodon.org
Michael on X.com: @mkennedy

#560: Building a Research OS: From Django to 30,000 Samples Aug 26, 2026

Show notes

In 2020, a gastroenterologist in Glasgow did the math on his new research study and came up with 30,000 samples, arriving over two years from three cities and a dozen hospitals. He asked around about how researchers keep track of that. The answer was Microsoft Excel. Shaun Chuah had written some HTML by hand in Notepad back in high school and that was about the whole of his programming experience, so he opened the Django tutorial and started reading. Six years later that app is Foundry120, holding 10 terabytes of clinical and genomics data with an agentic AI running on top of it.
Episode sponsors
Sentry Error Monitoring, Code talkpython26
Talk Python Courses
Talk Python Courses

Links from the show

Guest
Shaun Chuah: github.com
Up and Running with Rust Course: talkpython.fm
Foundry120: www.foundry120.com
Designing Data Intensive Applications: www.oreilly.com
Microsoft Foundry: ai.azure.com
ChatIBD: www.chatibd.com
Blog: shaunchuah.github.io
@drshaunchuah: x.com
github.com/shaunchuah: github.com
Watch this episode on YouTube: youtube.com
Episode #560 deep-dive: talkpython.fm/560
Episode transcripts: talkpython.fm
Theme Song: Developer Rap
🥁 Served in a Flask 🎸: talkpython.fm/flasksong
---== Don't be a stranger ==---
YouTube: youtube.com/@talkpython
Bluesky: @talkpython.fm
Mastodon: @talkpython@fosstodon.org
X.com: @talkpython
Michael on Bluesky: @mkennedy.codes
Michael on Mastodon: @mkennedy@fosstodon.org
Michael on X.com: @mkennedy

#559: 12 Things You Should (and Shouldn't) Do in AWS Aug 19, 2026

Show notes

Your site is down. It's 3am. Is it a bug, a bill, or a breach? You can't tell yet, and everyone is watching you find out. Matt Lea has spent fifteen years being the person companies call when an outage is costing them real money per hour, and his whole argument is that everything you'd want in that moment gets decided months earlier, on ordinary afternoons, when someone chose the convenient thing. We walk his top twelve dos and don'ts in AWS - infrastructure as code, IAM roles instead of access keys, private subnets, no wildcards, no public buckets - and I push on which of them actually matter if you're one person on a small VPS. Then we get to Cloud War Games, where Matt breaks things on purpose so your team's first real incident isn't their first incident. Let's get into it.
Episode sponsors
Sentry Error Monitoring, Code talkpython26
Talk Python Courses
Talk Python Courses

Links from the show

Guest
Matt Lea: linkedin.com
Talk Python Certificates: training.talkpython.fm/certificates
Schematical: schematical.com
CloudWarGames.com: cloudwargames.com
Zero to Hero on AWS Security: www.oreilly.com
Repo: github.com
Custom Wheel Offset: customwheeloffset.com
2012 TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon: techcrunch.com
tech comics: schematical.com
shhgit: github.com
Zero Trust in 200ms: Implementing Identity-Per-Transaction: us.pycon.org
Coolify: coolify.io
returned to full GA Nov 2025: aws.amazon.com
Signed URLs/cookies: docs.aws.amazon.com
Cloudflare: www.cloudflare.com
Bunny Shield: bunny.net
Cloud War Games One: www.youtube.com
Cloud War Games Two: www.youtube.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com
YouTube: youtube.com
KnocKnoc: knocknoc.io
Watch this episode on YouTube: youtube.com
Episode #559 deep-dive: talkpython.fm/559
Episode transcripts: talkpython.fm
Theme Song: Developer Rap
🥁 Served in a Flask 🎸: talkpython.fm/flasksong
---== Don't be a stranger ==---
YouTube: youtube.com/@talkpython
Bluesky: @talkpython.fm
Mastodon: @talkpython@fosstodon.org
X.com: @talkpython
Michael on Bluesky: @mkennedy.codes
Michael on Mastodon: @mkennedy@fosstodon.org
Michael on X.com: @mkennedy

#558: Hyper-Personal Software with Python Aug 10, 2026

Show notes

Every company has one. The little internal tool that Jane built back in 2021, and then Jane left. Nobody understands it, nobody will touch it. There are two unwritten rules around it: don't change it, it's working. And if you break it, you bought it. That's dark-matter enterprise software.
For every app you can actually see, there are ten of these sitting in the shadows, frozen. Michael Booth thinks that just changed. He read my article on hyper-personal software and ran with it, writing about hyper-team software: small teams inside big companies finally building the tools that were never going to get built.
We cover where this works, where it quietly goes wrong, and the guardrails that keep it from turning into a mess. Let's get into it.
Episode sponsors
Sentry Error Monitoring, Code talkpython26
Python in Production
Talk Python Courses

