WEBVTT 00:00:00.001 --> 00:00:04.920 Hello and welcome to Python Bytes, where we deliver Python news and headlines directly to your earbuds. 00:00:04.920 --> 00:00:09.360 It's episode 91, recorded August 8th, 2018. I'm Michael Kennedy. 00:00:09.360 --> 00:00:10.340 And I'm Brian Okken. 00:00:10.340 --> 00:00:11.180 Hey, Brian. How are you doing? 00:00:11.180 --> 00:00:12.040 I'm doing great. 00:00:12.040 --> 00:00:16.680 Awesome. Well, as always, the Python news cycle has not let us down, has it? 00:00:16.680 --> 00:00:19.360 No, it's keeping up. It's good. 00:00:19.360 --> 00:00:21.080 It's definitely. We've got a lot of good stuff to cover. 00:00:21.080 --> 00:00:24.740 Before we do, though, another thing not letting us down is Datadog. 00:00:24.740 --> 00:00:27.060 They're definitely helping us prop up. 00:00:27.060 --> 00:00:28.880 So thank you, Datadog, for sponsoring this episode. 00:00:29.020 --> 00:00:31.300 Check them out at pythonbytes.fm.datadog. 00:00:31.300 --> 00:00:33.920 They actually have some cool new announcements, which I'll get to later. 00:00:33.920 --> 00:00:36.780 But let's talk about what makes Python cool, huh? 00:00:36.780 --> 00:00:38.580 There's a lot of stuff that makes Python cool. 00:00:38.580 --> 00:00:41.780 But there was an article that came up. 00:00:41.780 --> 00:00:43.300 I think it's on Medium. 00:00:43.300 --> 00:00:45.100 HackerNoon. That's right. 00:00:45.100 --> 00:00:47.560 Sorry, HackerNoon, that I thought you were Medium for a second. 00:00:47.560 --> 00:00:49.260 By Shankar Jha. 00:00:49.260 --> 00:00:52.460 And I probably mispronounced his last name. Apologies. 00:00:52.460 --> 00:00:55.520 But an article called What Makes Python Cool. 00:00:55.520 --> 00:00:58.980 And my first reaction is like, oh, yet another rah-rah. 00:00:58.980 --> 00:00:59.860 Python is awesome. 00:00:59.860 --> 00:01:11.660 But it is actually kind of a neat article because it talks about some of the things that a lot of people that are just starting out or starting to learn Python or they have to might not stumble around. 00:01:11.940 --> 00:01:13.860 They might not run into for a while. 00:01:13.860 --> 00:01:15.660 And they're good things to note. 00:01:15.660 --> 00:01:19.720 So he starts off with the Zen of Python with import this. 00:01:19.720 --> 00:01:22.820 And it's a good thing for people to look at. 00:01:22.820 --> 00:01:29.340 And then, of course, if you're looking at cool imports, import anti-gravity that redirects you to XKCD is cool. 00:01:29.880 --> 00:01:35.440 Yeah, if people have never typed import anti-gravity in their REPL in Python, they should definitely do that. 00:01:35.440 --> 00:01:39.160 And those two things actually make it – they're not just jokes. 00:01:39.160 --> 00:01:46.620 It kind of indoctrinates you into the fact that the Python community doesn't take itself too awfully seriously. 00:01:46.620 --> 00:01:50.140 It's all serious work and we do a lot of important things. 00:01:50.140 --> 00:01:52.600 But it's a good, fun thing to have there. 00:01:52.600 --> 00:01:54.340 So I hope they never take those out. 00:01:54.340 --> 00:01:55.140 Yeah, I agree. 00:01:55.140 --> 00:02:02.080 And then things that he starts off right off the bat after that with how to swap two variables in one line. 00:02:02.080 --> 00:02:07.100 Like A, B equals B, A. 00:02:07.100 --> 00:02:08.940 We're just used to that now. 00:02:08.940 --> 00:02:16.540 But when you first see this – or a lot of people don't think they can do that because you can't do that in C, I don't think. 00:02:16.540 --> 00:02:18.320 You didn't used to be able to at least. 00:02:18.320 --> 00:02:19.000 Nope, I don't think so. 00:02:19.000 --> 00:02:20.800 And it's a fun extra thing. 00:02:20.800 --> 00:02:24.260 How fast you can spin up a web server just with one line. 00:02:24.260 --> 00:02:32.140 A reminder to take a look at the collections and iter tools modules or packages because there are a whole bunch of good stuff in there. 