#184: Teaching Python with BBC micro:bit

You're about to launch your new app or API, or even just a big refactor of your current project. Will it stand up and deliver when you put it into production or when that big promotion goes live? Or will it wither and collapse? How would you know? Well you would test that of course. We have Anthony Shaw back on the podcast to dive into a wide range of tools and techniques for performance and loading testing of web apps.

6 Okt 202459min

Do you have kids? Maybe nieces and nephews? Or maybe you work in a school environment? Maybe it's just friend's who know you're a programmer and ask about how they should go about introducing programming concepts with them. Anna-Lena Popkes is back on the show to share her research on when and how to teach kids programming. We spend the second half of the episode talking about concrete apps and toys you might consider for each age group. Plus, some of these things are fun for adults too. ;)

25 Sep 202454min

Do you have text that you want to process automatically? Maybe you want to pull out key products or topics of conversation? Maybe you want to get the sentiment? The possibilities are many with this week's topic: NLP with spaCy and Python. Our guest, Vincent D. Warmerdam, has worked on spaCy and other tools at Explosion AI and he's here to give us his tips and tricks for working with text from Python.

20 Sep 20241h 3min

A couple of weeks ago, Charlie Marsh and the folks at Astral made another big splash with a major release of uv called "uv: Unified Python packaging" which has many far reaching features. We had to have Charlie on the show to give us the inside look into this development. Let's get to it.

4 Sep 20241h 12min

Every year the core developers meet to discuss and propose the major changes and trends in Python itself. This invite-only conference of about 50 people happens inside PyCon in the US. Because it's private, we rarely get detailed looks inside this event. On this episode, we have Seth Michael Larson here to give us his account of the sessions and proposals. It's a unique look into the zeitgeist of CPython.

24 Aug 20241h 1min

Python performance has come a long way in recent times. And it's often the data scientists, with their computational algorithms and large quantities of data, who care the most about this form of performance. It's great to have Stan Seibert back on the show to talk about Python's performance for data scientists. We cover a wide range of tools and techniques that will be valuable for many Python developers and data scientists.

19 Aug 20241h 8min

Do you feel like ADHD is holding you back? Maybe you don't personally have ADHD but you work with folks who do and you'd like to support them better. Either way, how ADHD interplays with programming and programmers is pretty fascinating. On this episode we have Chris Ferdinandi who himself has ADHD and has written a lot about it to share his journey and his advice for thriving with ADHD as a programmer or data scientist.

2 Aug 20241h

This episode turned out to be a seminal one for me. After speaking with David about the Flask ecosystem, it finally convinced me to get moving and convert [talkpython.fm](https://talkpython.fm) to Quart. You can read all about the journey in a detailed write up I did at [Talk Python rewritten in Quart (async Flask)](https://talkpython.fm/blog/posts/talk-python-rewritten-in-quart-async- flask/). With this episode, I hope you’re ready for an inside look at the latest happenings in Flask, one of Python’s most popular web frameworks. David Lord, Flask’s lead maintainer, takes us behind the scenes of recent performance boosts (like a 50% speedup in Werkzeug), the future of async support via Quart, and how the broader Pallets ecosystem is evolving under one umbrella. You’ll also hear about Pallets Eco, which aims to streamline and revive critical Flask extensions, and learn how you can contribute to this massive open-source effort. If you use Flask, want to keep your Python apps on the cutting edge, or just love data-driven insights from top maintainers, this episode is for you. **Flask** and its sister libraries are faster, leaner, and more maintainable than ever. The **pallets-eco** initiative aims to keep the Flask extension ecosystem thriving. David and the Pallets team welcome new contributors, especially folks interested in type annotations, extension maintenance, or community support. Check out the Pallets Discord to get involved!

26 Jul 20241h 1min