Transcript #397: So many PyCon videos

00:00 Hello and welcome to Python Bytes, where we deliver Python news and headlines directly to your earbuds.

00:05 This is episode 397, recorded August 20th.

00:09 And I am Brian Okken.

00:10 And I am Michael Kennedy.

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01:02 Yep.

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01:05 What do you got for us, Michael?

01:07 I've been waiting and waiting to talk about this.

01:11 So let's talk about Pi Awaitable.

01:15 It was bad, but it had to be done.

01:17 You know what I mean?

01:17 So Pi Awaitable.

01:19 This is something I feel like probably not a ton of people are going to be using, but the concurrency

01:26 models in Python are only increasing.

01:28 The use of async and await is only increasing.

01:32 And people writing code, people writing code in B and Rust and other languages to basically create lower, lower level faster bits is increasing.

01:42 And so I put this out there to help those of you who are saying, maybe I want to rewrite the section in C or integrate with this other bit of code in C.

01:52 So this is a project called Pi Awaitable, which is really for people writing code in C, C extensions for Python.

02:00 Okay.

02:00 Okay.

02:01 And interestingly, it comes from Peter.

02:04 Last name is Birma.

02:08 Peter Birma.

02:09 And if you check out his website, it's pretty interesting, actually.

02:12 Hey, I'm Peter, software engineer from the United States.

02:14 I'm 16 years old.

02:15 Oh, wow.

02:16 I've been writing.

02:16 I've been coding since I was nine.

02:18 And this is just one of my many projects.

02:21 So there's a bunch of projects you can see that, like the pointers.py joke that was going around a while ago.

02:27 He did that and stuff.

02:28 Anyway, so that's kind of interesting and impressive.

02:30 And so this is a library that lets you create code in C that can accept an async Python function.

02:39 So if you write async def in Python, right, and create some function that uses async and await, and you pass it off to the C layer, well, that used to be kind of tricky.

02:51 This used to be, this was suggested as a pep.

02:54 If you check it out, I don't know if it got far enough to have a number, but there's like the whole PEP write up of what is the value of this?

03:02 Why does it exist?

03:03 How do you use it?

03:03 How should it be added?

03:04 And from what I gather, what I understand is that since this thing only uses the public ABI, the public interface of the C API, it doesn't necessarily have to be part of CPython.

03:19 It could just be a third party library.

03:20 So here it is.

03:21 And here's how you, here it goes, Brian.

03:24 This will, this will connect with you, I think.

03:26 Hash include pyawaitable.h.

03:29 Here we go.

03:30 Here's a function that takes a Python coroutine function or an async def type of function, uses this library to create something that can be awaited on it.

03:43 And then it returns it.

03:44 So then that basically turns the C function into an async, something that can be awaited from Python.

03:50 Okay.

03:51 So the C function is the thing that you're waiting for completion of?

03:55 Yes.

03:56 So here's a C extension written with this library that itself is effectively an async def function that you just await as if it was a native Python one.

04:06 Okay.

04:07 In the event loop and all that kind of stuff.

04:08 And it can coordinate with other async things like your own ones or the built-in, you know, async io.sleep or whatever.

04:14 That's pretty cool.

04:15 Yeah.

04:16 Pretty cool?

04:16 Yeah.

04:17 So I'm pretty short and sweet and pretty focused, so I'm not going to say much more about it, but check it out.

04:22 It's pretty new, but, you know, it seems not super advanced in terms of what it does.

04:28 So you can, if you're doing a lot of C and async programming, you can check it out and see what you think of it and use it and contribute.

04:34 Nice.

04:34 All right.

04:36 Well, I want to show you something pretty.

04:39 So look at this plot.

04:41 This is amazing.

04:42 So this is just a coal production since 1900.

04:46 So why am I showing this?

04:48 Because it looks like it came out of a magazine or something.

04:50 You've got like these call outs with, it's a stacked plot, but it's got like the colors are all, instead of doing like a key,

05:00 there's, they're, they're listed as colored names in, in one of the descriptions.

