The Python pprint module is helpful in many situations. It comes in handy when making API requests, dealing with JSON files, or handling complicated and nested data. You’ll probably find that using the normal print() function isn’t adequate to efficiently explore your data and debug your application. When you use print() with dictionaries and lists, the output doesn’t contain any newlines. Before you start exploring pprint, you’ll first use urllib to make a request to get some data. You’ll make […]

Python 3.10 is now available–but should you switch to it immediately? And if not now, when? The short answer after its immediate release was, no, you probably don’t want to switch immediately; quite possibly you can’t switch immediately. Now that some time has passed, we’re getting closer to yes, or at least a maybe. To understand why, we need to consider Python packaging, the software development process, and take a look at the history of past releases. We can then […]

You’ve discovered a product that might help you with your job: perhaps a book that will teach you a new and relevant skill, or software that will speed up development. Since you do want to write software better and faster, you are considering buying this product. But, then again, the product costs money, and maybe that money is better spent on something else. So should you buy the product or not? How do you decide? And if it is worth […]

Advent of Code is an online Advent calendar where you’ll find new programming puzzles offered each day from December 1st to the 25th. While you can solve the puzzles at any time, the excitement when new puzzles unlock is really something special. You can participate in Advent of Code in any programming language—including Python! This tutorial will help you get started with solving puzzles and earning your first golden stars. Advent of Code puzzles are designed to be approachable by […]

You’ve discovered a product that might help you with your job: perhaps a book that will teach you a new and relevant skill, or software that will speed up development. Since you do want to write software better and faster, you are considering buying this product. But, then again, the product costs money, and maybe that money is better spent on something else. So should you buy the product or not? How do you decide? If it is worth buying, […]

This week, we’re joined by Eric Wastl, a Senior Architect at TCGPlayer and the founder of Advent of Code (AoC). Join us as we discuss the inception of AoC, how to avoid common pitfalls when solving code challenges in AoC, and what Eric gets up to in the “3.8 seconds” of free time he has per year. Ricky: Thanks for joining me, Eric. You’re perhaps most well known for being the founder of Advent of Code, which we’ll talk about […]

Conda installs can be very very very slow. Every time you run conda install: It has to collect the package metadata. It has to solve the environment. … maybe you can take a coffee break here, or go work on a jigsaw puzzle to relax … It has to download packages. Eventually, finally, it will install the packages it downloaded. By the time this is all done you’ve probably forgotten what it was you were trying to do in the […]