#252: Jupyter is now a desktop app!

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Special guest: Ethan Swan

Michael #0: Changing themes to DIY

Brian #1: SQLFluff

• Suggested by Dave Kotchessa.
• A SQL Linter, written in Python, tested with pytest
• Configurable, and configuration can live in many places including tox.ini and pyproject.toml.
• Great docs
• Rule reference with anti-pattern/best practice format
• Includes dialects for ANSI, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Teradata, BigQuery, Snoflake
• Note in docs: “SQLFluff is still in an open alpha phase - expect the tool to change significantly over the coming months, and expect potentially non-backward compatible api changes to happen at any point.”

Michael #2: JupyterLab Desktop

• JupyterLab App is the cross-platform standalone application distribution of JupyterLab.
• Bundles a Python environment with several popular Python libraries ready to use in scientific computing and data science workflows.
• JupyterLab App works on Debian and Fedora based Linux, macOS and Windows operating systems.

Ethan #3: Requests Cache

• Create a requests_cache session and call HTTP methods from there
  • You can also do it without a session but that’s a bit weird, looks like it’s monkey patching requests or something…
• Results are cached
• Very handy for repeatedly calling endpoints
  • especially if the returned data is large, or the server has to do some compute
• Reminds me of @functools.lru_cache
• Can set things like how long the cache should last (when to invalidate)
• Funny easter egg in example: “# Cache 400 responses as a solemn reminder of your failures”

Brian #4: pypi-rename

• This is a cookiecutter template from Simon Willison
• Backstory:
  • To refresh my memory on how to publish a new package with flit I created a new pytest plugin.
  • Brian Skinn noticed it somehow, and suggested a better name. Thanks Brian.
  • So, how to nicely rename. I searched and found Simon’s template, which is…
• A cookiecutter template. So you can use cookiecutter to do some of this work for you.
• But it’s based on setuptools, and I kinda like flit lately, so I just used the instructions.
• The README.md includes instructions for the steps needed:
  • Create renamed version
  • Publish under new name
  • Change old one to depend on new one, but be mostly empty
  • Modify readme to tell people what's going on
  • Publish old name as a notice
• Now people looking for old one will find new one.
• People just installing old one will end up with new one also since it’s a dependency.

Michael #5: Django 4 coming with Redis Adapter

• #33012 closed New feature (fixed) → Add a Redis cache backend.
• Adds support for Redis to be used as a caching backend with Django.
• Redis is the most popular caching backend, adding it to django.core.cache module would be a great addition for developers who previously had to rely on the use of third party packages.
• It will be simpler than that provided by django-redis, for instance customising the serialiser is out-of-scope for the initial pass.

Ethan #6: PEP 612

• It wasn’t possible to type a function that took in a function and returned a function with the same signature (which is what many decorators do)
  • This creates a ParamSpec – which is much like a TypeVar, for anyone who has used them to type generic functions/classes
• It’s a reminder that typing is still missing features and evolving, and it’s good to accept the edge cases for now – “gradual typing”
  • Reading Fluent Python by Ramalho has influenced my view on this – don’t lose your mind trying to type crazy stuff, just accept that it’s “gradual”
• Mention how typing is still evolving in Python and it’s good to keep an eye out for new features that help you (see also PEP 645 – using int? for Optional[int]; and PEP 655 – annotating some TypedDict keys as required and others not required)

Extras

Michael

• Earsketch
• Django Critical CVE: CVE-2021-35042
  • Vulnerable versions: >= 3.0.0, < 3.1.13
  • Patched version: 3.1.13
  • Django 3.1.x before 3.1.13 and 3.2.x before 3.2.5 allows QuerySet.order_by SQL injection if order_by is untrusted input from a client of a web application.

Ethan

• Pedalboard
  • I happened upon this project recently and checked back, only to see that Brett Cannon was the last committer! A doc fix, like he suggested last episode

Brian

• Zero Cost Exceptions in Python 3.11
  • Suggested by John Hagen
  • Guido, Mark Shannon, and others at Microsoft are working on speeding up Python
  • faster-cpython/ideas repo includes a slide deck from Guido which includes “Zero overhead” exception handling.
  • Python 3.11 “What’s New” page, Optimizations section includes:
  • “Zero-cost” exceptions are implemented. The cost of try statements is almost eliminated when no exception is raised. (Contributed by Mark Shannon in bpo-40222.)
  • MK: I played with this a bit.

Joke: QA 101