00:02:32.140 --> 00:02:38.260 Enumerate with the enumerate keyword is – or built in, whatever that is. 00:02:38.260 --> 00:02:45.460 It's a really cool thing and it keeps people from keeping track of their own indices when they're going through lists. 00:02:45.460 --> 00:02:51.740 Do you know what I learned from Bob Beldervos from PyBytes with an I, not a Y, not Python bytes, about enumerate? 00:02:51.740 --> 00:02:56.300 Is it takes an extra parameter that will let the index start at one or anything you specify. 00:02:56.300 --> 00:03:00.620 Because I've always had like it go at zero, then I'll have like index plus one all over the place. 00:03:00.620 --> 00:03:02.300 Well, you can just say start at one, two, three. 00:03:02.300 --> 00:03:03.280 That's a parameter in there. 00:03:03.280 --> 00:03:03.660 It's nice. 00:03:03.660 --> 00:03:08.620 Yeah, and that's a brilliant thing because, yeah, I've seen that a lot of people adding one. 00:03:08.620 --> 00:03:10.960 Just start at one and then it's in the right order. 00:03:11.380 --> 00:03:20.800 Easily reverse a list, doing zip, a couple zip tricks, how cool comprehensions and dictionaries are, and pretty print with pprint. 00:03:20.800 --> 00:03:22.060 Anyway, it's a good article. 00:03:22.060 --> 00:03:22.800 Yeah, absolutely. 00:03:22.800 --> 00:03:24.960 I really – I think it covers a lot of nice stuff. 00:03:24.960 --> 00:03:29.180 And if you're kind of new to Python, there are some cool things in here that you'll be like, 00:03:29.180 --> 00:03:35.820 oh, I didn't know when I was working in the REPL that if I forgot to assign some computation to a variable, 00:03:35.820 --> 00:03:39.440 I can still access it one time quickly as an underscore. 00:03:39.440 --> 00:03:40.660 So that's pretty cool. 00:03:40.800 --> 00:03:42.360 Yeah, I actually forget that all the time. 00:03:42.360 --> 00:03:47.500 So I'm glad that people keep putting that down because I forget about it and it saves time. 00:03:47.500 --> 00:03:49.680 The many uses and meanings of underscore. 00:03:49.680 --> 00:03:52.740 Yeah, and we're not even in Perl. 00:03:52.740 --> 00:03:53.500 Yeah, exactly. 00:03:53.500 --> 00:03:57.480 So if I were a Django person, I'm not. 00:03:57.480 --> 00:04:00.700 My sites are based on Pyramid and Flask and things like that. 00:04:01.000 --> 00:04:07.360 But if I were a Django person, I'd be doing a bit of a backflip right now because there's a brand new major Django release. 00:04:07.360 --> 00:04:12.180 And this is the first major release after Django kicked Legacy Python out the door. 00:04:12.180 --> 00:04:13.560 So Django 2.1 is out. 00:04:13.560 --> 00:04:14.180 Pretty cool, huh? 00:04:14.420 --> 00:04:14.680 Yeah. 00:04:14.680 --> 00:04:16.400 What do we got in 2.1? 00:04:16.400 --> 00:04:17.900 Well, there's actually a ton of features. 00:04:17.900 --> 00:04:22.420 I think the one that the team highlights the most is this thing called model view permissions. 00:04:22.800 --> 00:04:24.980 So Django comes with its ORM, right? 00:04:24.980 --> 00:04:26.020 Its own ORM. 00:04:26.020 --> 00:04:29.160 And in there, you have models that map to the database. 00:04:29.160 --> 00:04:34.340 And now you can set it up so you have view-only permissions on models, which is pretty cool. 00:04:35.220 --> 00:04:39.300 And they said Django 2 has reached the end of mainstream support. 00:04:39.300 --> 00:04:47.360 They just released 2.0.8, which is the final version you're ever going to see except for possible security fixes until April of 2019. 00:04:47.360 --> 00:04:49.640 But after that, there's going to be no more Django 2.0. 00:04:49.640 --> 00:04:51.600 So be sure to look about upgrading. 00:04:51.600 --> 00:04:54.460 And then in terms of features, we have the model view feature. 00:04:54.460 --> 00:04:59.400 We also have the ability to customize how deletes happen. 00:04:59.400 --> 00:05:01.280 So there's like a delete query set option. 00:05:01.280 --> 00:05:04.300 So you can delete select objects and customize that. 00:05:04.300 --> 00:05:06.380 There's a way to override the default admin site. 00:05:06.380 --> 00:05:08.080 There's tons of ORM features. 00:05:08.080 --> 00:05:09.960 I highlighted one, but there's actually a whole bunch. 