05:06 This is great.

05:07 So anyway, I like this plot.

05:09 I want to do something like this.

05:10 And luckily there's an article called annotated area charts with plot line.

05:15 Plot line is an open source Python library.

05:18 And, and this is just a good walks.

05:22 There's a tutorial that walks you through doing this, this wonderful, very professional looking plot.

05:28 And, and it's not something that doesn't even look that complicated.

05:31 Anyway, so going through this looks, looks pretty fun to, to try to do some, some fancy plots like this.

05:38 Maybe make, make my job, make me look more professional at my job.

05:42 You know, one of the, so it uses, it uses plot line, which I hadn't heard of.

05:48 And plot line is, it's based on GG plot two.

05:53 And it says plot line is an implementation of a grammar of graphics.

05:57 I did not know the GG and GG plot was grammar of graphics.

06:01 That's cool.

06:03 I learned that today.

06:05 So that's cool.

06:05 Anyway, I'm like, well, wait a second.

06:08 Is this, is this open source?

06:10 Yeah, it's all, it's all on, on GitHub.

06:12 So, and MIT licensed.

06:15 So I feel safe with, with this talk about licenses a lot lately and it, and I am paying more attention

06:20 to the licenses that I use.

06:22 So, anyway, just a fairly quick shout out to this wonderful, oh, who wrote it?

06:27 It was Nicola Renni.

06:30 And great looking blog too.

06:32 But anyway, just had to make really beautiful plots with plot line.

06:36 That's a nice looking blog and very nice looking presentation.

06:40 So plot, plot nine is new to me.

06:42 So good to know.

06:43 Right on to the next one.

06:46 We have Delta base.

06:48 So Brian, I'm sure you've heard of SQLite, the embedded database that you can just point at

06:55 a file and run.

06:56 So Delta base is kind of like that, but broader, I guess.

06:59 It's a lightweight comprehensive solution for managing data, Delta tables built on Polars

07:05 and Delta Lake.

07:06 All right.

07:06 So some, some definitions for this makes sense.

07:09 So Polars is a data frame framework, very much like pandas.

07:14 I actually had a guy who created it on talk Python quite a while ago when it came out.

07:19 And the idea is one, it's super fast, but two, the way that you work with it is a so-called

07:27 fluent API.

07:28 Scrolling for an example, not finding one, a fluent API that has deferred execution.

07:33 So when you work with Panda, you might say, do this filter and then transform this and

07:37 then multiply that thing by something.

07:39 It just does every one of those steps and then processes it together with Polars.

07:43 It says, okay, I see what you're doing.

07:46 And first you told me to multiply.

07:48 And then you told me to filter.

07:49 But if I filter and then multiply, I'll be multiplying way fewer things potentially.

07:54 Right.

07:54 So that's kind of the big difference.

07:56 Anyway, super cool.

07:57 Built on Rust.

07:58 So obviously it's got some pizzazz behind it.

08:02 So are you saying that you can write it in a fluent way that makes sense to you, but it'll

08:06 rearrange it if it makes sense to Polar?

08:08 Yeah.

08:08 It has like a query optimizer type of deal.

08:10 It's not quite a query because you're not writing a query, but it has a deferred execution and

08:15 it takes into consideration.

08:16 If I remember this correctly, it takes into account all the different steps because it doesn't

08:22 actually execute until you give it like the command.

08:24 And so it's built up all these steps that it can do.

08:27 And so it can make decisions about that.

08:29 Oh, that's cool.

08:30 Okay.

08:30 Yeah.

08:30 Which is really cool.

08:31 But in other ways, it's very similar to pandas.

08:33 Not trying to be a copy of it, but that's, you know, it's kind of plays the same space.

08:37 All right.

08:37 So that's one thing.

08:38 The other is Delta Lake.

08:41 This is an implementation of Delta Lake, I guess.

08:45 And with a space, rather than with a space, without a space.

08:50 Oh, that clears it up.

