Stay ConnectedA weekly Python podcast hosted by Christopher Bailey with interviews, coding tips, and conversation with guests from the Python community.
The show covers a wide range of topics including Python programming best practices, career tips, and related software development topics. Join us every Friday morning to hear what’s new in the world of Python programming and become a more effective Pythonista.
Copyright: © 2020 Real Python
Do you get stressed while trying to learn Python? Do you prefer to build small programs or projects as you continue your coding journey? This week on the show, Real Python author Stephen Gruppetta is here to talk about his new book, “The Python Coding Book.”
Stephen has been teaching Python to adults and children for many years. With his new book, he wants to share the relaxed and friendly learning environment he’s developed. We discuss using analogies to explain programming concepts and constructing complete programs as chapter goals.
Over the last year, Stephen focused on writing. He started his newsletter, The Python Coding Stack, wrote more tutorials for Real Python and authored the book.
This episode is sponsored by Mailtrap.
Course Spotlight: Python Basics: Code Your First Python Program
In this video course, you’ll write your first Python program. Along the way, you’ll learn about errors, declare variables and inspect their values, and try your hand at writing comments.
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How do you verify and validate the data coming into your Python web application? What tools and security best practices should you consider as a developer? Christopher Trudeau is back on the show this week, bringing another batch of PyCoder’s Weekly articles and projects.
We discuss the recent Real Python tutorial “Pydantic: Simplifying Data Validation in Python.” The piece covers installing the library with optional dependencies, working with base models, validating functions, and managing environment variables.
We continue our conversation about web development with another article about Python security best practices. This article covers several Python libraries and crucial steps you can take to help make your web-based applications more secure.
We also share several other articles and projects from the Python community, including a news roundup, why Python lists multiply oddly, inline run dependencies in pipx, a discussion about open-source contribution assignments, playing sounds in Python, and a Python library to access ISO country definitions.
This episode is sponsored by Mailtrap.
Course Spotlight: Using raise for Effective Exceptions
In this video course, you’ll learn how to raise exceptions in Python, which will improve your ability to efficiently handle errors and exceptional situations in your code. This way, you’ll write more reliable, robust, and maintainable code.
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Our TOPPODCAST Picks pipx 1.4.2News:
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pipx 1.4.2 – PEP 723 adds the ability to specify dependencies within a Python script itself. The folks who write pipx have added an experimental feature that takes advantage of this future language change. This article shows you how the new feature looks and what pipx does with it.pipx – In this tutorial, you’ll learn about a tool called pipx, which lets you conveniently install and run Python packages as standalone command-line applications in isolated environments. In a way, pipx turns the Python Package Index (PyPI) into an app marketplace for Python programmers.Discussion:
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What are the benefits of using a decoupled data processing system? How do you write reusable queries for a variety of backend data platforms? This week on the show, Phillip Cloud, the lead maintainer of Ibis, will discuss this portable Python dataframe library.
Phillip contrasts Ibis’s workflow with other Python dataframe libraries. We discuss how “getting close to the data” speeds things up and conserves memory.
He describes the different approaches Ibis provides for querying data and how to select a specific backend. We discuss ways to get started with the library and how to access example data sets to experiment with the platform.
Phillip discovered Ibis while looking for a tool that allowed him to reuse SQL queries written for a specific data platform on a different one. He recounts how he got involved with the Ibis project, sharing his background in open source and learning how to contribute to a first project.
This episode is sponsored by Mailtrap.
Course Spotlight: Creating Web Maps From Your Data With Python Folium
You’ll learn how to create web maps from data using Folium. The package combines Python’s data-wrangling strengths with the data-visualization power of the JavaScript library Leaflet. In this video course, you’ll create and style a choropleth world map showing the ecological footprint per country.
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What is error culture, and how do you avoid it within your organization? How do you navigate alert and notification fatigue? Hey, it’s episode #200! Real Python’s editor-in-chief, Dan Bader, joins us this week to celebrate. Christopher Trudeau also returns to bring another batch of PyCoder’s Weekly articles and projects.
We discuss an article series about error culture. We dig into false positives, hero culture, and the tendency to start ignoring alerts. We contrast our personal experiences and propose possible remedies. Dan describes configuring Real Python’s alert system.
We also share several other articles and projects from the Python community, including a news roundup, reading and writing WAV files in Python, moving beyond flat files toward SQLite and SQLAlchemy, getting help in Python, exploring four kinds of optimization, a framework for building web scrapers, and a project to simply subprocesses.
This week’s episode is brought to you by Sentry.
Course Spotlight: SQLite and SQLAlchemy in Python: Move 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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sleep() was in the Python standard library, Ishaan stumbled through the built-in help and learned how to use it to answer just these kinds of questions.Discussion:
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How do you customize a LLM chatbot to address a collection of documents and data? What tools and techniques can you use to build embeddings into a vector database? This week on the show, Calvin Hendryx-Parker is back to discuss developing an AI-powered, Large Language Model-driven chat interface.
Calvin is the co-founder and CTO of Six Feet Up, a Python and AI consultancy. He shares a recent project for a family-owned seed company that wanted to build a tool for customers to access years of farm research. These documents were stored as brochure-style PDFs and spanned 50 years.