00:05:09.960 --> 00:05:12.140 Caching is pretty cool. 00:05:12.140 --> 00:05:15.240 So caching used to kind of like store items. 00:05:15.240 --> 00:05:17.940 And when it got full, it would just randomly start throwing stuff out. 00:05:17.940 --> 00:05:21.720 And now it uses LRU, last recently used to call. 00:05:21.720 --> 00:05:24.740 So like a better sort of the hot stuff stays in the cache, which is good. 00:05:24.740 --> 00:05:29.180 Migrations can now be run from PYC, so compiled files. 00:05:29.180 --> 00:05:34.200 So in frozen environments that are just have the binary bytecode, you can still run migrations and tons more. 00:05:34.200 --> 00:05:35.780 Wow, that's actually pretty cool. 00:05:35.780 --> 00:05:37.000 Yeah, there's a lot of stuff in there. 00:05:37.000 --> 00:05:41.060 Like there's pages and pages of changes from Django 2, which is pretty awesome. 00:05:41.060 --> 00:05:49.520 Yeah, actually, if I was going to go look at Django, which is on my to-do list, the ability to overwrite the default admin site, that sounds kind of neat. 00:05:49.520 --> 00:05:54.080 Because I'm not really a fan of the look of the default admin site. 00:05:54.080 --> 00:05:55.420 Yeah, it's pretty cool. 00:05:55.420 --> 00:05:55.700 Great. 00:05:55.700 --> 00:05:58.800 So you've got one that's a little playful, right? 00:05:58.800 --> 00:05:59.240 Yeah. 00:05:59.240 --> 00:06:01.460 So this is actually pretty awesome. 00:06:02.640 --> 00:06:04.440 It's actually a GitHub repo. 00:06:04.440 --> 00:06:07.300 And I'm going to look this person up. 00:06:07.300 --> 00:06:12.360 It's Annalena Popkis, which actually I might have actually got that last name right. 00:06:12.360 --> 00:06:12.840 Who knows? 00:06:12.840 --> 00:06:18.620 But she's a computer science graduate student or computer science graduate. 00:06:19.200 --> 00:06:22.540 She's working as an intern right now, according to her blog. 00:06:22.540 --> 00:06:25.560 But it's like the whole 100 days of code thing. 00:06:25.560 --> 00:06:31.520 But she's doing it all in the open and all in Harry Potter themes. 00:06:31.520 --> 00:06:33.380 And it's really fun. 00:06:33.380 --> 00:06:37.340 And so far, it's up to day 18. 00:06:37.860 --> 00:06:39.500 So she's still working on it. 00:06:39.500 --> 00:06:42.240 And hopefully, we'll continue it all with it. 00:06:42.240 --> 00:06:44.520 But this is just some really fun stuff. 00:06:44.520 --> 00:06:50.580 And I like the idea of using a theme for going through a 100 days of code system. 00:06:50.580 --> 00:06:51.780 So it's kind of fun. 00:06:51.780 --> 00:06:52.260 Yeah. 00:06:52.260 --> 00:06:57.380 So to give people an idea of what you're describing and what she's doing is like, for example, on 00:06:57.380 --> 00:07:00.320 days 16, 17, 18, she worked with data classes. 00:07:00.320 --> 00:07:02.720 Data classes are a cool 3-7 thing that are awesome. 00:07:02.720 --> 00:07:05.320 And she's modeling a house, right? 00:07:05.320 --> 00:07:11.040 When the young wizard students go off to the wizard school, they go into like Gryffindor 00:07:11.040 --> 00:07:12.940 and Slytherin and the different houses. 00:07:12.940 --> 00:07:16.460 And so like her whole example of exploring data classes is about that. 00:07:16.460 --> 00:07:21.640 What also I think is actually going to pay off pretty big time for her is every one of these, 00:07:21.640 --> 00:07:25.160 she's not just writing the code and putting it in a separate section in GitHub. 00:07:25.160 --> 00:07:29.280 But she's also doing like a full-on explanatory blog post. 00:07:29.280 --> 00:07:33.200 Like this one is probably six pages of writing about it. 00:07:33.200 --> 00:07:35.840 And that's got to help understand it really well and make it stick. 00:07:35.840 --> 00:07:36.380 Yeah. 00:07:36.380 --> 00:07:41.940 And then it's also, you know, 100 days of writing, you know, practice writing about text stuff. 