[September 2022] Python Monthly Newsletter 💻🐍

34th 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 September 2022 as a Python Developer…

Responding To Recruiters 📞

Like many software engineers, each week I receive multiple emails from recruiters. I’m grateful to work in a field with such opportunities, and I know that receiving a lot offers to interview is a good problem to have. But, practically, most of the time I’m not looking for a new job, and so handling all these emails is a recurring administrative task.

Here is the writeup of how this Python programmer solved this problem with GPT-3 and a little Python. Code is provided!

Phishing PyPI Users 🥸

PyPI, the official third-party software repository for Python packages, is warning about a phishing campaign targeting its users.

Ok one more: Hundreds of PyPI and npm Packages Affected With Cryptominers.

Be careful out there!

Python Strings Must Know 📄

Python's strings have 47 methods. That's almost as many string methods as there are built-in functions in Python! Which string methods should you learn first? This article shows you the most important ones you need to know.

List Comprehensions 🪚

Python’s list comprehensions (and generators) are an awesome feature that can greatly simplify your code. Most of the time, however, we only use them to write a single for loop, maybe with the addition of one if conditional, and that's it. If you start poking around a bit though, you will find out that there are many more features of Python's comprehensions that you don't know about, but can learn a lot from…

An Experiment 🔬

How good is a code assistant in 2022? This article will focus on CodeWhisperer to help answer that question: Can Amazon's CodeWhisperer write better Python code than you?

Weekend Project Idea 🧰

I don't know why, but I found this super interesting and pretty. A great weekend project idea to have fun with and be creative. Create a Dragon Curve.

Want something even harder? How about this: Build an Alexa or Siri Equivalent Bot in Python Using OpenAI

Python 3.12 Will Be Faster ⛓

The plan for how to make Python 3.12 faster than its predecessors.

There is also a plan to introduce Lazy Imports to Python.

A Discussion You Should Read ⚔️

I think all of us as programmers have thought about this: Generalists vs Specialists. Do you regret being a generalist? I recommend reading this fascinating discussion on Hackernews.

News Around the World 🗺

The founder of Patagonia is giving his company away to help fight climate change. I highly recommend reading his book Let My People Surf.
The Ethereum Merge Is Done, Opening a New Era for the Second-Biggest Blockchain.
Proof that you can still make apps as a single developer that are popular: A 63-year-old man in Japan who is an avid iPhone user has dedicated some of his post-retirement years to developing a popular, unique app that displays two calculators on one screen.

Big Tech News 🏢

TikTok U.S.A has been breached. Goodbye your data. If this shocks you, you haven't been paying attention to the news the last few years.
The fall event from Apple brought new iPhone 14 models, new AirPods and lots more... check out the important parts here.
Replit which we use heavily in our ZTM courses has a big announcement similar to Github Copilot. Is this the future?: Today, we're announcing AI Mode, which infuses state-of-the-art intelligence into nearly all IDE features. AI Mode sports an ML-powered pair programmer that completes your code in realtime, tools to generate, transform, and explain code, and an in-editor search utility that lets you find and import open-source code without leaving your editor (think Stackoverflow in your editor).
Adobe has acquired Figma for $20billion. This is the biggest SaaS acquisition ever. A signal that Adobe realized they cannot compete with Figma. Don't worry, it's not going anywhere anytime soon. Adobe is smart enough to not lose the design battle again (or not?).
Open AI has released Whisper...that approaches human level robustness and accuracy on English speech recognition.
Google is shutting down Stadia

Completely useless to your career but still great 🙃

Drone over Everest. Pretty impressive.
Stable Diffusion has been the talk of the town in the Machine Learning world the last few months. Here is a cool website that lets you play around with this impressive algorithm. Here is another fun library to play with.
A reminder to have a little humility.
Welcome to Bitburner, a cyberpunk-themed incremental RPG! The game takes place in a dark, dystopian future... The year is 2077...
TDungeon is a small adventure game that runs in the Typescript type system. Umm.. WHAT!?
New Webb Image Captures Clearest View of Neptune’s Rings in Decades.
A hilarious read about our Calendar.

Best Resource of the Month 🥽

Is it too late to start programming? Am I too old? I'm surprised at how many times I get this question. The answer is always that it's never too late (I think the oldest ZTM student we have is in their 80s!).

I wanted to share these two resources this month that will not only give you advice from programmers with experience, but it also proves the point that it is never too late to get started:

Trick of the Month 🎩

Seamlessly visualize your JSON data instantly into graphs.
A programming font based on the typeface used in Minecraft

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.