Invented over half a century ago, the hash table is a classic data structure that has been fundamental to programming. To this day, it helps solve many real-life problems, such as indexing database tables, caching computed values, or implementing sets. It often comes up in job interviews, and Python uses hash tables all over the place to make name lookups almost instantaneous. Even though Python comes with its own hash table called dict, it can be helpful to understand how […]

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, the Python representation can increase memory usage even more. And that means either slow processing, as your program swaps to disk, or crashing when you run out of memory. One common solution is streaming parsing, aka lazy parsing, iterative parsing, or chunked processing. Let’s see how you can apply this technique to JSON […]

Like many other programming languages, Python supports object-oriented programming. At the heart of Python’s object-oriented capabilities, you’ll find the class keyword, which allows you to define custom classes that can have attributes for storing data and methods for providing behaviors. Once you have a class to work with, then you can start creating new instances or objects of that class, which is an efficient way to reuse functionality in your code. Creating and initializing objects of a given class is […]

Python 3.11 will be released in October 2022. Even though October is still months away, you can already preview some of the upcoming features, including how Python 3.11 will offer more readable and actionable error messages. There are many other improvements and features coming in Python 3.11. Keep track of what’s new in the changelog for an up-to-date list. Python 3.11 Alpha A new version of Python is released in October each year. The code is developed and tested over […]

In February 2022, another preview release of Python 3.11 became available for early adopters to test and share their feedback. Shortly afterward, the Python steering council announced that Python 3.11 would also include a TOML parser in the standard library. In addition, GitHub Issues will soon become the official bug tracking system for Python. In other news, PyCon US 2022 shared its conference schedule. The Python Software Foundation (PSF) wants to hire two contract developers to improve the Python Package […]

If you’re using CircleCI to build your Docker images, you might find yourself using an old version of Docker without realizing it. That means: Slower builds. Lack of support for newer Linux distributions. Let’s see why, and how to fix it. BuildKit makes Docker builds faster Newer versions of Docker add support for BuildKit, a new build backend that among other features (build secrets, and local caching which can speed up builds during development) also can make your production builds […]

Have you ever struggled to keep track of the things that you need to do? Perhaps you’re in the habit of using a handwritten to-do list to remind you of what needs doing, and by when. But handwritten notes have a way of getting lost or forgotten. Because you’re a Python coder, it makes sense to build a Django to-do list manager! In this step-by-step tutorial, you’re going to create a web app using Django. You’ll learn how Django can […]