One of the hardest decisions in programming is choosing names. Programmers often use this phrase to highight the challenges of selecting Python function names. It may be an exaggeration, but there’s still a lot of truth in it. There are some hard rules you can’t break when naming Python functions and other objects. There are also other conventions and best practices that don’t raise errors when you break them, but they’re still important when writing Pythonic code. Choosing the ideal […]

Summer isn’t all holidays and lazy days at the beach. Over the last month, two important players in the data science ecosystem released new major versions. NumPy published version 2.0, which comes with several improvements but also some breaking changes. At the same time, Polars reached its version 1.0 milestone and is now considered production-ready. PyCon US was hosted in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in May. The conference is an important meeting spot for the community and sparked some new ideas and […]

Watch Now This tutorial has a related video course created by the Real Python team. Watch it together with the written tutorial to deepen your understanding: Working With JSON Data in Python Since its introduction, JSON has rapidly emerged as the predominant standard for the exchange of information. Whether you want to transfer data with an API or store information in a document database, it’s likely you’ll encounter JSON. Fortunately, Python provides robust tools to facilitate this process and help […]

Python has many built-in functions that you can use directly without importing anything. These functions cover a wide variety of common programming tasks that include performing math operations, working with built-in data types, processing iterables of data, handling input and output in your programs, working with scopes, and more. To get the most out of this tutorial, you’ll need to be familiar with Python programming, including topics like working with built-in data types, functions, classes, decorators, scopes, and the import […]

Python’s unittest.mock library is a tool that helps you create mock objects to simulate complex logic and unpredictable dependencies. This helps you write valuable tests that verify your application logic is correct, reliable, and efficient. You’ll begin by learning about what mocking is and how you can use it to improve your tests. What Is Mocking? A mock object substitutes and imitates a real object within a testing environment. Using mock objects is a versatile and powerful way to improve […]