08:51 Totally.

08:52 Oh, yeah.

08:52 So absolutely.

08:53 So this is a format, actually, that allows you to talk with computational engines such

09:01 as Spark, Hive, Snowflake, but also things like DuckDB and others.

09:07 And you can just point it at a local file.

09:09 You don't even have to have a server.

09:10 Okay.

09:11 So this is a pretty cool looking library that lets you basically, you know, it's optimized

09:17 for doing upserts and all sorts of things like that.

09:21 efficient versioning and so on.

09:24 So you just pointed at some path if you want, sort of the SQLite experience.

09:29 And then you say, here's a table.

09:32 It has a primary key with its name.

09:34 And here is a bunch of data I want you to put into it.

09:36 And notice that there is no, here's my SQL create statement and my table schema and all

09:44 of those things.

09:45 Right?

09:45 Like, where is that?

09:46 Doesn't exist, does it?

09:47 So you just say, I'm going to commit this thing.

09:51 Also, if you go, you can do select statements against it, right?

09:54 Query statement, SQL statements against it.

09:56 You go and look at the docs, which I did.

10:01 Here we go.

10:01 Which are a bit of a work in progress here.

10:03 However, if you go and check out the docs, it shows you, for example, under connecting that

10:08 you can connect to just a path, but you could also connect to an S3 bucket.

10:13 You can connect to some kind of Azure data lake container or Google cloud storage, or as

10:21 you saw, a big query.

10:22 So this is pretty interesting, right?

10:24 Just change your connection string and you get these different data tables.

10:27 Neat.

10:28 Data lakes rather.

10:29 Yeah.

10:29 So that's what I have for people.

10:31 If they're doing this kind of stuff, you know, this is something kind of a wrapper around

10:36 those things.

10:36 Also not super popular, but I don't know, this week I kind of felt like shining a light on

10:41 things that were new and could maybe catch on with folks.

10:44 Yeah.

10:44 It looks fun.

10:46 Yes.

10:46 Also fun videos, I think.

10:50 So I wanted to highlight a blog post on the PyCon blog at blog spot, which still just cracks

10:59 me up.

10:59 But anyway, it's PyCon US 2024 recap and recording release, which I was confused by.

11:07 I would have thought a recording release was something you had to sign to make sure that

11:11 your video was releasable.

11:13 But it's no, we just wanted to say that the videos from PyCon are out and I'll take a look

11:19 at those in a second.

11:20 One of the highlights that they noticed was that there were a lot of people showing up.

11:27 There was a total attendance of 2,991.

11:31 That's 2,551 in person and 440 online.

11:37 So that's pretty cool.

11:38 I was just curious.

11:39 I looked.

11:40 Michael reminded me that if you go to look at PyCon on Wikipedia, it has a list of years of

11:49 attendees.

11:50 I think it was like a hotel or something.

11:58 Yeah.

11:58 And then I started going in Portland and we were at over 3,000 in Portland.

12:05 And then Cleveland was over 3,000 as well.

12:08 And then the pandemic hit and it went down quite a ways.

12:11 But we're back to better numbers.

12:15 2022 was 1,700.

12:17 2023 now is over, was 2,100.

12:22 And now we're up to 2,500-ish in person.

12:24 Let's say it's going better.

12:26 I think I'm not.

12:28 If I'd be totally up for going possibly next year, but I'm totally going to hit Long Beach

12:34 in 2026.

12:35 That sounds great.

12:36 Oh, yeah.

12:37 I'm definitely going to Long Beach.

12:39 Yeah.

12:39 Bring on some SoCal.

12:40 Let's do it.

12:41 Okay.

12:41 So they also announced in this announcement that there's a, where is it?

12:46 Somewhere in there.

12:47 It has a link to the YouTube thing.

12:49 So you can find the link there, but you can also see it in our show notes.

12:52 So if you go to PyCon US at YouTube, all the videos are now up.

12:56 And my favorite way to get them is to just hop over to the playlist.