We discuss several of the tools used to augment a LLM. Calvin covers working with LangChain and vectorizing data with ChromaDB. We talk about the obstacles and limitations of capturing documentation.
Calvin also shares a smaller project that you can try out yourself. It takes the information from a conference website and creates a chatbot using Django and Python prompt-toolkit.
This episode is sponsored by Mailtrap.
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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Can you build a Space Invaders clone using Python’s built-in turtle module? What advantages does the Seaborn data visualization library provide compared to Matplotlib? Christopher Trudeau is back on the show this week, along with special guest Real Python core team member Bartosz Zaczyński. We’re sharing another batch of PyCoder’s Weekly articles and projects.
Bartosz shares a Real Python step-by-step project for building a video game using the Python turtle module. The turtle module provides an interactive environment that lets users create pictures and shapes on a virtual canvas. The project takes you through game design concepts such as animating sprites, detecting a collision, and building a game loop.
We discuss another Real Python resource, “Visualizing Data in Python With Seaborn.” Seaborn is a significant next step if you’ve already been working with Matplotlib. It produces impressive visualizations and offers a functional or object-based approach to designing plots.
We also share several other articles and projects from the Python community, including a news roundup, finding Python Easter eggs, exploring whether Python has pointers, styling Excel cells with OpenPyXL, using weird tests to capture tacit knowledge, inspecting and running Django commands in a TUI, building reactive web UIs in Python, and a project for predictable Python datetimes.
This week’s episode is brought to you by Posit.
Course Spotlight: Python Turtle for Beginners
In this step-by-step course, you’ll learn the basics of Python programming with the help of a simple and interactive Python library called turtle. If you’re a beginner to Python, then this tutorial will definitely help you on your journey as you take your first steps into the world of programming.
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How is Python being used to automate processes in the laboratory? How can it speed up scientific work with DNA sequencing? This week on the show, Chemical Engineering PhD Student Parsa Ghadermazi is here to discuss Python in bioinformatics.
Parsa provides background on his research and the bioinformatic techniques used to discover gut microbes’ role in human health and diseases. We talk about automating lab experiments with liquid handling robots and Python.
We dig into libraries to shatter and reassemble DNA sequences. Parsa also shares current projects from the Chan Lab at Colorado State University and his GitHub repository.
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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What are the advantages of determining the type of an object by how it behaves? What coding circumstances are not a good fit for duck typing? Christopher Trudeau is back on the show this week, bringing another batch of PyCoder’s Weekly articles and projects.
Christopher covers a recent Real Python tutorial by Leodanis Pozo Ramos titled Duck Typing in Python: Writing Flexible and Decoupled Code. The tutorial explains the concepts of duck typing within object-oriented programming and its use within Python’s built-in tools.
We discuss a recent article on monkey patching in Python. This practice of dynamically modifying a class or module’s behavior at runtime allows for testing, debugging, and experimentation.
We also share several other articles and projects from the Python community, including a news roundup, why names are not the same as objects in Python, using IPython Jupyter magic commands, a discussion about becoming a senior developer, a data exploration challenge, a Python evaluation game, and a terminal UI for regex testing.
This week’s episode is brought to you by Sentry.
Course Spotlight: Pointers and Objects in Python
In this video course, you’ll learn about Python’s object model and see why pointers don’t really exist in Python. You’ll also cover ways to simulate pointers in Python without managing memory.
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How do you get yourself unstuck when facing a programming problem? How do you develop a positive developer mindset while learning Python? This week on the show, Bob Belderbos from Pybites is here to talk about learning Python and building healthy developer habits.
Bob created the Pybites learning platform with his friend Julian Sequeira. They initially focused on exercises and coding challenges to motivate new Python students. As they grew their community, they created a podcast and moved into coaching.
They noticed that most new developers share common struggles of tutorial paralysis, imposter syndrome, and motivation. Bob discusses techniques for developing a positive mindset, overcoming coding blocks, and delivering projects.
Course Spotlight: Grow Your Python Portfolio With 13 Intermediate Project Ideas
Get started on 13 Python project ideas that are just right for intermediate Python developers. They’ll challenge you enough to help you become a better Pythonista.
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What are the typical computer tasks you do manually every week? Could you automate those tasks with a Python script? Christopher Trudeau is back on the show this week, bringing another batch of PyCoder’s Weekly articles and projects.
We discuss a recent Hacker News thread about frequently used automation scripts. We share the kinds of tasks we’ve automated with Python in our work and personal lives.
Christopher shares a tutorial about building a micro-search engine from scratch using Python. The post takes you through coding the components of a crawler, index, and ranker. The finished engine is designed to search the posts of the blogs you follow.
We also share several other articles and projects from the Python community, including a news roundup, how a Polars query works under the hood, using Python for data analysis, understanding open-source licensing, summarizing the significant changes between Python versions, a robust TUI hex editor, and a lightweight dataframe library with a universal interface for data wrangling.
This week’s episode is brought to you by Intel.
Course Spotlight: Building Command Line Interfaces With argparse
In this step-by-step Python video course, you’ll learn how to take your command line Python scripts to the next level by adding a convenient command line interface that you can write with argparse.
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uv: Python Packaging in Rust – uv is an extremely fast Python package installer and resolver, designed as a drop-in alternative to pip and pip-tools. This post introduces you to uv and shows some of its performance numbers.Show Links:
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