What are the benefits of using a decoupled data processing system? How do you write reusable queries for a variety of backend data platforms? This week on the show, Phillip Cloud, the lead maintainer of Ibis, will discuss this portable Python dataframe library. Phillip contrasts Ibis’s workflow with other Python dataframe libraries. We discuss how “getting close to the data” speeds things up and conserves memory. He describes the different approaches Ibis provides for querying data and how to select a specific backend. We discuss ways to get started with the library and how to access example d ..read more

What is error culture, and how do you avoid it within your organization? How do you navigate alert and notification fatigue? Hey, it’s episode #200! Real Python’s editor-in-chief, Dan Bader, joins us this week to celebrate. Christopher Trudeau also returns to bring another batch of PyCoder’s Weekly articles and projects. We discuss an article series about error culture. We dig into false positives, hero culture, and the tendency to start ignoring alerts. We contrast our personal experiences and propose possible remedies. Dan describes configuring Real Python’s alert system. We also share sever ..read more

How do you customize a LLM chatbot to address a collection of documents and data? What tools and techniques can you use to build embeddings into a vector database? This week on the show, Calvin Hendryx-Parker is back to discuss developing an AI-powered, Large Language Model-driven chat interface. Calvin is the co-founder and CTO of Six Feet Up, a Python and AI consultancy. He shares a recent project for a family-owned seed company that wanted to build a tool for customers to access years of farm research. These documents were stored as brochure-style PDFs and spanned 50 years. We discuss sever ..read more

Can you build a Space Invaders clone using Python’s built-in turtle module? What advantages does the Seaborn data visualization library provide compared to Matplotlib? Christopher Trudeau is back on the show this week, along with special guest Real Python core team member Bartosz Zaczyński. We’re sharing another batch of PyCoder’s Weekly articles and projects. Bartosz shares a Real Python step-by-step project for building a video game using the Python turtle module. The turtle module provides an interactive environment that lets users create pictures and shapes on a virtual canvas. The project ..read more

How do you get yourself unstuck when facing a programming problem? How do you develop a positive developer mindset while learning Python? This week on the show, Bob Belderbos from Pybites is here to talk about learning Python and building healthy developer habits. Bob created the Pybites learning platform with his friend Julian Sequeira. They initially focused on exercises and coding challenges to motivate new Python students. As they grew their community, they created a podcast and moved into coaching. They noticed that most new developers share common struggles of tutorial paralysis, imposte ..read more

What are the typical computer tasks you do manually every week? Could you automate those tasks with a Python script? Christopher Trudeau is back on the show this week, bringing another batch of PyCoder’s Weekly articles and projects. We discuss a recent Hacker News thread about frequently used automation scripts. We share the kinds of tasks we’ve automated with Python in our work and personal lives. Christopher shares a tutorial about building a micro-search engine from scratch using Python. The post takes you through coding the components of a crawler, index, and ranker. The finished engine i ..read more

How do you avoid the bottlenecks of data processing systems? Is it possible to build tools that decouple storage and computation? This week on the show, creator of the pandas library Wes McKinney is here to discuss Apache Arrow, composable data systems, and community collaboration. Wes briefly describes the humble beginnings of the pandas project in 2008 and moving the project to open source in 2011. Since then, he’s been thinking about improvements across the data processing ecosystem. Wes collaborated with members of the broader data science community to build the in-memory analytics infrast ..read more

What are real-life examples of using Python decorators? How can you harness their power in your code? Christopher Trudeau is back on the show this week, bringing another batch of PyCoder’s Weekly articles and projects. We discuss a recent article series that digs into Python decorators. The first two articles discuss the basics of constructing decorators. The third part describes how popular Python libraries use decorators with call interception, function registration, and enriching the behavior of a function. Christopher shares a piece about the common pitfalls of working with the Pythondatet ..read more

How do you manage the dependencies of a large-scale data science project? How do you migrate that project from a laptop to cloud infrastructure or utilize GPUs and multiple instances in parallel? This week on the show, Savin Goyal returns to discuss the updates to the open-source framework Metaflow. Savin briefly describes the Metaflow platform and the goal of simplifying engineering overhead for data scientists and programmers. We discuss how the platform captures snapshots of a project as you work, allowing you to go back in time or share the state of your project with another team member. W ..read more

What’s it like to sit down for your first developer sprint at a conference? How do you find an appropriate issue to work on as a new open-source contributor? This week on the show, author and software engineer Stefanie Molin is here to discuss starting to contribute to open-source projects. Stefanie is a data scientist and software engineer on Bloomberg’s Security Data Science team. She recently wrote an article titled “5 Ways to Get Started in Open Source.” We discuss finding ways to contribute that fit your interests and developer skills. We dig into the experience of participating in commun ..read more