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#83: from __future__ import braces

Published Fri, Jun 22, 2018, recorded Wed, Jun 20, 2018

Sponsored by DigitalOcean: pythonbytes.fm/digitalocean

Special guest: Cristian Medina, @tryexceptpass

Brian #1: Code with Mu: a simple Python editor for beginner programmers.

  • Found out about this from Nicholas Tollervey (@ntoll)
  • Built by an impressive list of people: https://codewith.mu/en/ thanks
  • Beginning code editor that also works with Adafruit and micro:bit boards.
  • From about:
    • Less is More.
      • Mu has only the most essential features, so users are not intimidated by a baffling interface.
    • Tread the Path of Least Resistance.
      • Whatever the task, there is always only one obvious way to do it with Mu.
    • Keep it Simple.
      • It's quick and easy to learn Mu ~ complexity impedes a novice programmer's first steps.
    • Have fun!
      • Learning should inspire fun ~ Mu helps learners quickly create and test working code.

Cris #2: Python parenthesis primer

  • Good for beginners. Covers the main uses of parenthesis, curly brackets and square brackets. Including code examples.
  • Parenthesis
    • Callables.
    • Operation prioritization.
    • Tuples.
    • Generator expressions.
    • Skirting the indentation rules.
  • Square brackets
    • Lists and their comprehensions.
    • Indexing.
    • Slices.
    • Comments also mention type hints.
  • Curly braces
    • Dictionaries and comprehensions.
    • Sets and comprehensions.
    • F-strings.
    • str.format.
  • Try to import braces from __future__:
        >>> from __future__ import braces
          File "[HTML_REMOVED]", line 1
        SyntaxError: not a chance
    

Michael #3: Python for Qt Released

  • The Qt Company happy to announce the first official release of Qt for Python (Pyside2).
  • v5.11
  • We hope we can receive plenty of feedback on what works and what does not. We want to patch early and often.
  • Eventually the aim is to release Qt for Python 5.12 without the Tech Preview flag.
  • Started two years ago with this announcement from Lars.
  • Get Qt for Python: The release supports Python 2.7, 3.5 & 3.6 on the three main desktop platforms. The packages can be obtained from download.qt.io or using pip with
  • pip install --index-url=https://download.qt.io/official_releases/QtForPython/ pyside2

Brian #4: Itertools in Python 3, By Example

  • by David Amos (@somacdivad)
  • Iterators and generators are awesome.
  • Nice discussion of lazy evaluation and iterator algebra.
  • Naive approach using list can blow up in memory and time if you use huge datasets.
  • Examples:
    • combinations, combinations_with_replacement, permutations
    • count, repeat, cycle, accumulate
    • product, tee, islice, chain
    • filterfalse, takewhile, dropwhile

Cris #5: Python Sets and Set Theory

  • Nice primer on sets in python and a little set theory.
  • How to build them: set() vs {``'``value1``'``, '``value2``'``} vs {name for name in name_list}
  • Membership tests (which are O(1))
  • Set operations
    • Union
    • Intersection
    • Difference
    • Symmetric Difference
  • Frozen sets

Michael #6: Python 3.7 is coming soon!

  • Schedule
    • 3.7.0 candidate 1: 2018-06-12
    • 3.7.0 final: 2018-06-27
  • What’s new / changed?
    • New syntax features: PEP 563, postponed evaluation of type annotations.
    • New modules: dataclasses: PEP 557 – Data Classes
    • New built-in features: PEP 553, the new breakpoint() function.
    • Standard lib changes:
      • The asyncio module has received new features, significant usability and performance improvements.
      • The time module gained support for functions with nanosecond resolution.
    • Speed:
      • Method calls are 20% faster
      • 3.7 is THE fastest Python available, period.
  • What’s new in Python 3.7 course by Anthony Shaw

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