00:07:41.940 --> 00:07:43.960 So yeah, it'll definitely help. 00:07:43.960 --> 00:07:44.900 It's a good idea. 00:07:44.900 --> 00:07:45.340 Yeah. 00:07:45.340 --> 00:07:45.740 I love it. 00:07:45.740 --> 00:07:46.720 I'm glad you brought that one in. 00:07:46.720 --> 00:07:47.600 I saw that come up. 00:07:47.600 --> 00:07:49.400 I'm like, wow, that's pretty clever. 00:07:49.400 --> 00:07:50.260 Well done, Anna. 00:07:50.260 --> 00:07:50.700 Nice. 00:07:50.700 --> 00:07:51.680 All right. 00:07:51.780 --> 00:07:55.960 Before we move on to the next one, let me tell you about a new feature from Datadog. 00:07:55.960 --> 00:07:59.360 So we talked about Datadog and their monitoring and stuff before. 00:07:59.360 --> 00:08:05.600 So Brian, we've talked a little bit about machine learning and AI taking over the world, right? 00:08:05.600 --> 00:08:06.700 Yes. 00:08:06.880 --> 00:08:07.040 Yeah. 00:08:07.040 --> 00:08:09.360 So here's a little bit more of it in a good way. 00:08:09.360 --> 00:08:21.580 So Datadog has their APM application performance monitoring stuff has a new watchdog auto detection engine that uses machine learning to alert you about performance anomalies in your application. 00:08:21.580 --> 00:08:23.040 That's cool, right? 00:08:23.040 --> 00:08:24.080 That is really cool. 00:08:24.080 --> 00:08:25.960 So it learns how your app normally works. 00:08:25.960 --> 00:08:29.640 It's like, whoa, you know, it's pinned this thing at 100% CPU for some reason. 00:08:29.640 --> 00:08:30.880 Something must have gone wrong. 00:08:30.880 --> 00:08:32.520 Or maybe it's totally flat. 00:08:32.520 --> 00:08:34.060 You're processing no traffic. 00:08:34.060 --> 00:08:35.480 Either way, you probably want to know. 00:08:35.480 --> 00:08:44.940 So with Datadog's new watchdog thing, you can explore and analyze all your app performance data, navigate between correlated metrics, traces, logs, all that kind of stuff in real time. 00:08:45.460 --> 00:08:55.720 So if you want to start optimizing your Python apps with machine learning, you can get a 14-day free trial and Datadog will send you a free t-shirt at pythonbytes.fm/Datadog. 00:08:55.720 --> 00:08:57.040 So that's pretty awesome. 00:08:57.040 --> 00:08:58.200 I'd like to check that out. 00:08:58.200 --> 00:08:59.520 Yeah, definitely cool. 00:08:59.520 --> 00:08:59.840 Yeah. 00:08:59.840 --> 00:09:02.360 We've talked about deployment once or twice, right? 00:09:02.360 --> 00:09:03.240 I think so. 00:09:03.240 --> 00:09:06.080 Along with our GUI kick. 00:09:06.080 --> 00:09:08.140 So here's an interesting take on it. 00:09:08.140 --> 00:09:15.020 So one of the things I think is challenging about distributing a Python application is you have to distribute your source code. 00:09:15.680 --> 00:09:23.400 Now, maybe you distribute the PYC files so you can distribute like a bytecode version, but it's pretty easy to unbytecode that, right? 00:09:23.400 --> 00:09:29.800 But there's not a lot of great ways to distribute your code if you are concerned that maybe someone will mess with it. 00:09:29.800 --> 00:09:38.560 Like you could put it onto, say, a web server, but if somebody breaks into the web server and they find your code, well, they could change simple things like your Stripe ID. 00:09:38.560 --> 00:09:44.180 So all of a sudden, all your purchases start deposited into their bank account instead of yours or things like this, right? 00:09:44.680 --> 00:09:48.780 So if you want to deploy your apps and protect them, that can be tricky. 00:09:48.780 --> 00:10:01.760 And it's extra tricky in Python because if we're deploying C++ or Go or even .NET, there's like compiled binaries and you can sign those so that they don't get, they can't run basically if they're not properly signed and things like that. 00:10:01.760 --> 00:10:04.120 But in Python, you distribute generally source code. 00:10:04.340 --> 00:10:15.140 So this next thing is there's this like consulting group company and they wanted to come up with a way to protect Python code for the people they work for. 00:10:15.140 --> 00:10:21.040 So they wrote this article and created this thing called Executing Encrypted Python with No Performance Penalty. 