When your Python project relies on external packages, you need to make sure you’re using the right version of each package. After an update, a package might not work as it did before the update. A dependency manager like Python Poetry helps you specify, install, and resolve external packages in your projects. This way, you can be sure that you always work with the right dependency version on every machine. Using Poetry will help you start new projects, maintain existing […]

Upgrading to new software versions is work, and work that doesn’t benefit your software’s users. Users care about features and bug fixes, not how up-to-date you are. But there is only so much time you can delay upgrading, and for Python 3.6, the time to upgrade is right now. Python 3.6 is reaching its end of life as of December 2021. No more bug fixes. No more security fixes. “It’s dead, Jim.” As of mid-December 2021, 15% of packages downloaded […]

Python is a general-purpose programming language. You can understand its growth in the last couple of years by considering its approachability for learning and its high suitability for data analysis, machine learning, and web development. But what kind of programming language is it? What are some differences when you compare Java vs Python? What can you do with it? And is it really as “easy to learn” as some people claim? You’ll explore Python from a Java perspective in this […]

How do you visualize performance data so you can easily spot bottlenecks? Brendan Gregg’s flamegraphs are a great solution, adopted by a large number of profilers and performance tools. However, even great solutions can be improved. With a few small tweaks, you can make flamegraphs much easier to read. To see what I mean, I’ll start with a default flamegraph, and then make it better step by step. Most of the improvements can be achieved by using the right tool […]

The Python pprint module is helpful in many situations. It comes in handy when making API requests, dealing with JSON files, or handling complicated and nested data. You’ll probably find that using the normal print() function isn’t adequate to efficiently explore your data and debug your application. When you use print() with dictionaries and lists, the output doesn’t contain any newlines. Before you start exploring pprint, you’ll first use urllib to make a request to get some data. You’ll make […]

Python 3.10 is now available–but should you switch to it immediately? And if not now, when? The short answer after its immediate release was, no, you probably don’t want to switch immediately; quite possibly you can’t switch immediately. Now that some time has passed, we’re getting closer to yes, or at least a maybe. To understand why, we need to consider Python packaging, the software development process, and take a look at the history of past releases. We can then […]

You’ve discovered a product that might help you with your job: perhaps a book that will teach you a new and relevant skill, or software that will speed up development. Since you do want to write software better and faster, you are considering buying this product. But, then again, the product costs money, and maybe that money is better spent on something else. So should you buy the product or not? How do you decide? And if it is worth […]