How do you find the most interesting or suspicious points within your data? What libraries and techniques can you use to detect these anomalies with Python? This week on the show, we speak with author Brett Kennedy about his book “Outlier Detection in Python.” Brett describes initially getting involved with detecting outliers in financial data. He discusses various applications and techniques in security, manufacturing, quality assurance, and fraud. We also dig into the concept of explainable AI...
Jun 14, 2024•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 208
How do you effectively break a software problem into individual steps? What are signs you’re writing overly clever code? Christopher Trudeau is back on the show this week, bringing another batch of PyCoder’s Weekly articles and projects. We discuss an article about de-warping images of book pages. We both found the piece a good study on decomposing a complex software problem. Christopher discusses an article titled “Clever code is probably the worst code you could write.” Early in a programming ...
Jun 07, 2024•55 min•Ep. 207
How do you start adding unit tests to your Python code? Can the built-in unittest framework cover most or all of your needs? Christopher Trudeau is back on the show this week, bringing another batch of PyCoder’s Weekly articles and projects. We dig into a recent tutorial by Leodanis Pozo Ramos about writing unit tests using Python’s unittest. The tutorial covers organizing your tests, exploring assert methods, creating test fixtures, and debugging failing tests. We explore a collection of Python...
May 31, 2024•43 min•Ep. 206
What’s it like to learn Python as a visually impaired or blind developer? How can you improve the accessibility of your Python web applications and learn current guidelines? This week on the show, Real Python community member Audrey van Breederode discusses her programming journey, web accessibility, and assistive technology. Audrey shares her background as a system administrator and instructor. While she was learning Python, she discovered Real Python. Audrey provided some feedback about the bu...
May 17, 2024•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 205
Would you like to get more practice working with APIs in Python? How about exploring the globe using the data from OpenStreetMap? Christopher Trudeau is back on the show this week, bringing another batch of PyCoder’s Weekly articles and projects. We share an article from the Pybites blog about building queries using the Overpass API for OpenStreetMap. The post explores the data structures, tags, query formats, and how to use Overpass in Python. Christopher discusses a Real Python article by rece...
May 10, 2024•53 min•Ep. 204
Do you get stressed while trying to learn Python? Do you prefer to build small programs or projects as you continue your coding journey? This week on the show, Real Python author Stephen Gruppetta is here to talk about his new book, “The Python Coding Book.” Stephen has been teaching Python to adults and children for many years. With his new book, he wants to share the relaxed and friendly learning environment he’s developed. We discuss using analogies to explain programming concepts and constru...
May 03, 2024•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 203
How do you verify and validate the data coming into your Python web application? What tools and security best practices should you consider as a developer? Christopher Trudeau is back on the show this week, bringing another batch of PyCoder’s Weekly articles and projects. We discuss the recent Real Python tutorial “Pydantic: Simplifying Data Validation in Python.” The piece covers installing the library with optional dependencies, working with base models, validating functions, and managing envi...
Apr 26, 2024•59 min•Ep. 202
What are the benefits of using a decoupled data processing system? How do you write reusable queries for a variety of backend data platforms? This week on the show, Phillip Cloud, the lead maintainer of Ibis, will discuss this portable Python dataframe library. Phillip contrasts Ibis’s workflow with other Python dataframe libraries. We discuss how “getting close to the data” speeds things up and conserves memory. He describes the different approaches Ibis provides for querying data and how to se...
Apr 19, 2024•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 201
What is error culture, and how do you avoid it within your organization? How do you navigate alert and notification fatigue? Hey, it’s episode #200! Real Python’s editor-in-chief, Dan Bader, joins us this week to celebrate. Christopher Trudeau also returns to bring another batch of PyCoder’s Weekly articles and projects. We discuss an article series about error culture. We dig into false positives, hero culture, and the tendency to start ignoring alerts. We contrast our personal experiences and ...
Apr 12, 2024•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 200
How do you customize a LLM chatbot to address a collection of documents and data? What tools and techniques can you use to build embeddings into a vector database? This week on the show, Calvin Hendryx-Parker is back to discuss developing an AI-powered, Large Language Model-driven chat interface. Calvin is the co-founder and CTO of Six Feet Up, a Python and AI consultancy. He shares a recent project for a family-owned seed company that wanted to build a tool for customers to access years of farm...