00:10:21.040 --> 00:10:21.800 Oh, wow. 00:10:21.800 --> 00:10:22.020 Cool. 00:10:22.220 --> 00:10:25.220 So, you know, we have the PYC, which is the bytecode thing. 00:10:25.220 --> 00:10:26.800 And that's just straight bytecode. 00:10:26.800 --> 00:10:30.860 But what they've created is what they're calling a PYCE file. 00:10:30.860 --> 00:10:38.760 And the PYCE file is an encrypted Python byte file, which until you decrypt it, can't be executed. 00:10:38.760 --> 00:10:40.360 So that's pretty cool, right? 00:10:40.360 --> 00:10:41.240 That's very cool. 00:10:41.320 --> 00:10:45.000 Yeah, and the way they make this work is they override the import statement. 00:10:45.000 --> 00:10:50.040 They basically import a library that changes what import means. 00:10:50.040 --> 00:10:55.640 So when you say import, it runs their custom code that says, oh, it's one of these encrypted files. 00:10:55.640 --> 00:10:58.520 Well, that means grab the decryption key, decrypt it. 00:10:58.520 --> 00:10:59.900 Now we load that into memory. 00:10:59.900 --> 00:11:06.060 And the no performance part comes from the fact that once Python has loaded a module, it's just in memory. 00:11:06.540 --> 00:11:10.860 And so the decrypted version's in memory, you hit it again, and it's golden, right? 00:11:10.860 --> 00:11:11.440 It just keeps running. 00:11:11.440 --> 00:11:15.220 So basically, it maybe starts a tiny bit slower, but then it's the same. 00:11:15.220 --> 00:11:18.320 So if this is something you're interested in, check it out. 00:11:18.320 --> 00:11:18.900 It's pretty cool. 00:11:18.900 --> 00:11:21.500 So is this a commercial thing or is it something there? 00:11:21.500 --> 00:11:24.220 I think it's open source on GitHub as far as I can tell. 00:11:24.220 --> 00:11:26.100 That's very cool. 00:11:26.100 --> 00:11:29.980 It is from a commercial company, like a consulting company. 00:11:29.980 --> 00:11:32.960 But I think, let me see if I can find the license. 00:11:32.960 --> 00:11:33.720 Do they have a license? 00:11:33.720 --> 00:11:36.520 The license is, wait for it. 00:11:36.600 --> 00:11:37.340 Actually, wait for GitHub. 00:11:37.340 --> 00:11:38.480 Come on, license. 00:11:38.480 --> 00:11:40.420 Apache 2.0. 00:11:40.420 --> 00:11:42.020 Yeah, permissive license. 00:11:42.020 --> 00:11:44.720 Yeah, so it's free for commercial use. 00:11:44.720 --> 00:11:46.080 This is a very cool thing. 00:11:46.080 --> 00:11:47.140 I'll have to check that out. 00:11:47.140 --> 00:11:48.020 Yeah, nice. 00:11:48.020 --> 00:11:53.120 Yeah, it's not being used by a lot of people, but it seems to me like the people who want this really want this. 00:11:53.120 --> 00:11:53.680 You know what I mean? 00:11:53.680 --> 00:11:55.420 Everybody else is like, why do you want that? 00:11:55.420 --> 00:11:56.200 I don't care about that. 00:11:56.200 --> 00:11:58.480 But if you really wanted it, it seems like it'd be pretty cool. 00:11:58.480 --> 00:12:00.440 So anyway, that's what I found for that one. 00:12:00.440 --> 00:12:00.800 That's great. 00:12:00.800 --> 00:12:01.700 Nice. 00:12:01.700 --> 00:12:02.220 Yeah. 00:12:02.900 --> 00:12:03.880 What's this next one about? 00:12:03.880 --> 00:12:06.000 I don't even know what to make of your notes here. 00:12:06.000 --> 00:12:06.660 This is crazy. 00:12:06.660 --> 00:12:07.280 It's cool. 00:12:07.280 --> 00:12:12.740 Well, actually, I just saw, this actually came in just this morning. 00:12:12.940 --> 00:12:21.240 I saw a tweet from Harry Percival saying that he wrote a plug-in for pytest called pytest-ICDiff. 00:12:21.240 --> 00:12:31.820 And it's a plug-in that allows you to use ICDiff for asserts that are equal comparisons in pytest. 00:12:31.820 --> 00:12:35.820 Right, like a failure in, say, like, assert these are equal, but then they're not. 00:12:35.820 --> 00:12:39.580 And it'll show you like a color diff instead of just, no, they're different. 00:12:39.580 --> 00:12:40.840 Yeah, that's pretty much it. 00:12:40.840 --> 00:12:41.520 I love it. 00:12:41.520 --> 00:12:49.440 And I have never even heard of ICDiff, but ICDiff apparently is a different diff that isn't necessarily tied to pytest. 