#310: Calling All Tools for Readmes

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About the show

Sponsored by Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub.

Special guest:

• Adam Hopkins
• Python Web Development with Sanic

Brian #1: Tips for clean code in Python

• Bob Belderbos
• Generally some great tips to think about to keep code maintainable:
  • Smaller units. Break things up into single responsibility. SRP: Single Responsibility Principle
  • Move magic numbers into constants or parameters.
  • Avoid global scope. (even though it’s not really global)
  • Use linters and auto-formatters.
  • Use very narrow try/except blocks.
  • Idiomatic Python. (Although I agree, this is a weird one as it’s hard for new people to follow).
  • Pay attention to data structure choice and learn to utilize standard structures and those in collections.
  • Use the standard libary.
  • Use mappings
  • Flat is better than nested.
• But I’m gonna focus on the “smaller units” because it applies to modules as well.
  • Try to keep modules organized such that you can keep relevant and related code concepts in your head.

Michael #2: Mastodon is picking up speed

• @pythonbytes@fosstodon.org
• @mkennedy@fosstodon.org
• @brianokken@fosstodon.org
• @admhpkns@fosstodon.org
• I’m calling this a “Mastodon First” strategy rather than “Let’s burn down Twitter and scatter”
• Just did a Talk Python about it
• Money in mouth: I became a patreon of Fosstodon and Mastodon’s company
• Mastodon is open source, find it here
• Twitter’s potential collapse could wipe out vast records of recent human history
• Python’s API for Mastodon: toot
• Download a proper Twitter archive with this Python script
• Integrated the API into stream deck
• You can install it as a PWA:

Adam #3: Correction to Sanic Worker Manager in v22.9

• Episode #308 covered a recent article published on a new feature in Sanic v22.9
• Blog article: Pushing work to the background of your Sanic app
• The segment focused on the celery-like job queue in Sanic
• Clarification:
  • Goal of the feature is to bring a consistent development experience from dev thru prod
  • Enables usage of multiprocessing-safe shared objects
  • Simple pattern for managing multiple long-running processes
• Release notes for Sanic v22.9
• Sanic documentation on the Worker Manager

Brian #4: Some FastAPI news, and some great READMEs.

• FastAPI 0.87.0 has some interesting notes
  • Upgraded Starlette, which includes TestClient based on HTTPX instead of Requests
  • Since that might break some peoples use of TestClient, someone named Kludex built bump-testclient to help automatically convert test code to the new interface. That’s so cool!
  • Use Ruff for linting
  • Add a Help Maintain FastAPI section to the docs that emphasizes that it’s super helpful to:
    • Help others with issues
    • Review PRs
    • Both of those sections have other expanded sections to describe what that means.
  • The FastAPI commitment to great documentation is amazing and worth emulating.
  • It also has a really good README.
    • Interesting sponsors section. Cool way for a popular project to get maintenance funding.
    • Testimonials. It’s like a sales landing page, which really, a README kinda is.
    • Other common good practices and cool items
      • Images
      • Some use of collapsable sections.
• Other notable READMEs
  • pytest
    • short example right away to show how simple it can be to use.
  • textual and rich
    • great use of images and short examples
    • highlighting often missed features, such as pretty and inspect
    • Utilizing expandable/collapsable sections for longer examples
  • httpx
    • like pytest, shows a small example quickly,
    • redirects many other sections to more thorough docs.

Michael #5: Closevember

• An annual event focused on sustainable open source development practices and maintainer well-being.
• Let's support open source maintainers by helping them close issues and pull requests throughout November.
• Over at closember.org
• Contributing to a project carries a number of responsibilities, in order to make it as easy as possible for a project to receive that contribution.
• For Maintainers: How to Get Ready (see site)
  • If you only want assistance with closing some issues and PRs, then tag your repo with closember and you’re all set.
  • One thing that we often find helpful is to declutter our physical and digital environment: tidying our desks a bit, decluttering our computers’ desktops, unsubscribing from some email lists ... that sort of thing.
  • I did this this month actually. Spent 6 hours completely rebuilding my desk to have zero wires and look tidy and clean (hint: 3m of industrial velcro and things stuck upside down) and formatted my computer to a fresh OS after two years.
• For the Community: How to Participate (see site)
  • If you’ve never used GitHub before, your first step is going to be signing up for a free account.
  • Also, if you’re super new to git: talkpython.fm/git
  • If you’ve opened issues or PRs on projects in the past, you can start by taking a look at your own GitHub issues and your own PRs to see if any of them are outdated or have already been fixed—if so, close them!
  • After that, start browsing projects: take a look at your favorite projects and see if they’ve been tagged with closember, or browse the list of closember projects.
• Check out the close boards (on the site)

Adam #6: Super simple “Cache with async power” using Cashews

• Recently popped up in my GitHub Explore
  • Cashews: Async cache framework with simple API to build fast and reliable applications
• Super simple out-of-the-box API
  • supports in memory, Redis, DiskCache (local sqlite)
  • one-line setup then implemented as a decorator
  • Human-friendly TTL values: example “3h”
• Client-side caching - For example, if you are using Redis backend you do not need to make a network call on every cache request
• Strategies for common cache issues
  • cache hits, early recalculation, soft TTL, resource locking, rate limiting!, circuit breaker
• Has its own interface for middleware

Extras

Michael:

• Take the PSF survey

Adam:

• Voting season is upon us: Python Steering Council nominations are open

Joke: JavaScript has been Banned from Twitter