Apr 05, 2024•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 199
Can you build a Space Invaders clone using Python’s built-in turtle module? What advantages does the Seaborn data visualization library provide compared to Matplotlib? Christopher Trudeau is back on the show this week, along with special guest Real Python core team member Bartosz Zaczyński. We’re sharing another batch of PyCoder’s Weekly articles and projects. Bartosz shares a Real Python step-by-step project for building a video game using the Python turtle module. The turtle module provides an...
Mar 29, 2024•50 min•Ep. 198
How is Python being used to automate processes in the laboratory? How can it speed up scientific work with DNA sequencing? This week on the show, Chemical Engineering PhD Student Parsa Ghadermazi is here to discuss Python in bioinformatics. Parsa provides background on his research and the bioinformatic techniques used to discover gut microbes’ role in human health and diseases. We talk about automating lab experiments with liquid handling robots and Python. We dig into libraries to shatter and ...
Mar 22, 2024•51 min•Ep. 197
What are the advantages of determining the type of an object by how it behaves? What coding circumstances are not a good fit for duck typing? Christopher Trudeau is back on the show this week, bringing another batch of PyCoder’s Weekly articles and projects. Christopher covers a recent Real Python tutorial by Leodanis Pozo Ramos titled Duck Typing in Python: Writing Flexible and Decoupled Code. The tutorial explains the concepts of duck typing within object-oriented programming and its use withi...
Mar 15, 2024•51 min•Ep. 196
How do you get yourself unstuck when facing a programming problem? How do you develop a positive developer mindset while learning Python? This week on the show, Bob Belderbos from Pybites is here to talk about learning Python and building healthy developer habits. Bob created the Pybites learning platform with his friend Julian Sequeira. They initially focused on exercises and coding challenges to motivate new Python students. As they grew their community, they created a podcast and moved into c...
Mar 08, 2024•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 195
What are the typical computer tasks you do manually every week? Could you automate those tasks with a Python script? Christopher Trudeau is back on the show this week, bringing another batch of PyCoder’s Weekly articles and projects. We discuss a recent Hacker News thread about frequently used automation scripts. We share the kinds of tasks we’ve automated with Python in our work and personal lives. Christopher shares a tutorial about building a micro-search engine from scratch using Python. The...
Mar 01, 2024•45 min•Ep. 194
How do you avoid the bottlenecks of data processing systems? Is it possible to build tools that decouple storage and computation? This week on the show, creator of the pandas library Wes McKinney is here to discuss Apache Arrow, composable data systems, and community collaboration. Wes briefly describes the humble beginnings of the pandas project in 2008 and moving the project to open source in 2011. Since then, he’s been thinking about improvements across the data processing ecosystem. Wes coll...
Feb 23, 2024•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 193
What are real-life examples of using Python decorators? How can you harness their power in your code? Christopher Trudeau is back on the show this week, bringing another batch of PyCoder’s Weekly articles and projects. We discuss a recent article series that digs into Python decorators. The first two articles discuss the basics of constructing decorators. The third part describes how popular Python libraries use decorators with call interception, function registration, and enriching the behavior...
Feb 16, 2024•57 min•Ep. 192
How do you manage the dependencies of a large-scale data science project? How do you migrate that project from a laptop to cloud infrastructure or utilize GPUs and multiple instances in parallel? This week on the show, Savin Goyal returns to discuss the updates to the open-source framework Metaflow. Savin briefly describes the Metaflow platform and the goal of simplifying engineering overhead for data scientists and programmers. We discuss how the platform captures snapshots of a project as you ...
Feb 09, 2024•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 191
What’s it like to sit down for your first developer sprint at a conference? How do you find an appropriate issue to work on as a new open-source contributor? This week on the show, author and software engineer Stefanie Molin is here to discuss starting to contribute to open-source projects. Stefanie is a data scientist and software engineer on Bloomberg’s Security Data Science team. She recently wrote an article titled “5 Ways to Get Started in Open Source.” We discuss finding ways to contribute...
Feb 02, 2024•1 hr 19 min•Ep. 190
How does a debugger work? What can you learn about Python by building one from scratch? Christopher Trudeau is back on the show this week, bringing another batch of PyCoder’s Weekly articles and projects. Christopher shares a two-part tutorial on building a debugger in Python? Creating a simple one requires less code than you might think. We also talk about an article from Itamar Turner-Trauring about how to prepare for the upcoming changes to NumPy. The new version is not backward compatible an...
