Python Monthly Newsletter 💻🐍

49th issue! If you missed the previous ones, you can read all the previous issues of my monthly Python newsletter here.

Python Developer Monthly Newsletter - December 2023

If it’s your first time here, welcome, keep reading. If you're a long time reader, welcome back, you can skip to the next section to dive right into this month's newsletter.

Being a Python developer is a fantastic career option. Python is the most popular programming 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 interesting problems.

One of the hardest parts though? Staying up-to-date with the constantly evolving ecosystem.

You want to be a top-performing python developer, but you don’t have time to select from hundreds of articles, videos and podcasts coming out every day.

That's why I write this every month to help you out.

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 Python articles, news, resources, podcasts and videos of the month.

Think 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 December 2023 as a Python Developer…

First off, Happy New Year! Thank you for reading this monthly newsletter for so many years (that I totally don't leave until the last minute and dread writing on the last day of the month but I'm too committed now and too many of you read so I can't stop. I'm trapped help me...)

Ok back to this month's news:

Python + A.I. 🔥

This is what a real Python looks like. Ok, jokes aside, let's get to the really good educational stuff:

Weekend Project Idea 🧰

Turn (almost) any Python command line program into a full GUI application with one line using Gooey.

This is a cool tool to experiment with. Weekend is for learning!

Python 3.12 🎺

This is the first maintenance release of Python 3.12.

Python 3.12 is the newest major release of the Python programming language, and it contains many new features and optimizations that programmers are getting excited about.

How to Flatten a List 🪟

5 ways to flatten a list of lists.

This is a great article to show you the different ways you can solve a problem in Python, but how each solution has a pro and con. These are the type of things that you can experiment with if you're using ChatGPT for ideas.

Why Type_Checking? 🩻

Python requires that type annotations are available at runtime for function definitions, and annotated assignments in classes and modules.

Don't have any clue what any of that means?

Here is an interesting article on the topic.

History of Data Engineering 🛖

Although not directly related to this newsletter, the history part of this article is super interesting and I think you would agree too.

I highly recommend reading that section to get a better understanding of the data world.

Let's Talk About A.I. 🚀

Whether you hate it or not, A.I. and that term is shaking up the industry.

Don't believe me?

Check out this presentation about how the world has changed because of A.I. in 2023.

It's worth keeping an eye out on things and here at ZTM you can expect a lot of content around this in 2024.

News Around the World 🗺

• It's the end of the year and I'm sick and tired of 2023 "end of the world" type news. So to end the year with a good bang (...👀), here is how to kill a developer in 4 words or less.

• 2023 was a great year for computer science. Here are 2023's biggest breakthroughs

Big Tech News 🏢

• Google introduced its new GeminiAI trying to battle OpenAI's ChatGpt. For those that are confused: the main Gemini excitement is Gemini Ultra (which is claimed to beat GPT-4). The one available through Bard is Gemini Pro.

• Figma and Adobe merger is officially off! I have a suspicion that Adobe lucked out on this because they were acquiring Figma at the peak of the market, and with the new Generative AI wave, they now have Adobe Firefly. Although Adobe does have to pay $1 BILLION to Figma because the deal didn't go thourhg... ouch 😬. Curious to see what the consequences of this will be over the coming years.

• Jury decides Google has illegal monopoly in app store fight. Funny that this happened before the Apple store.

• How Nvidia become a trillion dollar company. An interesting story with a lot of history lessons.

• (Very famous) Design executive Tang Tan is set to leave Apple in February and will join Jony Ive’s LoveFrom design studio... which works with OpenAI. Interesting.

Completely useless to your career but still great 🙃

• Kind of interesting: A bride-to-be discovers a reality-bending mistake in Apple's computational photography.

• Optical Illusions using A.I. (pre-trained diffusion models).... trippy.

• Wiggly drawings. People are creative.

• Fun tool for video exploration: A GPT-4/Gemini Voice/Video Exploration Tool

Best Resource of the Month 🥽

Let's end the year on a strong note with this excellent article: Code is read more than written.

A simple reminder to everyone here that should be common programmer knowledge:

The person first writing a piece of code shouldn’t buy convenience at the expense of the people who will have to read it and modify it in the future.

More generally, code is read more than written.

It’s usually a good investment to make the code maintainable by keeping it simple, writing tests and documentation, etc.

It’s about having perspective over the software development cycle. You follow this and you will make everyone in your company happy.

Here is an example of this practice in real life (still a good read even if it's in JavaScript).

Trick of the Month 🎩

• Want to see how your year looked in coding? Here is Github Unwrapped.

• Generate a snake game from a Github user contributions graph and output a screen capture as animated svg or gif. This may be the coolest trick ever. Great way to end 2023 / start 2024!

• Wow. For those hardcore people with multiple computers.

Thanks for reading and Happy New Year!

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.