00:12:49.440 --> 00:12:54.640 You can use it just on the command line for better diff, colored diffs. 00:12:54.640 --> 00:12:58.480 Yeah, IC stands for improved color diff, which is pretty cool. 00:12:58.480 --> 00:13:00.780 And it's a Python project in and of itself. 00:13:00.780 --> 00:13:04.220 And then it looks like Harry Percival's pytest-ified it. 00:13:04.220 --> 00:13:08.280 Yeah, it's cool that having some color there, highlight things. 00:13:08.280 --> 00:13:12.440 I think it's great because so often when a test fails, you're like, oh, what is going on? 00:13:12.440 --> 00:13:15.100 Like, you want to look at it and you're like, what is that? 00:13:15.100 --> 00:13:16.600 Is that, oh, there's that dot there. 00:13:16.600 --> 00:13:18.420 You know, like some color would really help, right? 00:13:18.420 --> 00:13:21.080 Yeah, to highlight exactly which part of it's different. 00:13:21.080 --> 00:13:21.760 Yeah, exactly. 00:13:21.760 --> 00:13:25.800 So that's a pretty short section, just a new tool that I thought was neat. 00:13:25.800 --> 00:13:26.500 I thought I'd share. 00:13:26.500 --> 00:13:29.620 Well, I don't know why you wouldn't use this if you're using pytest. 00:13:29.880 --> 00:13:33.040 Yeah, that won't help you for other types of asserts. 00:13:33.040 --> 00:13:38.540 But it's the equality of why is it not equal that really trips people up sometimes. 00:13:38.540 --> 00:13:39.120 Yeah, for sure. 00:13:39.120 --> 00:13:40.660 Yeah, it's great. 00:13:40.660 --> 00:13:41.560 Nice find there. 00:13:41.560 --> 00:13:42.600 And well done, Harry. 00:13:42.600 --> 00:13:45.680 All right, the last one is a bit of a amusing. 00:13:45.680 --> 00:13:47.880 And this was sent to us by one of our listeners. 00:13:47.880 --> 00:13:49.540 So thank you for sending this in. 00:13:50.000 --> 00:13:53.900 And I wasn't sure whether we should cover it, but I kind of feel like we should. 00:13:53.900 --> 00:14:00.360 So what they sent in to us is highlighting a .NET project, C#.NET. 00:14:00.360 --> 00:14:03.540 And you might think, Michael, why do we care about a .NET project? 00:14:03.540 --> 00:14:04.620 We don't really. 00:14:04.620 --> 00:14:09.560 But the parallels for what we could do in Python, this would make me do a backflip. 00:14:09.560 --> 00:14:12.280 I don't even know how to do it, but I'd give it a shot, even though it might hurt. 00:14:12.280 --> 00:14:17.060 So they said, hey, there's this project called Blazor by the .NET guys. 00:14:17.060 --> 00:14:20.540 And it was created by this guy by the name of Steve Sanderson, who's a really brilliant 00:14:20.540 --> 00:14:20.980 web guy. 00:14:20.980 --> 00:14:25.140 So what they're doing is they're using WebAssembly. 00:14:25.140 --> 00:14:31.140 And if you're unfamiliar with that, it's a new, it's kind of like JavaScript, but in binary 00:14:31.140 --> 00:14:32.540 compiled form. 00:14:32.540 --> 00:14:38.780 So it's a binary instruction format for stack-based VM that runs inside of web browsers. 00:14:38.780 --> 00:14:44.940 And it's designed as a portable target compilation for high-level languages like C, C++, and Rust. 00:14:45.780 --> 00:14:51.080 So instead of writing in JavaScript and then running that in JavaScript engine, like V8 00:14:51.080 --> 00:14:56.660 or whatever, you compile something like Rust or C++ or C into this WebAssembly stuff that 00:14:56.660 --> 00:15:00.440 is then executed more or less natively in Firefox, Edge, Safari, and Chrome. 00:15:00.440 --> 00:15:01.960 So all the browsers that really matter. 00:15:01.960 --> 00:15:05.580 So coming back to this project, Blazor. 00:15:05.900 --> 00:15:11.440 So what this is, is the .NET people and Steve Sanderson have found a way to take the entire 00:15:11.440 --> 00:15:16.580 .NET runtime, known as the CLR, and compile it to WebAssembly. 00:15:16.580 --> 00:15:22.100 And what's interesting about that is it's written entirely in C and C++. 00:15:22.100 --> 00:15:24.740 You know what else is written entirely in C and C++? 00:15:24.740 --> 00:15:26.200 Yeah, CPython. 00:15:26.200 --> 00:15:26.940 CPython. 