Python Monthly Newsletter 💻🐍

33rd issue! If you missed the previous ones, you can read all 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 August 2022 as a Python Developer…

Tabs vs Spaces ☄️

Someone posted in the Python discussion forum:

"I know that “tabs vs spaces” is a long discussed topic. Objectively seeing the topic after so many years and taking into account that our world is becoming more inclusive, may I bring this back to consideration again?"

Hilarity ensued.

Crimes With Python 🥸

Ok, not actual crimes, but crimes using the new Pattern Matching feature in Python. This is what you SHOULDN'T do. Get ready to have your mind blown.

Meta Endorsed Languages 👽

Programming languages endorsed for server-side use at Meta... does Python make the cut?

This is an interesting article on what Meta uses as a guideline for using server side languages. Meta’s primary supported server-side languages are Hack, C++, Rust, and Python!

Counting Words ⚡️

Someone did an experiment: counting words in Python, Go, C++, C, AWK, Forth, and Rust... which one wins?

Try to guess the order before clicking on the article and seeing the results here.

Profiling or Logging? 🔬

When your software is too slow in production, how can you figure out the source of the problem?

One common starting point to improving production observability is logging, and ideally trace-based logging (tracing for short).

But there’s another approach to finding performance problems, using sampling-based profiling in production.

So which one should you pick?

Weekend Project Idea 🧰

Do you like the NBA and/or basketball? Doesn't matter because this project is fun regardless: Automatically Create NBA Highlights With a Few Lines of Python Code.

You will leverage open-source computer vision models to generate basketball highlights. Have fun with this one this weekend!

Do you really hate the NBA? Fine, then you can do this project instead.

Async in Python ⛓

For the last couple years the Python web ecosystem as a whole has been seeing new frameworks pop up which are fully async, or support going fully async, from the start.

But this raises a lot of questions, like: just what is “async” Python? Why do people care about it so much? And is it really that useful for building web apps? What are all these new frameworks and other tools about? Find out here.

The Y Combinator 🪆

If you want to prove you're a computer science nerd, you need to know what Y Combinator is. This is one the best explanations I have watched on the topic. If you've done the Master the Coding Interview series here at ZTM (Part 1 here / Part 2 here), then this should be an easy video for you to follow.

Enjoy it.

News Around the World 🗺

• Crypto doing crypto things: Hundreds of PyPI and npm Packages Affected With Cryptominers

• Did you know that there is an anti-smartphone revolution happening right now?

Big Tech News 🏢

• Twitter may have leaked 5 million accounts' data. And a whistleblower (former Head of Security!) came out with a massive report claiming all kinds of security and privacy vulnerabilities. Twitter's PR department must be having so much fun right now. Oh ya... if anyone cares the Elon Musk and Twitter saga continues with nothing being resolved yet. This whistleblower seems to help Elon's case though. But this doesn't affect any of us sooooo moving along!

• In news that shocks nobody: Instagram and Facebook can track anything you do on any website in their in-app browser.

• The Story of Spotify.

Completely useless to your career but still great 🙃

• https://www.google.com/search?q=cat... see what happens.

• Best developer portfolio website ever?

• The world's oldest song written 3,400 years ago.

Best Resource of the Month 🥽

To learn how to build more maintainable and usable Python libraries, I’ve been reading some of the most widely used Python packages. Along the way, I learned some things about Python that are off the beaten path. Here are a few things I didn’t know before.

This is a great article showcasing how truly understanding concepts in programming means experimenting and trying things that are uncommon to test your assumptions. Highly recommend trying this method.

Trick of the Month 🎩

• A design system for building retro mac-inspired interfaces

• Interview the interviewer. Questions to ask at your next interview.

See you next month everyone... also share this with your friends... pretty please! ❤️

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 our courses below or see all ZTM courses here.