Python Monthly (June 2020) | Zero To Mastery

**7th issue! If you missed the previous ones, you can read the previous issues 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 the fields of Web, Data Science and Machine Learning). 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 June as a Python Developer…

Ultimate Python Debugging 🐛

Nobody writes perfect code. Half the time, you are spending your time debugging your programs, so it is always a good time to invest in learning the proper way to debug your python code. Lucky for you, this article helps you out.

While you are at it, also learn about Python Error Handling.

A Free Python Course 🦄

A pretty in depth Python course that tries to cover some of the basics of Python in written form. A productive little thing to do over the weekend or dive into a specific topic you are curious about.

Dependency Management ⛲️

Dependency management is a big topic for all programming languages. Python has one of the more complex dependency management out there, so it is no surprise that there are many ways of doing it. Here is a breakdown of the most common/best ways of going about this hard problem.

The Best Flattener 🥌

I love articles like these that don't necessarily make a HUGE impact in your programming ways, but do show you that there are many options out there for doing things. Remember, performance is only one of the factors in deciding what is "good" (i.e. think about readability too).

How To Build A Large Project 🏄

A great overview of potential ways to structure your Python Monorepos so that it scales well. It is not always about micro services, and sometimes Monorepos may be the answer for your large scale application. Have a read here.

Weekend Project Idea 🎏

This is a fun project for you to build yourself this weekend using some Python Scraping (pick your favourite movie critic). Bonus points if you make this into a web app or a voice skill for Alexa or Google Home.

Ok, just because I like you, here is another idea in case you don't like the first one.

What Are Enums? 📚

Enum stands for enumeration and refers to a set of symbolic names, which are called enumeration members. Huh? They are essentially a data structure that can be very useful and an important one to add to your Python skills. So have a read here to learn all about them.

Python Best Practice Bites 🥞

A bunch of quick code snippets to demonstrate Python best practices that you can learn right away. Enjoy.

Master NumPy 🤖

NumPy is one of the most popular Python libraries that gets heavily used in the Machine Learning and Data Science space. [In this interactive tutorial],(https://mathtocode.com/) you get to learn all about NumPy by solving math problems (it's a lot more fun than it sounds).

PEP618 - zip() 🤐

New PEP adds an optional length checker to the zip() function to avoid the common errors that you get when combining lists of different lengths. Have a read through the documentation here.

To Pickle or Not To Pickle 🥒

Pickle is a very unique to Python. But should you always use it? In some cases, it may not be the best option, so you should be aware of these 9 flaws.

Github Is Taking Over 🗿

Github's latest Actions (ha! get it?) have really shown the powerhouse that it is. Now, they announced Github Linter. A Github super linter that will lint all your code with no need for you to build your own linting pipeline. Things are becoming better and better with Github and I don't see why we shouldn't be using all their tools in one place.

News Around the World 🗺

EU is launching Gaia-X to take on AWS and Alibaba cloud services. I don't see this going well for them, but will be an interesting one to watch.
Using LIDAR technology (used in autonomous vehicles), scientists discovered a massive 3,000 year old ceremonial complex in the Mayan region.
Someone created a privacy best practice cheatsheet for times when you attend a protest.
The coming chip wars. A little bit of a biased article, but a great overview of the landscape of chip making.
Big news out of India banning dozens of Chinese apps.

Big Tech News 🏢

If you want to make a quick $100,000 from Apple, you do it like this person. A big piece of news out of Apple this month was the fact that they will be moving away from Intel chips by 2021. If you want insight into what this all means, this is the best article I have found. They also had their big iOS 14 update come out with one privacy feature getting TikTok in trouble. Finally, FaceID and TouchID is coming to the Safari Browser using the new Web Auth API.
Facebook is experimenting with new apps: Venue for live events, CatchUp to catch up with people you like. On less exciting news for them, a bunch of advertisers are boycotting Facebook ads.
Amazon is making a big play into autonomous cars by buying Zoox. The reason? They are now the 4th largest delivery service and growing fast. Watch out Uber, Lyft and Tesla. Amazon is also jumping on the no code bandwagon.
In the biggest WTF? announcement this month, CloudFlare announces CloudFlare tv. No idea what their play is here, but cooool.
A bunch of big tech companies starting with IBM, then Amazon, then Microsoft are stopping facial recognition business momentarily until governments/authorities get their act together.
Zoom is blowing up in a positive way and negative way at the same time with all of this remote work happening.
Uber lost out on this battle: Just Eat Takeaway to Acquire Grubhub for $7.3 Billion (that's a lot of money).
Microsoft announced that Rust is the future of system level programming and not C/C++. Pretty big endorsement. Speaking of Microsoft (which owns Github), Github might be removing the word "master" as the branch names for repositories.
People are still angry at Google Chrome for its latest planned updates to the URL bar. Meanwhile Mozilla is looking to build its own VPN.

Completely useless to your career but still great 🙃

You can now use Python with LEGO robot!

Why 536 was the worst year to be alive.

Best Resource of the Month 🥽

I'm cheating this month since I am adding my own article in here (sorry, I didn't find any MUST READ python articles this month). However, before you walk away, I highly recommend you check out this article that I wrote a few years ago that talks about what it means to be a Senior programmer (hint: it's not just about technical knowledge). Enjoy!

Trick of the Month 🎩

Live radio from around the world. Or listen to it while driving around the world.
Check the weather like a hacker

See you next month everyone!

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.