Installing packages with Python is just one pip install command away. That’s one of the many great qualities that the Python ecosystem has to offer. However, you may have downloaded a third-party package once that didn’t work out for you in one way or another. For example, the package didn’t support the Python version that you were using in your project, or the package didn’t do what you expected it to do. By understanding the characteristics of a high-quality Python […]

February is the shortest month, but it brought no shortage of activity in the Python world! Exciting developments include a new company aiming to improve cloud services for developers, publication of the PyCon US 2023 schedule, and the first release candidate for pandas 2.0.0. In the world of artifical intelligence, OpenAI has continued to make strides. But while the Big Fix has worked to reduce vulnerabily for programmers, more malicious programs showed up on PyPI. Read on to dive into […]

Mutable data types are another face of the built-in types in Python. The language provides a few useful mutable collection types that you can use in many situations. These types allow you to change the value of specific items without affecting the identity of the container object. In the following sections, you’ll learn about lists, which are arguably the classic example of a mutable type in Python. To complete your tool kit of mutable types, you’ll learn about dictionaries and […]

Python namespace packages are an advanced Python feature. You may have heard them mentioned in relation to the __init__.py file. Specifically, if you don’t include at least an empty __init__.py file in your package, then your package becomes a namespace package. For the most part, namespace packages and regular packages won’t behave differently when it comes to using them in your project. In fact, you’ve probably accidentally forgotten to include an __init__.py file in at least one package but didn’t […]