Python Monthly (January 2020)

2nd issue! That's right, you're right at the beginning of this journey! If there is enough interest, I will keep doing these every month so please share it with your friends!

If you missed it, you can read the previous and future issue of the Python Monthly newsletter here.

If it’s your first time here… (otherwise skip this part)

Being a Python developer is a fantastic career option. Python is now the most popular language with lots of growing job demand (especially in Web, Data Science and Machine Learning field). You have many job opportunities, you can work around the world, and you get to solve hard problems. One thing that is hard, however, is staying up to date with the constantly evolving ecosystem. You want to be a top performing python developer, coder, programmer, software developer, but you don’t have time to select from hundreds of articles, videos and podcasts each day.

This monthly newsletter is focused on keeping you up to date with the industry, keeping your skills sharp, without wasting your valuable time. I will be sharing the most important articles, podcasts and videos of the month. Think Tim Ferriss and the Pareto Principle (80/20 rule) meeting the Software Development world. What’s the 20% that will get you 80% of the results?

What you missed in January as a Python Developer…

Everything About Python Timers ⏱

A great writeup of all the ways you can time, measure and monitor your code in Python. It goes from the basics all the way to advanced. You probably don't need to know all of them though.

Async Python Web Ecosystem 🧬

Unlike the standard WSGI, ASGI, the Asynchronous Standard Gateway Interface is starting to pick up steam in the industry as it promises to bring asynchronous execution like Node.js and Go allow for backend services. You can read about the development of this space here.

Learn Machine Learning 🤖

Want to learn Data Science and Machine Learning? Well, lucky for you, I just released a course with my friend Daniel. It's pretty good if I say so myself. Also, don't judge me for self promoting in this newsletter. How else am I going to afford the new LEGO international space station?

Visual Guide to Dictionaries 🎬

A visual guide to how Python Dictionaries work. It's one of the most fundamental data structure in Python (and many other languages) so understanding how to use their full power is a must.

Who Likes Performance? 🚀

Performance talk in front of any programmer is like catnip for a cat. You immediately want to hear more right? Well, here is another great article discussing performance in Python.

Cool Python Libraries/Tools 🧩

The popular library for Data Science (and working with data frames), Pandas, has released version 1.0.0!

Python web scraper that scrapes job listings around the web and filters based on whatever criteria you want. Automate your job applications!

Fully featured HTTP library for Python3: HTTPX.

CleverCSV is a Python package for handling messy CSV files.

JetBrains just released a free font specifically for programmers.

Copying and Mutating Data 🧬

Copying data is wasteful and uses up the limited memory that you have on a device. Mutating data is dangerous and can lead to weird bugs. So can you avoid these things? Not entirely, but there are ways around minimizing some of these issues. Read here to learn how.

Speaking of copying data, do you know what happens when you have too much data to fit in memory?

iterators, generators, coroutines 🕵️‍

Have no idea what any of the above terms mean? Or maybe you know what iterators and generators are, but have only vaguely heard of coroutines? This article will teach you all three and how they are related.

Django, Django Everywhere ⛑

A full walkthrough of Django 3 and how to build a CRUD app with MySQL and Bootstrap. I'm personally a bigger fan of Flask and PostgreSQL but hey, everyone has their own preference!

How does Django actually work with the browser? If you've ever wondered that, here is your answer.

Functional Programming with Python 🔥

Passing a function as an argument to another function in Python is a crucial ability in having a functional programming paradigm. What does it all mean though? This article shows you the power of that statement.

Python Environment Madness 🛰

Python environments is a tough topic because there are so many options out there. When you are starting out, it is hard to know what is available, and when to use what. This article will give you a complete rundown of everything that is available and what the pros and cons are.

Now that you know about environments, this is how you can install packages in Python.

Concurrency In Python? 🤔

Did you know you can do concurrency in Python? This article will show you how to get started and show people how cool you are.

Building Games In Python 🌅

Although if you want to build games, there are probably better options out there than Python, this guide will take your through how to do exactly that: build games in Python. And here is another one.

What is Pythonic? 🎋

What does it mean when someone says that the code is not Pythonic? Well this article shows you how to do a Pythonic code review.

Around the World 🗺️

US Government started restricting exporting of artificial intelligence software due to national security. This is mainly targeted at other super powers like China and companies now will need a license to send certain software abroad.
SHA-1 hashing function is now just as vulnerable as MD5. For those having no idea what that last sentence meant, it means you should use a more secure hashing function than SHA-1 from now on. Fun fact: SHA stands for Secure Hashing Algorithm... HA!
Hospitals aren't very good at protecting their data. About a billion medical images are exposed online due to lack of best practices.
DuckDuckGo is Now a Default Search Engine Option on Android in the EU.
A day long internet outage in Yemen due to internet cable being cut. A reminder that this whole internet thing works through underwater cables connecting everything together.
NY Times released an article that is making a stir in the world of tech and the ethical use of Facial Recognition.
Turkish citizens finally get access to Wikipedia after 2+ years of being blocked.

Big Tech News 🏢

Microsoft recently released a neat little tool Sketch2Code. You draw on paper your template, and it converts it into HTML. Pretty neat use of Machine Learning. There has been an increasing trend towards "nocode" recently (this is a topic I will be discussing in my upcoming 2020 trends article). Also, according to Goldman Sachs, Microsoft Azure has an edge over AWS when it comes to cloud computing for the enterprise. I expect people are underestimating how valuable Azure DevOps knowledge is compared to AWS. Not all good news for Microsoft, as the NSA found a critical bug in Widows 10 this month.
Apple's new feature in iOS13 which notifies users of apps tracking in the background have negatively affected the ad companies needing this data (as they should). Good news here. On not so good news, Apple doesn't encrypt your iCloud backups because the FBI complained.
Alphabet becomes the 4th US company to reach a Trillion Dollar valuation (Microsoft, Apple and Amazon have done it already). Google/Alphabet also really ticked off people by changing how ads are displayed in their search results. They then backtracked because people were complaining.
Intel CPUs where discovered to have another vulnerability.

Completely useless to your career but still great 🙃

Ever wondered how you can create a moon animation using NASA images and Python just in a few lines of code? Well, wonder no more.

Best Resource of the Month 🥽

What is good code? What is a good program? This article is able to give you not only code specific advice, but also practical advice for thinking about your programs and software. Highly recommend reading it and taking notes.

While we are at it, here are 30 Python tips/tricks/advices.

Trick of the Month 🎩

Build real time object detection to add to your portfolio!

See you next month!

By the way, my full time job is to teach people to code in the most efficient way possible as the Lead Instructor of Zero To Mastery Academy. You can see a few of my courses below or see all of my courses by visiting the courses page.