#372: Applied mathematics with Python
Often when we learn about or work with Math, it's done so in a very detached style. You might learn the rules and techniques for differentiation, for example. But how often do you get to apply them to meaningful and interesting problems? In this episode, we have Vince Knight and Geraint Palmer on to discuss solving a wide variety of applied and approachable math problems using Python. Whether you're deeply into math or not so much, I think there is a lot to enjoy from this episode.
8 Jul 20221h 15min
#371: pipx - Installable, Isolated Python Applications
I'm sure you're familiar with package managers for your OS even if you don't use them. On macOS we have Homebrew, Chocolatey on Windows, and apt, yum, and others on Linux. But if you want to install Python applications, you typically have to fallback to managing them with pip. Maybe you install them for your account with the --user flag. But with pipx you get a clean, isolated install for every Python application that you use. And if you distribute Python apps, pipx is a definitely worth considering as a channel.
30 Jun 202258min
#370: OpenBB: Python's Open-source Investment Platform
You may have heard of the Bloomberg terminal. It's expensive software that can monitor and analyze real-time financial market data and place trades on the electronic trading platform. But have you heard of OpenBB? It's similar software for real-time and long term analysis for finance and investing. The difference is it's open source and built entirely with Python and gives you access to analyze a massive amount of real-time and historical data using the full Python data science stack. On this episode, we have one of the cofounders, James Maslek here to give us a look inside this cool piece of Python-based software.
22 Jun 202254min
#369: Getting Lazy with Python Imports and PEP 690
Python is undergoing a performance renaissance. We already have Python 3.11 20-40% faster than even Python 3.10. On this episode, we'll dive into a new proposal to make Python even more efficient using lazy imports laid out in PEP 690. We have all three folks involved on the episode: Carl Meyer, Germán Méndez Bravo, and Barry Warsaw. Are you ready to get into making Python faster still? Let's dive in.
16 Jun 202256min
#368: End-to-End Web Testing with Playwright
How do you test whether your web sites are working well? Unit tests are great. But for web apps, the number of pieces that have to click together "just so" are many. You have databases, server code (such as a Flask app), server templates (Jinja for example), CSS, Javascript, and even deployment topologies (think nginx + uvicorn). Unit tests won't cover all of that integration. But Playwright does. Playwright is a modern, Pythonic take on testing webs apps using code driving a browser core to interact with web apps the way real users and API clients do. I think you'll find a lot to like there. And we have Pandy Knight from Automation Panda here to break it down for us.
3 Jun 20221h 13min
#367: Say Hello to PyScript (WebAssembly Python)
Despite Python being overwhelmingly popular and positive, there are major areas of computing where Python is not present. Most notably on mobile and on the frontend side of the web. PyScript, a new project launched by Fabio Pliger from Anaconda, just might change that. It was made public and announced at PyCon just two weeks ago by Peter Wang and now has over 10,000 GitHub stars. But what is hype vs. reality vs. projected hopes and dreams? We're going to find out on this episode. Fabio is here to tell us all about his new project.
25 Mai 20221h 13min
#366: Optimizing PostgreSQL DB Queries with pgMustard
Does your app have a database? Does that database play an important role in how the app operations and users perceive its quality? Most of you probably said yes to the first, and definitely to the second. But what if your DB isn't doing as well as it should? How would you know? And once you know, what do you do about it? On this episode, we're joined by Michael Christofides, co-creator of pgMustard, to discuss and explore the EXPLAIN command for Postgres and other databases as well as all the recommendations you might dig into as a result of understanding exactly what's happening with you queries.
20 Mai 20221h 14min
#365: Solving Negative Engineering Problems with Prefect
How much time do you spend solving negative engineering problems? And can a framework solve them for you? Think of negative engineering as things you do to avoid bad outcomes in software. At the lowest level, this can be writing good error handling with try / except. But it's broader than that: logging, observability (like Sentry tools), retries, failover (as in what you might get from Kubernetes), and so on. We have a great chat with Chris White about Prefect, a tool for data engineers and data scientists meaning to solve many of these problems automatically. But it's a conversation applicable to a broader software development community as well.
12 Mai 20221h 4min