00:15:27.500 --> 00:15:32.800 So what they've done is they've taken this thing, which is a native OS compiled thing, 00:15:32.800 --> 00:15:38.240 and they've turned it into something that runs on the client side in the browser natively by 00:15:38.240 --> 00:15:38.900 using WebAssembly. 00:15:38.900 --> 00:15:39.640 That's cool. 00:15:39.640 --> 00:15:40.200 That's awesome. 00:15:40.200 --> 00:15:43.100 And it even has what's called a head-of-time compile mode. 00:15:43.480 --> 00:15:49.440 So you can take your, in their case, .NET, my hope for the world Python code, 00:15:49.440 --> 00:15:54.220 and pre-compile that into WebAssembly binaries that you ship instead of JavaScript or source code 00:15:54.220 --> 00:15:55.140 or anything like that. 00:15:55.140 --> 00:16:01.720 And they even created a single-page app front-end framework with routing and unit testing and 00:16:01.720 --> 00:16:02.520 all sorts of stuff. 00:16:02.520 --> 00:16:06.700 So this is a really cool project that I think may inspire people to try it for Python. 00:16:06.700 --> 00:16:11.320 So what I still don't, I'm kind of, I hope people do try it for Python. 00:16:11.320 --> 00:16:12.140 I think that'd be great. 00:16:12.140 --> 00:16:16.020 I'm trying to, even Blazor itself, I'm trying to understand the use model. 00:16:16.020 --> 00:16:21.560 Is it, it's not, at that point, you're not doing client-server stuff with Blazor, I'm assuming, or is it? 00:16:21.560 --> 00:16:28.660 You could be doing client, so the real use of this is if you were thinking about using AngularJS, 00:16:28.660 --> 00:16:35.200 VueJS, React, React Native, any of these, like, JavaScript front-end frameworks where most of your app 00:16:35.200 --> 00:16:41.920 lives on the client side in the browser, like Gmail or Google Docs or Dropbox Paper or something like that. 00:16:41.920 --> 00:16:51.340 Instead of writing that in tons of JavaScript and executing through a JavaScript engine, Blazor lets you write that in C# and execute it natively at a much higher performance. 00:16:51.340 --> 00:16:52.040 Oh, okay. 00:16:52.200 --> 00:16:52.360 Yeah. 00:16:52.360 --> 00:16:54.820 So that's being accomplished by them. 00:16:54.820 --> 00:16:56.260 And it's already, they have working models. 00:16:56.260 --> 00:16:57.120 It's not like a theory. 00:16:57.120 --> 00:16:58.240 This is already working. 00:16:59.200 --> 00:17:09.500 So when we were at PyCon 2018 in Cleveland this year, one of the very first keynotes, a guy named Dan Callahan, I believe, may have misremembered his last name, 00:17:09.500 --> 00:17:10.980 but worked for Mozilla. 00:17:10.980 --> 00:17:20.260 And they basically laid this path out for Python and called for this to exist, said, look, there's WebAssembly, there's C code, CPython. 00:17:20.760 --> 00:17:23.920 We need CPython in the browser. 00:17:23.920 --> 00:17:28.960 Obviously, it can't do things like connect to databases or do other weird stuff that the browser won't allow. 00:17:28.960 --> 00:17:34.820 But a vast majority of what you want to do in Python or JavaScript could be done in Python and faster and better. 00:17:34.820 --> 00:17:35.280 Yeah. 00:17:35.280 --> 00:17:36.540 Oh, that'd be cool. 00:17:36.540 --> 00:17:36.900 Okay. 00:17:36.900 --> 00:17:38.020 So that's really cool. 00:17:38.100 --> 00:17:42.180 And I linked to his YouTube video that is the keynote where he lays this out. 00:17:42.180 --> 00:17:43.500 It's like a 45-minute talk. 00:17:43.500 --> 00:17:47.260 And the foundations of it, he actually references this in the video. 00:17:47.260 --> 00:17:55.140 A lot of the foundations for WebAssembly itself come from this thing called ASM.js, A-S-M as in assembly, dot JS. 00:17:55.140 --> 00:18:01.620 That's an interesting project that preceded it that will let you take, like, C code and run it in the browser by compiling it to JavaScript. 00:18:02.340 --> 00:18:07.480 So Gary Bernhardt has this amazing fictional presentation that is very educational. 00:18:07.480 --> 00:18:13.560 And the tech part it teaches is real, but it has, like, a story around it called The Birth and Death of JavaScript. 