Python Monthly Newsletter 💻🐍

30th 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 May 2022 as a Python Developer…

Dunder Mifflin Method 🗞

If you’ve ever created a Python class, you are probably already familiar with dunder methods, but you might not even know it.

A dunder method — also known as a magic method — gets its name from the double underscores that begin and end the method name.

Dunder methods allow you to build classes that overload Python operators and interact beautifully and seamlessly with Python functions. Read all about them here.

GIL’s Impact 🏗

Most computers these days come with multiple cores, allowing multiple threads to run computations in parallel. And even without multiple cores, you can have concurrency, for example one thread waiting on disk while another runs code on the CPU.

The ability to use parallelism can be critical to scaling your application—or making your data processing finish faster.

Unfortunately, in many cases Python can only run one thread at a time, due to what’s know as the Global Interpreter Lock (“GIL”). Learn about it here.

You can read about the current status of the NO GIL movement here.

PyScript Baby 👶

The creators and maintainers of the popular Anaconda tool just released PyScript!

PyScript is a framework that allows users to run Python and create rich applications in the browser by simply using special HTML tags provided by the framework itself. This could be a game changer. Keep your eyes out on its development.

Once you check out the announcement, see how you can use PyScript with this article.

PyCon 2022 👨‍🎤

PyCon US 2022 happened this past month and luckily for you that didn't attend, you can take note of all the highlights so you stay up to date in the community: Here are the highlights.

Modern Python Performance 📟

There are three separate projects that are currently being worked on to try to speed up Python in various ways; all of them are "coming out in various forms either last year or this year". Here is a breakdown of the upcoming things.

The Well Maintained Test 🧑‍🌾

A test that you can use to decide whether a new package you’re considering depending on is well-maintained.

Python 3.11 Beta 💻

Python 3.11 beta release is here! If you want to check it out and be all trendy here it is.

Weekend Project Idea 🧰

This month, learn to contribute to an open source Python project! This weekend project idea uses this article to show you the step by step process of becoming an open source contributor. Enjoy!

Python Patterns 🧩

A collection of design patterns/idioms in Python for you to spend your lifetime learning.

Code Audit 🧘

Learnings from 5 years of tech startup code audits. 16 things that this author learned from reviewing code. A great list.

News Around the World 🗺

• Newsflash: Wordpress use is shrinking

• Github released a review of a npm security issue from this past month: Attack campaign using stolen OAuth tokens

Big Tech News 🏢

• Supabase raises $80M Series B for its open source Firebase alternative

• I'm noticing a trend right now when it comes to tech hiring. A lot of companies are suspending some of their hiring. If you have a solid job right now, I recommend looking at staying put as the mobility between jobs we saw in the last couple of decades for tech workers may not keep going at the same pace

• Twitter to pay $150 million penalty for allegedly breaking its privacy promises – again

Completely useless to your career but still great 🙃

• WTF Python!?

• Porting Zelda Classic onto the web

• Random bug: And. And. And. And. And.

• GameBoy Graphics: Tiles, Palettes, and Encoding

• The two envelops problem

Best Resource of the Month 🥽

What's in which Python. This is the best resource of the month because it shows you exactly which features were added to the Python language in which versions.

A great historical context for you and your Python friends!

With each major Python release, all the attention goes to the new language features: the walrus operator, dictionary merging, pattern matching. There is also a lot of writing about asyncio and typing modules.

However, the Standard Library also get updates! Once you are done with the above article, check out the Standard Library novelties introduced in versions 3.8–3.10.

Trick of the Month 🎩

• Search for the oldest results on the internet.

• Git ignores .gitignore with .gitignore in .gitignore

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.