Python - 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

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

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

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?

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

packaging

Clarifying PEP 518 (a.k.a. pyproject.toml)

I was reading the latest issue of Pycoder's Weekly and they mentioned Thomas Kluyver's pull request to implement PEP 518 in pip. The newsletter linked to the reddit thread announcing the landing of the PR, and being a co-author of the PEP I was

project management

Designing an async API, from sans-I/O on up

While developing the CLA bot for CPython (aka, the Knights Who Say Ni), I decided to make it asynchronous, partially for performance reasons but also because I simply wanted to. 😁 The problem with doing that for a GitHub bot is there wasn't any pre-existing

Python

Customizing class creation in Python

When one thinks of ways of customizing classes at creation time, people probably typically think of metaclasses and class decorators. Metaclasses are at typically viewed as the beginning of class creation while class decorators are at the end. But what you may not know

project management

How to use your project & Travis to help test Python itself

One of the hardest parts of doing a new release of CPython is getting people to test it before the final release goes out. While CPython has a test suite and we try to do our best to have good code coverage (currently sitting

project management

My experience with type hints and mypy

The CLA bot for the PSF is designed defensively because if the bot accidentally lets a pull request through from someone that has not signed the CLA that could lead to legal troubles. To alleviate any worries I may have about bugs lurking in

Python

Why pathlib.Path doesn't inherit from str in Python

Over on python-ideas a discussion has broken out about somehow trying to make p'/some/path/to/a/file return an instance of pathlib.Path. This led to a splinter discussion as to why pathlib.Path doesn't inherit from str? I figured instead of

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