00:18:13.560 --> 00:18:18.040 So that's the proper pronunciation in his fake world. 00:18:18.040 --> 00:18:20.240 And I linked to that video as well. 00:18:20.240 --> 00:18:27.900 And it's just, it's super insightful on how, like, ASM.js and WebAssembly can bring things in to this. 00:18:27.900 --> 00:18:32.260 So, like, he has something insane, like, a macOS running Firefox. 00:18:32.260 --> 00:18:37.560 And in Firefox, there's, like, Windows running, which is running Chrome. 00:18:37.560 --> 00:18:41.700 Or something super, like, Inception-like based on just this ASM.js. 00:18:41.700 --> 00:18:42.940 And WebAssembly could go farther. 00:18:42.940 --> 00:18:43.840 So it's really cool. 00:18:43.840 --> 00:18:44.160 Nice. 00:18:44.160 --> 00:18:44.600 Yeah. 00:18:44.600 --> 00:18:47.220 Anyway, just wanted to give sort of a highlight to that project. 00:18:47.220 --> 00:18:53.000 I think actually creating this myself is probably beyond my understanding of CPython. 00:18:53.000 --> 00:18:54.360 But I would love for this to exist. 00:18:54.360 --> 00:18:54.620 Yeah. 00:18:54.620 --> 00:18:56.900 And then we'll have to hit you up on that backflip. 00:18:56.900 --> 00:18:57.540 Yeah, exactly. 00:18:57.700 --> 00:19:00.020 I will do it maybe on something soft. 00:19:00.020 --> 00:19:02.160 Maybe in a gymnastics place. 00:19:02.160 --> 00:19:03.140 But, yeah, I'll definitely do it. 00:19:03.140 --> 00:19:03.460 All right. 00:19:03.460 --> 00:19:05.600 So very cool project. 00:19:05.600 --> 00:19:09.900 It's not directly relevant, but it has massive parallels in the Python space. 00:19:09.900 --> 00:19:10.480 So that would be cool. 00:19:10.480 --> 00:19:12.720 Anything else you want to share with us, Brian, while we're all here? 00:19:12.720 --> 00:19:13.440 No, I'm good. 00:19:13.440 --> 00:19:13.860 Nice. 00:19:13.860 --> 00:19:14.340 How about you? 00:19:14.340 --> 00:19:15.580 I want to share two things. 00:19:15.580 --> 00:19:20.600 One, we were talking before about my Building Data-Driven Web Apps course that's being well-received. 00:19:20.600 --> 00:19:24.260 If you want to learn about building data-driven web apps in Python, check that out. 00:19:24.260 --> 00:19:25.280 Put the link at the bottom. 00:19:25.740 --> 00:19:33.140 Another one, someone sent in on Twitter to us just highlighting Guido Van Rossum's final presentation. 00:19:33.140 --> 00:19:45.100 At the time, I don't think that he knew that it was his final presentation, but he gave a sort of closing the conference talk at PyCascades called a Python 3 retrospective. 00:19:45.200 --> 00:19:52.020 And so just highlighting, like, here's his last official as BDFL presentation might be interesting to some people. 00:19:52.020 --> 00:19:52.560 Yeah. 00:19:52.560 --> 00:19:53.340 Yeah, it was a good talk. 00:19:53.340 --> 00:19:53.780 I was there. 00:19:53.780 --> 00:19:54.180 Okay. 00:19:54.180 --> 00:19:55.260 I'll have to check that out. 00:19:55.260 --> 00:19:55.860 I haven't seen it. 00:19:55.860 --> 00:19:56.620 Yeah, yeah. 00:19:56.620 --> 00:19:57.100 It's pretty good. 00:19:57.100 --> 00:19:57.880 All right. 00:19:57.880 --> 00:20:01.280 Well, Brian, thanks for being here and sharing everything you have. 00:20:01.280 --> 00:20:01.720 Oh, yeah. 00:20:01.720 --> 00:20:02.100 Thank you. 00:20:02.100 --> 00:20:02.400 Yep. 00:20:02.400 --> 00:20:02.680 Bye. 00:20:02.680 --> 00:20:02.960 Bye. 00:20:03.660 --> 00:20:05.280 Thank you for listening to Python Bytes. 00:20:05.280 --> 00:20:07.840 Follow the show on Twitter via at Python Bytes. 00:20:07.840 --> 00:20:10.740 That's Python Bytes as in B-Y-T-E-S. 00:20:10.740 --> 00:20:14.180 And get the full show notes at pythonbytes.fm. 00:20:14.180 --> 00:20:18.500 If you have a news item you want featured, just visit pythonbytes.fm and send it our way. 00:20:18.500 --> 00:20:21.200 We're always on the lookout for sharing something cool. 00:20:21.200 --> 00:20:24.600 On behalf of myself and Brian Okken, this is Michael Kennedy. 00:20:24.860 --> 00:20:28.220 Thank you for listening and sharing this podcast with your friends and colleagues.