Python Monthly Newsletter 💻🐍

28th 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 March 2022 as a Python Developer…

Using ThreadPoolExecutor 📚

The ThreadPoolExecutor class in Python can be used to download multiple books from Project Gutenberg at the same time. How? In this tutorial, you will discover how to concurrently download books from Project Gutenberg in Python... a pretty cool way to learn about the ThreadPoolExecutor!

Github Issues Migration for Python 📯

Python Steering Council is working on migrating the data that is currently residing at https://bugs.python.org/ (BPO) into the GitHub Issues of the CPython repository hosted there. The ultimate goal is to move all user- and core developer-provided issue-reporting entirely to Github.

Learn Some Data Visualization 📊

Visually exploring ideas coming from data is a powerful tool. Instead of creating an endless number of charts to discover content, we can create interactive visual outputs using ipywidgets combined with seaborn. This is how to do it.

Fixing A Bug In Python 👾

Want to learn how to contribute and improve the Python language? Here is a step by step that someone took to fix a vulnerability in Python.

Weekend Project Idea 🎏

If you need to process a large JSON file in Python, it’s very easy to run out of memory. Even if the raw data fits in memory... it's still an issue. So how can you solve this problem? Your weekend project is to try this out yourself!

List VS Tuple 🛠

The ultimate battle between these 2 data types in Python. Who will win? Is there a winner at all? Let's dive deep and find out.

Python 4 Is Here! 🐲

That's a lie. There is no Python 4. But if such a thing where to come up in the future (which will probably happen), what features would you like to see? Python programmers were asked this question and there are some good AND bad ideas here.

Python Built-in Functions To Know 🎍

Which built-ins should you know about?

Most Python developers will only ever need about 30 built-in functions, but which 30 depends on what you’re actually doing with Python.

This article takes a look at all 71 of Python’s built-in functions, in a birds eye view sort of way and organizes them in a way to show you which ones you actually need to learn. Very cool analysis!

CLIs In Python ⌨️

One of the most important skills you learned in Python 101 is how to run Python code using command line interface (CLI), which is essentially the starting point of your Python journey.

The nicest thing about command line application is its flexibility to combine with other applications and be able to run in most of the operating systems. Here is how to do it even better.

Learning Some Cython 💊

The Cython language is a superset of the Python language that additionally supports calling C functions and declaring C types on variables and class attributes on top of Python. How is this useful? An Introduction to Just Enough Cython to be Useful.

Python 3.11 👩‍💻

Want to give the brand new Python 3.11 a try? Here is the alpha release.

Python 3.11 may finally lay the foundation to make an old dream come true and have Python in the web browser.

Moving from pipenv to poetry or PDM ✌️

"Does anyone have experience moving from pipenv to either poetry or PDM?" - An interesting discussion.

Advice From A Veteran 📬

My guiding principles after 20 years of programming (not me). For their 20 years programming anniversary, the author tried to list the top principles that have been accumulated over the years as their guiding principles through their career.

Technical Writing Skill ✍️

As developers, not only do we need to know how to communicate our code, we also need to understand how to create written and technical documentation to ensure our meaning, decisions, and processes are understood.

This technical writing happens as documentation, inter-team communication (communication between different teams), and even blog posts. But what if you’ve never been trained in technical communication? How can you get started in technical writing? Learn it here.

News Around the World 🗺

• Digital Ocean has acquired CSS-Tricks. In the past they acquired Scotch.io (which is now gone). Interesting move.

• Is open source being weaponized during these turmoiling times?

• Microsoft and identity management platform Okta both disclosed breaches this week involving LAPSUS$, a relatively new cybercrime group that specializes in stealing data from big companies and threatening to publish it unless a ransom demand is paid. Here’s a closer look at LAPSUS$, and some of the low-tech but high-impact methods the group uses to gain access to targeted organizations. Turns out they were teenagers from the UK.

Big Tech News 🏢

• Google is introducing a new privacy platform called Checks. Look up the definition of the word oxymoron. This is exactly what an oxymoron is.

• Remote work slacking is over! Lots of companies are finding that remote work isn't such a great thing for their employee productivity (despite what employees may try to convince you of)... Google is bringing workers back into their offices along with other big tech companies.

• Meta, in one of its big moves since announcing the rebranding, released this: https://thesoloist-vr.com/. Exclusively available to watch through their Oculus platform. Is this the future of media with walled garden content?

• Apple had their big event where they announced a ton of new features and products. Here are the noteworthy ones.

• Nividia is going big into the CPU market after their failed takeover of AMD. Check it out.

Completely useless to your career but still great 🙃

• Most addictive game ever: Almost Pong

• Endurance: Shackleton's lost ship is found in Antarctic and extremely well preserved. Ps I highly recommend reading the book about the crazy survival story.

• This may be one of the coolest products I have ever seen. Tell me you don't want one.

• “Better than our most optimistic prediction” – first images from James Webb exceed all expectations.

• Top movies and coding music according to developers.

Best Resource of the Month 🥽

Telescopes have been fundamental in our understanding of our place in the universe. And when you think about images that have shaped our modern view of space, you probably think about Hubble (the telescope).

But just this year, the JWST or James Web Space Telescope, was launched.

JWST will go far beyond what Hubble has discovered. And did you know Python is used extensively in the whole data pipeline of JWST?

Python will literally uncover secrets of the universe in the coming years.

This month's best resource is a podcast that talks about how Python is being used with the JWST.

Trick of the Month 🎩

• Want to scan bar codes? There's a Web API for that.

• Hey! New code editor for Mac users in the wild!

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 couple of my courses below or see all ZTM courses here.