1 Billion Row Challenge, Learn RAG, Python Big O and more
pytest 8.2.0 is available now, Python Toolbox, Demystifying list comprehensions in Python with some more interesting articles, packages and projects
News
pytest 8.2.0 is available now!
Now pytest can read command line arguments from a file. You need to specify it using the prefix character @. Exp: pytest @tests_to_run.txt. This update has a bunch of improvements & bug fixes.
Python Toolbox
Python is amazing because of its simplicity, passionate people like you and amazing packages. There are so many packages sometimes it becomes very confusing. So we summarised and put them here. If your favorite package is missing then you can contribute to it too.
Django Developers Survey 2023 Results are out
It is a collaborative effort between the Django Software Foundation and PyCharm. Around 4,000 Django users and enthusiasts from around the world took the survey.
Djangonauts Space Session 2 Applications Open!
PyPy v7.3.16 release is available now!
Fake job interviews target developers with new Python backdoor
A new campaign tracked as “Dev Popper” is targeting software developers with fake job interviews in an attempt to trick them into installing a Python remote access trojan (RAT). The developers are asked to perform tasks supposedly related to the interview, like downloading and running code from GitHub, to make the entire process appear legitimate.
Articles
Demystifying list comprehensions in Python
If you are new to Python programming then you might have heard about list comprehensions but it is a bit confusing to understand. In this article, Lyuboslav Karev explained them using simple to complex examples.
# Lyuboslav Karev
Covered about “One Billion Row Challenge” a couple of times in the newsletter. This is another one by Doug Mercer. He adapted one of the top Python submissions which uses only built-in libraries and also he used a few awesome libraries (polars, DuckDB) that shared that approach too. Of Course, they are not near to the winner approaches for top submissions but using Python libraries we can write simple and elegant solutions which will do the magic in sub-10 seconds.
# Doug Mercer
Python Big O: the time complexities of different data structures in Python
If you know what time complexity the data structure you are using has for your task then you can write better performant code. Check this amazing cheat sheet by Trey Hunner created to get an idea of each data structure’s operation time complexity.
# Trey Hunner
Open Sourcing a Python Project the Right Way in 2024
Thinking of open-sourcing your Python project then you should check this article by Jonathan Adly. He went through a bit of struggle when he was open-sourcing his package AgentRun so he shared his learnings in this article.
# Jonathan Adly
Combining Data Visuals: An Interactive Python Plotly Dashboard For Deeper Storytelling
Plotly Dash helps you build interactive web applications. You can say like Streamlit. Of Course, it has its own strengths and weaknesses. If you are thinking of learning about Plotly Dash then you should check this article by John Loewen.
# John Loewen
My latest TILs about Python
Python amazes everyone because it has so much stuff that makes our coding life much better. J. Carlos Roldán shared some of the interesting stuff he found recently in this article. In this, I felt the second parameter of the “sum” function was very interesting.
# J. Carlos Roldán
Another amazing video from freecodecamp. LLMs are a hot topic and in that world, RAGs are more popular. If you want to learn from scratch then check this video by Lance Martin.
# Lance Martin
Interesting Packages and Projects to explore
Colorama - Simple cross-platform colored terminal text in Python
Ibis - The portable Python dataframe library
Scapy - The Python-based interactive packet manipulation program & library.
Django GUID - It attaches a unique correlation ID/request ID to all your log outputs for every request. In other words, all logs connected to a request now have a unique ID attached to it, making tracing & debugging simple.
geemap - A Python package for interactive geospaital analysis and visualization with Google Earth Engine.
About Upcoming Python Events
TOUFU - Parent-Child Python Programming Workshop
May 4-6, 2024
May Helsinki Python meetup
May 7, 2024
Python Atlanta Meetup
May 9, 2024