Jan 26, 2024•48 min•Ep. 189
How can you measure the quality of a large language model? What tools can measure bias, toxicity, and truthfulness levels in a model using Python? This week on the show, Jodie Burchell, developer advocate for data science at JetBrains, returns to discuss techniques and tools for evaluating LLMs With Python. Jodie provides some background on large language models and how they can absorb vast amounts of information about the relationship between words using a type of neural network called a transf...
Jan 19, 2024•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 188
Do you need to transfer an extensive data collection for a science project? What’s the best way to send executable code over the wire for distributed processing? What are the different ways to serialize data in Python? Christopher Trudeau is back on the show this week, bringing another batch of PyCoder’s Weekly articles and projects. Christopher shares a tutorial by Real Python author Bartosz Zaczyński called “Serialize Your Data With Python.” This comprehensive guide moves beyond XML and JSON t...
Jan 12, 2024•54 min•Ep. 187
Are you interested in using your Python skills within Excel? Would you like to share a data science project or visualization as a single Office file? This week on the show, we speak with Principal Architect John Lam and Sr. Cloud Developer Advocate Sarah Kaiser from Microsoft about Python in Excel. John shares the multi-year journey of adding Python to Excel. He describes how the project moved beyond writing user functions in Python to something much more elaborate. He details assembling a team ...
Jan 05, 2024•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 186
Three members of the Real Python team are joining us this week: Kate Finegan, Tappan Moore, and Philipp Acsany. We wanted to share a year-end wrap-up with tutorials, step-by-step projects, code conversations, and video courses that showcase what our team created this year. Kate helps to shepherd articles through the multi-stage editing process. She and the rest of the team ensure these resources impart crucial Python knowledge and provide a thorough didactic experience. Kate was also instrumenta...
Dec 29, 2023•53 min•Ep. 185
It’s been a fascinating year for the Python language and community. PyCoder’s Weekly included over 1,500 links to articles, blog posts, tutorials, and projects in 2023. Christopher Trudeau is back on the show this week to help wrap up everything by sharing some highlights and Python trends from across the year. Christopher shares the top five links explored by PyCoder’s readers. We also dig into trends we noticed across all the articles and stories this year, including removing dead batteries fr...
Dec 22, 2023•38 min•Ep. 184
What goes into a code review in Python? Is there a difference in how a large organization practices code review compared to a smaller one? What do you do if you’re a solo developer? This week on the show, Brendan Maginnis and Nick Thapen from Sourcery return to talk about code review and automated code assistance. Nick and Brendan discuss their personal experiences with code reviews. From working together at a large company to starting Sourcery as a pair of developers to growing a team, they’ve ...
Dec 08, 2023•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 183
Have you thought of a way to improve the Python language? How do you share your idea with core developers and start a discussion in the Python community? Christopher Trudeau is back on the show this week, bringing another batch of PyCoder’s Weekly articles and projects. We consider a couple of Python syntax and functional ideas posted to the discussions on python.org. The first idea is for simplifying the syntax of a function’s keyword arguments, and the second is for the ability to return a Nam...
Dec 01, 2023•57 min•Ep. 182
Has the current growth of artificial intelligence (AI) systems made you wonder what the future holds for Python developers? What are the hidden benefits of learning to program in Python and practicing computational thinking? This week on the show, we speak with author Lawrence Gray about his upcoming book “Mastering Python: A Problem Solving Approach.” Lawrence shares how learning Python helped him through a dark and trying time. He developed lifelong skills that he wants to pass along through t...
Nov 17, 2023•54 min•Ep. 181
Have you moved through the fundamentals of Python, and are you now considering building a more extensive project or complete application? Where can you study the architecture of existing Python projects and learn best practices? Christopher Trudeau is back on the show this week, bringing another batch of PyCoder’s Weekly articles and projects. We discuss a set of resources that developers can study to learn how to structure projects. The collection was shared in a blog post titled “Great Resourc...
Nov 10, 2023•48 min•Ep. 180
Are you getting by with a few fundamental commands for Git when building your Python projects? Would you like to improve your version control techniques and become more efficient with the Git command line? This week on the show, Adam Johnson is back to talk about his new book, “Boost Your Git DX.” Adam brings advice about creating a Git configuration, enabling autocorrect, and customizing a global ignore file. He combed through the cryptic documentation and found the valuable developer settings,...
Nov 03, 2023•56 min•Ep. 179
