#45: A really small web API and OS-level machine learning

This episode is brought to you by Rollbar: pythonbytes.fm/rollbar

Brian #1: pico

• "a very small web application framework for Python"
• Recommended by Ivan Pejić
• lightning talk from EuroPython 2017
• This would be a good web framework for building internal services and tools that non-web developers need to interact with and modify.
• Very simple.
• Not REST, but not confusing either.

Michael #2: High Sierra ships, first major OS with machine learning built in?

• September 26th macOS High Sierra was released (yay)
• Mostly a foundational release with barely visible changes but awesome things like APFS replacing HFS+, etc.
• Comes with CoreML
  • Apple’s intent with the new CoreML framework is to package up prebuilt ML models and execution engines and make them possible for third-party apps to use.
  • Developers can take a trained machine learning algorithm, package it up as an MLModel, and integrate it into their apps.
  • Apple offers a few default machine learning models that developers can download and use too
• Rather than sharing your data with a central server, grouping it together with a lot of other people's data, and improving machine learning models that way, Apple stresses that everything CoreML does is happening on the device.
• On Macs that support Metal—generally, Macs from 2012 and later—CoreML uses a mix of CPU processing and GPGPU processing, depending on the task.
• Add on the fact that High Sierra has external GPU support now and you have a sweet combo.

Brian #3: A guide to logging in Python

• Simply put, the best logging introduction I've read so far.

Michael #4: Let me introduce: slots

• So what are slots? __slots__ are a different way to define the attributes storage for classes in Python.
• for normal Python classes, a dict is used to store the instance's attributes.
• With __slots__ we don't have an attribute called __dict__ inside our instance. But we have a new attribute called __slots__.
• But why would you need to use slots when you have a dict? Well the answer is that __slots__ are a lot lighter and slightly faster.
• Outcome:
  • ~57% less memory usage thanks to just one line of code.
  • __slots__ are also slightly faster.
• Covered in depth in my Write Pythonic Code Like a Seasoned Developer course.

Brian #5: pipenv revisited

• Covered in episode 11. However, there are some notable changes since then.
• Reminder:
  • pepenv handles virtualenv and pip interaction for you
  • pipenv install creates a virtualenv (if one doesn't exist) and installs stuff into a virtualenv.
  • pipenv shell uses the virtualenv
  • exit allows you to get out of the virtualenv
  • pipenv lock -r will generate a requirements.txt file for you, so you can use it even if you need a requirements.txt file.
• Notable changes:
  • New 4 minute screencast with Kenneth demonstrating how to use it. Watching him use it makes it very simple to understand.
  • Specify multiple package indexes, and even specify a particular index for particular packages. So you can combine both pypi with a company index and a group index and maybe one for your project.
  • pipenv check will tell you about any known security vulnerabilities in your installed packages
  • 9 months old with 192 releases, so keep an eye on it for new features all the time.

Michael #6: Stack Overflow gives an even closer look at developer salaries

• Tabs and spaces aren't the only things that influence developer pay…
• Some of the broad trends are no big surprise; for example, the chosen cities tend to pay more than their respective nations do, for example.
• DevOps specialists and data scientists both earn well.
• Other aspects of the data are a little more surprising. Graphics programmers, for example, aren't particularly well paid, in spite of having a relatively specialized, complex niche.
• And while earnings in four of the countries are surprisingly similar, those in America are substantially higher, regardless of experience; in fact, the median salary of a developer in the US is comparable to that of someone with 20 years of experience in Canada or Germany and markedly higher than 20-year veterans in France and the UK. Even after taking into account the US' higher healthcare costs, America is the place to be if you're a programmer.
• Comments
  • I do have to wonder how much Silicon Valley skews that salary chart, as the Web 2.0 companies pay HUGE comparatively [ref]
  • I asked Stack Overflow's data scientist that question, and she said not much; even without its outlier cities, the US pays much more than the rest of the world. [ref]
  • Healthcare cost are only part of it. I got paid about $600/month 9 months a year by my government to study in university. [ref]
  • I feel like a lot of IT people lack soft skills, and it caps their salary at a lower end. [ref]

Our news:

• Hardcopies of Python Testing with pytest now shipping on Amazon, as well as Pragmatic.
  • When you get your copy, let me know. Send a pic to @brianokken