Python Monthly Newsletter 💻🐍

Welcome to the 57th issue of Python Monthly!

If it’s your first time here, welcome, I like you already. If you want the full back story on this monthly newsletter, head here.

The quick version: I curate and share the most important Python articles, news, resources, podcasts, and videos.

Think the Pareto Principle (80/20 rule) meeting the Python world. I give you the 20% that will get you 80% of the results.

If you're a long time reader, welcome back old friend.

Alright, let's not waste any valuable time and jump right into this month's updates.

Here's what you missed in August 2024 as a Python Developer…

itertools Guide 🚆

The Python module itertools contains 20 tools that every Python developer should be aware of. This is a guide to get familiar with one of the most useful module that comes with Python. Enjoy

Asyncio Event Loop ⛓

How can you run an asyncio event loop in a separate thread? What does that even mean? This guide will help you.

This guide will teach you a very cool thing that you might have not known you can do: run an asyncio event loop in a new thread by starting a new thread and configuring it to start or run an event loop.

Python Packages Are Confusing 🪆

What's the deal with setuptools, setup.py, pyproject.toml and wheels?.

Between pyenv, venv, virtualenv, pip, anaconda, poetry, pipenv, uv, pipx, hatch, setuptools and so much more, Python landscape can get pretty confusing.

Hopefully this article can give you some historical perspective on this topic.

Weekend Project Idea 🧰

Use this amazing website to incorporate an API into your app this weekend and build something fun!

Become An Open Source God ⛩

Who doesn't want to be an Open Source contributor to a big project... like Chromium/Google Chrome web browser. Sounds impossible?

Well, this person managed to do it as a first time contributor. This is a great inspiring read.

News Around the World 🗺

Artificial intelligence’s progress in areas like customer service and content creation is at risk due to a phenomenon known as “model collapse,” where AI models, when trained on data that includes their own previous outputs, gradually produce less accurate and reliable content.

This recursive training loop degrades the model’s performance and can lead to poorer decision-making, reduced content quality, and increased biases. To prevent this, it’s essential to use high-quality human-generated data, maintain transparency in training methods, and periodically refresh models with new, diverse data to preserve AI’s effectiveness and relevance. - Forbes.

I know a few developers who are using older version of models because they produce better results and have less "socially acceptable guardrails" added to their training. Keep an eye out on this space.

Big Tech News 🏢

• Epic Games Store and Fortnite arrive on EU iPhones. In shocking news, EU has required Apple to allow 3rd party marketplaces. This is a small step in installing an app, but a giant leap for digital freedom, and also a giant leap for spam apps.

• Don't worry, Apple still has a stronghold on the app store. In other news, Apple says Patreon must switch to its billing system or risk removal from App Store (so they can get that sweet 30% commish 😉).

• Nvidia keeps making money: Nvidia Revenue Jumps 122% in Positive Sign for Tech’s A.I. Boom. Revenue was $30.04 billion in the quarter, surpassing its $28 billion estimate in May. Net income rose to $16.95 billion from $6.19 billion a year ago, eclipsing the most recent quarterly profits of Meta and Amazon. Apparently that's not good enough as the stock fell by as much as 7 percent in after-hours trading when they announced this... shrug

Completely useless to your career but still great 🙃

• Building Lego Machines to Destroy Tall Lego Towers. Do I need to say more?

• All of Earth's water in a single sphere! It's shocking how little water there actually is on this planet.

• YouTube as an actual TV with channel. Is this better for your attention?

Best Resource of the Month 🥽

It's not often that I share a podcast for the Best Resource of the Month... as a matter of fact, this might be only the 2nd time in all these years. It's also a 3 hour podcast but I guarantee it will blow your mind and inspire you.

The big takeaway is to not always focus on the latest trends, over complicating things, and especially focusing on meaningless minutia. Focus on solving a problem and ship. Oh and using PHP and jQuery isn't the end of the world.

Trust me on this one, it will make you a better programmer:

Pieter Levels: Programming, Viral AI Startups, and Digital Nomad Life | Lex Fridman Podcast

Trick of the Month 🎩

Be a real hacker. Stop typing your LLM commands on the web. Use the terminal instead: ell - A command-line interface for LLMs written in Bash.

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 an Instructor at the Zero To Mastery Academy. You can see a few of our courses below or see all ZTM courses here.