Tall, Snarky Canadian

Unravelling unary arithmetic operators

In this entire blog series on Python's syntactic sugar, this might end up being the most boring post. 😄 We will cover the unary arithmetic operators: -, +, and ~ (inversion if you don't happen to be familiar with that last operator). Due to the fact that

syntactic sugar

Unravelling augmented arithmetic assignment

PrologueThis post is part of a series on Python's syntactic sugar. The latest source code can be found as part of the desugar project. IntroductionPython has something called augmented arithmetic assignment. If you're not familiar with that phrase, it's basically when you do some

syntactic sugar

Unravelling binary arithmetic operations in Python

[This post has been updated multiple times since it's initial posting; see the Corrections section at the end for what was changed.] The reaction to my blog post on unravelling attribute access was positive enough that I'm inspired to do another post on how

syntactic sugar

Unravelling attribute access in Python

I wonder how many people realize that Python has a lot of syntactic sugar? I'm not claiming it's like a Lisp-based language where the syntax is as bare bones as possible (although the Lisp comparison is not entirely unfounded), but much of Python's syntax

Python

What is the core of the Python programming language?

Why ask this question?It's no secret that I want a Python implementation for WebAssembly. It would not only get Python into the browser, but with the fact that both iOS and Android support running JavaScript as part of an app it would also

project management

Why I don't like SemVer anymore

Back in 2017 I wrote a blog post on how I manage version numbers. In that post I mentioned how I tried to follow semantic versioning. Over the subsequent 3 years I have come to the conclusion I actually don't like SemVer for my

Python

The many ways to pass code to Python from the terminal

For the Python extension for VS Code, I wrote a simple script for generating our changelog (think Towncrier, but simpler, Markdown-specific, and tailored to our needs). As part of our release process we have a step where you are supposed to run python news

project management

Thoughts on where tools fit into a workflow

I am going to admit upfront that this is a thought piece, a brain dump, me thinking out loud. Do not assume there is a lesson here, nor some goal I have in mind. No, this blog post is providing me a place to

packaging

What the heck is pyproject.toml?

Recently on Twitter there was a maintainer of a Python project who had a couple of bugs filed against their project due to builds failing (this particular project doesn't provide

packaging

A quick-and-dirty guide on how to install packages for Python

When people start learning Python, they often will come across a package they want to try and it will usually start with "just pip install it!" The problem with that advice is it's a very simplistic view of how to manage packages and can

packaging

Why you should use `python -m pip`

Fellow core developer and Canadian, Mariatta, asked on Twitter about python -m pip and who told her about that idiom along with asking for a reference explaining it: I learned sometime ago that we should be doing `python -m pip install ...` instead of simply

open source

What it's like to be on the Python steering council

Someone emailed the steering council recently to ask what it was like to be on it, presumably because nominations will be opening next month. Instead of sending a private response I figured I would write a blog post instead so others could know what

A Primer on the Stellar Network

[Updated 2019-11-17] On September 10, 2019 while I was in London, UK at the Python core dev sprints, I got a message from a user named "spacedrop" on Keybase. The message said I was being given 356.2904939 XLM as a surprise gift of

packaging

How do you verify that PyPI can be trusted?

A co-worker of mine attended a technical talk about how Go's module mirror works and he asked me whether there was something there that Python should do. Best technical talk that I've seen in a long time: @katie_hockman on Go Module

open source

Podcast interviews where I talk about Python's governance

Over the past two months I have given two podcast interviews where I talk about how we handled Guido's retirement, chose our new governance model, and what being on the inaugural steering council has been like. Now that I have "talked it out" at

packaging

The challenges in designing a library for PEP 425 (aka wheel tags)

If you have ever looked at a project that has a lot of wheels (like numpy), you may have wondered what the part that comes after the project name and version mean. Well, they are known as platform compatibility tags and they are primarily

Python

Deconstructing xkcd.com/1987/

On April 30, 2018, https://xkcd.com/1987/ got published. This wasn't the first time that Randall Munroe posted about Python (probably the most famous comic was his import antigravity

open source

An update on Python's governance

This post is meant to act as a summary of the current state of Python's governance as of the end of 2018. If you want to see an alternative take on what I present here, LWN has an article. What did Guido provide us?

open source

Setting expectations for open source participation

(If you would prefer to watch a 30 minute talk on this same content, you can watch my Python US 2018 keynote) Who am I? [1] To start, I want to provide my bonafides so you know I'm not some crank spouting some armchair

Python

An approach to lazy importing in Python 3.7

[Please note that the code in this blog post is now up on PyPI as part of the modutil library] One of the new features in Python 3.7 is PEP 562 which adds support for __getattr__() and __dir__() on modules. Both open up

packaging

What are the most popular Docker images for Python?

There was a question at work about what the most popular Docker container image for running Python code was? I didn't have an answer, so I asked on Twitter to see if a clear answer could be gleaned. The first poll asked what people's

packaging

A tutorial on packaging up your Python code for PyPI

On Wednesday, October 25th, I gave a workshop at PyLadies Vancouver on how to package up your code and put it up on PyPI. Since this workshop came about by request, I figured others out there who couldn't attend might be interested in the

project management

How I manage package version numbers

I recently helped someone release their first project on PyPI and I was asked why I did version numbers the way I did, so I figured I would share where my current thinking on the topic sits (this doesn't mean all of my projects

Why Competitive Marketplaces Aren’t Always the Best Solution

[This was meant to be a contribution to a book collecting chapters on various topics that would help "a programmer who has never been politically active, but is starting to wonder why so many things seem to be going from bad to worse&

open source

Becoming an OSS project maintainer is about trust

To gain commit rights on CPython, a pre-existing core developer nominates your for commit rights to python-committers. That nominator lays out roughly why you should be given commit rights, and then promises to watch your commits for a little while to help you with

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