Python Monthly Newsletter 💻🐍

35th 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 October 2022 as a Python Developer…

Python Developers Survey 📌

Contribute to the Python Developers Survey 2022!

The survey is organized in partnership between the Python Software Foundation and JetBrains. After the survey is over, they will publish the aggregated results which I will post in this newsletter once it is live!

Python 3.11 Is Out 🎊

Python 3.11 is officially out! It has some nice little features added to the language but the biggest news is that Python 3.11 is between 10-60% faster than Python 3.10. Check out all of the details here.

Assert In Python 🧪

There are many ways to find bugs in Python code: the built-in debugger (pdb), a healthy amount of unit tests, a debugger in an IDE like Pycharm or Visual Studio, try/catch statements, if/else statements, assert statements, or the tried and true practice of covering every inch of your codebase in print() statements like it’s going out of style.

Assert statements can help us catch bugs quickly and are far less intrusive than copious amounts of print statements. However, unlike print statements, assert statements can be unexpectedly risky to use! Learn why that is here.

asyncio Ramblings 🔮

Creator of the Python, Guido van Rossum, talks about asyncio. A very interesting read that all Python developers should check out. Here it is.

Weekend Project Idea 🧰

A fun project using QR codes this month!

• Have you ever wondered how QR codes work?
• What about how procedural images are generated?
• Have you ever wanted to send someone a website link in a much cooler way?

If you said yes to any of these questions, you're in luck! Here a the weekend project you can work on this month.

Staff Engineer Archetypes 🚪

An interesting look at a software engineer's career ladder path. For those that aren't sure of what a role promotion might look like, this is a great read. Teach Lead, Architect, Right Hand, Solver.

News Around the World 🗺

• Neurons in a dish learn to play Pong. Yes...the human race is screwed.

• Some lawyers are investigating a potential lawsuit against GitHub Copilot for violating its legal duties to open-source authors and end users. Lots of ethical issues here.

Big Tech News 🏢

• Facebook is laying off thousands of employees apparently. This month was a bad month for the Meta parent company. In better news, they released their latest VR headset this month.

• Toyota Suffered a Data Breach by Accidentally Exposing A Secret Key Publicly On GitHub. Even big companies with lots of engineering power make mistakes.

• The sale of Twitter finally went through.

Completely useless to your career but still great 🙃

• Google's imagen that generates AI videos. Hover over each video to see the description that generated the video. Super cool

• An interesting photo collection of retro personal computer ads from the 1980s

• Not only is this a cool website, it also shows how much space junk we have

• NASA’s Webb Takes Star-Filled Portrait of Pillars of Creation

• A chill driving game with procedurally generate scenic landscapes. Coolest web app ever?

• Go inside the Great Pyramid of Giza for the first time

Best Resource of the Month 🥽

Writing and speaking effectively is a superpower, there is no denying it. As a software engineer, you write a lot. Most of the writing you do is for computers. Businesses, however, consist of people. So how do you talk and write well?

This is a valuable lesson to last your full career.

Trick of the Month 🎩

• AI generated free stock images for your project: wowow

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.