Links from the show

Guest
Michael Booth: github.com
Talk Python AI Integrations: talkpython.fm/blog
From Hyper-Personal to Hyper-Team Software: Small Team-Built, AI-Assisted Tools Inside the Enterprise: www.databooth.com.au
What hyper-personal software looks like (MK's article): mkennedy.codes
Databooth Site: www.databooth.com.au
Wall Street just lost $285 billion because of 13 markdown files: martinalderson.com
SaaSpocalypse is real but everyone is panicking about the wrong thing: www.reddit.com
Warp Terminal: www.warp.dev
Watch this episode on YouTube: youtube.com
Episode #558 deep-dive: talkpython.fm/558
Episode transcripts: talkpython.fm
Theme Song: Developer Rap
🥁 Served in a Flask 🎸: talkpython.fm/flasksong
---== Don't be a stranger ==---
YouTube: youtube.com/@talkpython
Bluesky: @talkpython.fm
Mastodon: @talkpython@fosstodon.org
X.com: @talkpython
Michael on Bluesky: @mkennedy.codes
Michael on Mastodon: @mkennedy@fosstodon.org
Michael on X.com: @mkennedy

#557: Security of everything at PyCon 2026 Aug 02, 2026

Show notes

Security has always been the vegetables of software. Everyone agrees it matters, and somehow it never quite makes it onto the plate. At PyCon US this year, that changed. For the first time ever, security got its own dedicated, day-long track, one of just two at the whole conference, sitting right next to AI. And the room was packed to the back wall.
On this episode, I'm joined by the three people at the center of it. Seth Larson, Security Developer in Residence at the Python Software Foundation and, very recently, a CPython core developer. Juanita Gomez, a PhD researcher at UC Santa Cruz in open source security, who co-chaired the track. And Mike Fiedler, PyPI's Safety and Security Engineer, one of the very few people paid full-time to keep the packages you install safe.
We use the arc of the track's talks to take the temperature of Python security right now: supply chain attacks, dependency cooldowns, zero trust, SBOMs, and the push to bring Rust into CPython. And why not one of us thinks security is anywhere close to solved. Turns out that's the good news. It's why the room was full.
Episode sponsors
Sentry Error Monitoring, Code talkpython26
Talk Python Courses

Links from the show

Guests
Juanita Gomez: linkedin.com
Mike Fiedler: miketheman.dev
Seth Michael Larson: sethmlarson.dev
Trailblazing Python Security: us.pycon.org
Everything Security at PyCon US 2026 (PSF blog): pyfound.blogspot.com
Dependency Cooldowns: cooldowns.dev
Anatomy of a Phishing Campaign (Mike Fiedler) Recording: www.youtube.com
FedRAMP: www.gsa.gov
Zero Trust in 200ms: Implementing Identity-Per-Transaction with Python & Serverless-Tristan McKinnon: www.youtube.com
Rust for CPython project: blog.python.org
pre-PEP: discuss.python.org
Rust for CPython: Making Python Safer and More Robust for Everyone - Emma Smith: www.youtube.com
SBOMit: github.com
Asleep at the Wheel: Getting your SBOMs to pay attention... - Sanchit Sahay, Abhishek Reddypalle: www.youtube.com
Volatility: volatilityfoundation.org
Post Incident Runtime SBOM Generation from Python Memory - Hala Ali: www.youtube.com
zizmor: docs.zizmor.sh
GitHub Actions security in Python packages (Andrew Nesbitt write-up): nesbitt.io
andrew/pycon: data & analysis for the GitHub Actions security talk: github.com
GitHub Actions Security in Python Packages - Andrew Nesbitt: www.youtube.com
gh-profiler: examine a GitHub user's profile to gauge their contributions: github.com
PyCon US YouTube channel: www.youtube.com
SBOMit: adding verification to SBOMs (OpenSSF): openssf.org
Ecosystems: ecosyste.ms
Watch this episode on YouTube: youtube.com
Episode #557 deep-dive: talkpython.fm/557
Episode transcripts: talkpython.fm
Theme Song: Developer Rap
🥁 Served in a Flask 🎸: talkpython.fm/flasksong
---== Don't be a stranger ==---
YouTube: youtube.com/@talkpython
Bluesky: @talkpython.fm
Mastodon: @talkpython@fosstodon.org
X.com: @talkpython
Michael on Bluesky: @mkennedy.codes
Michael on Mastodon: @mkennedy@fosstodon.org
Michael on X.com: @mkennedy