Python Monthly 💻🐍

16th issue! If you missed the previous ones, you can read the previous issues of my monthly Python 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 is the best Python newsletter for you if you want to keep up to date with the industry and keep your skills sharp, without wasting your valuable time.

I curate and share the most important articles, news, resources, podcasts and videos of the month.

Think Tim Ferriss and the Pareto Principle (80/20 rule) meeting the Python world. What’s the 20% that will get you 80% of the results?

Let's dive in. Here's what you missed in March 2021 as a Python Developer…

Python Developer Survey 📊

The results from the popular JetBrains Python Developer survey are in! Check out all the trends from 2020 and where we are headed for 2021. More than 28,000 Python developers and enthusiasts from almost 200 countries/regions took the survey to reveal the current state of the language and the ecosystem around it.

Weekend Project Idea 🎏

Do you want to create your own computer games but like Python too much to abandon it for a career as a game developer? There’s a solution for that! With the Pygame module, you can use your amazing Python skills to create games, from the basic to the very complex. In this weekend project, you’ll learn how to use Pygame by making a clone of the Asteroids game!

Poison Packages 🧪

If you’ve ever used the Python programming language (which you have because you are reading this newsletter), or installed software written in Python, you’ve probably used PyPI using the pip command. You have to be careful though... it is very easy to download malicious packages that infect your computer/code this way. Here are all the ways that it could happen and what to do to mitigate the risk: Poison packages – “Supply Chain Risks” user hits Python community with 4000 fake modules.

Speaking of PyPI, GitHub and the Python Package Index are collaborating to help protect you from leaked PyPI API tokens for package authors.

Python At Dropbox 🏗

Dropbox currently uses Python for their server-side product development, with more than 3 million lines of code belonging to their monolithic Python server. In this article they talk about their monolith that was also holding them back as they grew and what they did to solve it.

Python 3.10 Feature 🎛

Structural pattern matching is coming in Python 3.10 and this article explores how to use it to write Pythonic code, showing the best use cases for the match statement.

Race To AI Supremacy 🤖

Although this isn't directly related to Python, the characters of this story are using Python to develop the algorithms that turned into what we now know as Deep Learning. An amazing story and a fun read.

Data Science Tips 🎨

When visualizing data, you’re almost always working with color. If you use them to visualize data, hue palettes and gradients become “color scales.” That’s because they all “map” to some data: For example, every one of your hues stands for a certain category and every color in your gradient stands for a certain value (range).

This article gives you an overview of the different color scales and why color is so important for your data visualizations.

Python Testing Style Guide 🛠

What are some of the best practices around testing Python projects? I really enjoyed this read and it teaches some great principles to follow for your future testing needs.

Once you are done with that, dive into this article to master unit testing with Python.

150 lines of Python 💡

What can you do with 150 lines of Python? A lot, but not many things that would be as impressive as this: Building a full-text search engine in 150 lines of Python code. It's a lot simpler than you may think!

Fast Prototyping 🎪

Let's say you have a web app idea, but you don't know JavaScript and only know Python. Then perhaps this stack is best for you: HTMX, TailwindCSS and Flask. Check out this tutorial on how to use these 3 to build awesome web apps.

Python + MongoDB 🤿

Ever wanted to connect your Python server to a MongoDB database? You can learn all about that here and build a mini project along the way.

News Around the World 🗺

• We have to talk about the Suez Canal block from this month...

• PHP's internal git server was compromised... so they are going to just use Github instead of maintaining their own git server.

Big Tech News 🏢

• Intel ordered to pay $2.18 billion in patent lawsuit. A lot of negative news coming out of Intel and how far behind they are lately. However, keep an eye on them turning things around in a couple of years. They're not going anywhere.

• Okta buys Auth0 for $6.5 billion. Two giants in the security world becoming giant-er.

• At least 30,000 organizations across the United States — including a significant number of small businesses, towns, cities and local governments — have over the past few days been hacked because of holes in Microsoft's Email software.

• Almost a fifth of Facebook employees are now working on VR and AR: report

• Google announces that starting on July 1, 2021 they are reducing the service fee Google Play receives when a developer sells digital goods or services to 15% for the first $1M (USD) of revenue every developer earns each year (it used to be 30%). If you have an app on Google Play store, lucky you.

• Adobe has come up with "super resolution".

Completely useless to your career but still great 🙃

• Low earth orbit clutter

• Mars: Nasa's Perseverance rover sends stunning images

• Can you beat 1024 bytes of JavaScript in a game of chess?

• This will blow your mind... your browser can see you.

Best Resource of the Month 🥽

Generalists vs specialists - who has a greater chance of success? The React specialist, or the Full Stack developer? An interesting article explores this debate that echos beyond the tech world, into every parts of our life. The answer isn't as easy as you may think.

Once you read the above, then dive into this article to learn how to develop your personal "Talent Stack".

Trick of the Month 🎩

• 🍦 Never use print() to debug Python again. With this.

• Grow a bonsai tree in your terminal!

• code-complexity may be the coolest package I have never heard of but will 100% use on the next project. Learn about it here.

See you next month everyone!

By the way, I teach people how to code and get hired 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 ZTM courses here.