13:00 You can go to the, there's a 2024 thing, but underneath it, you can see the full playlist.

13:06 And I like that one because I can see all of the names of the, of the videos.

13:12 So you don't just hit play on the playlist and just binge.

13:15 No, no way.

13:17 But so if you, if you just hit the playlist though, if you start it, you can pause it.

13:23 But then all the little, all the, the playlist is over on the side, but you can't see the

13:29 titles.

13:29 Yeah.

13:30 Yeah.

13:30 Yeah.

13:30 So I agree with you.

13:31 This is the same way as I do the same way.

13:34 Anyway, I've already got queued up and you can search, you can search easier with this,

13:39 this way as well.

13:40 I'll go away.

13:41 And so I already queued up a search for test stuff, of course.

13:46 And I've got queued up pipe, pipe test for unit testers by Paul Gansel.

13:50 And then this one looks pretty good.

13:51 Testing data pipelines with the Emotish Swain.

13:54 So yeah, it does look cool.

13:56 Anyway, lots of stuff to check out.

13:58 Awesome.

13:58 Awesome.

13:59 That's all we got for that.

14:00 That's all we got.

14:01 Those are all of our main items.

14:03 Yeah.

14:04 Got any extras?

14:05 I do.

14:06 I have, I have multiple.

14:09 I have a couple of things I want to talk about actually.

14:12 One, I just impromptu added here.

14:14 So I've been, one of the things, one of the things I've been working on, Brian, is trying

14:19 to do like a little bit less being not distracted by my phone, but just pulled in by my phone

14:26 and other digital things.

14:28 Right.

14:28 You go, you're like, oh, I got a notification for a text from someone or my music stopped.

14:33 Why the heck did it stop?

14:34 Happy AirPods.

14:35 I got to go back and like, find it and make it go again.

14:37 Because I paused it for three minutes.

14:39 So it must have killed the app.

14:40 Like that makes sense.

14:41 You know what?

14:42 Super computer in your pocket.

14:43 So you go and open it up and you're like, oh wait, that has a little dot or that has a

14:47 little like badge of three on red.

14:49 What is that?

14:49 And then you start scrolling and then you're over there.

14:51 And then, you know, it just, there's just this like pressure or this sort of gravity

14:58 of, of that thing being around.

14:59 So I am taking an attempt and I would love to hear your thoughts on this.

15:03 So making an attempt to make my home screen feel less, more, less like a black hole

15:09 that sucks me in and more like a, I've come here for a purpose.

15:11 Let me do the thing and then go on.

15:13 I would, I looked at maybe getting an Android phone, like a really option to have like a

15:19 real dumb interface, like the nothing phone would be really cool or something like that.

15:23 But with my Apple watch and all my other things, basically I have to just throw that thing

15:28 in the trash if I switched to Android, which is really unfortunate, but I'm like, all right,

15:31 well, I'll stick with my iPhone.

15:33 So I'm, I started using this thing called dumb phone.

15:35 Have you heard of this?

15:36 No.

15:37 So what it does is it uses some weird tricks to take over your home screen on iPhone.

15:44 And it just has a really, really simple display.

15:48 Like the phone, instead of being an icon, it's just the word phone, your messages, instead

15:52 of being the green thing with the, like the three in red is just the word messages and so on.

15:56 Okay.

15:57 And so for example, here's a, I'll link to it.

16:00 I'll link to it.

16:01 I'll link to it.

16:01 I'll link to it.

16:02 It's a screenshot of my iPhone 13 mini.

16:04 It just says web bone messages, maps, weather, and photos on a gray white text on a gray background.

16:08 And you can swipe it over.

16:09 Like the next one I think is videos, podcast news, something like that.

16:13 You know, and the ones like productivity, like mail and calendar.

16:17 Okay.

16:17 If you still want, you still wrote where you're at Mac, you can, you can pull down, you can

16:20 search, or you can even keep swiping until you get past this.

16:24 Anyway, this, I'm trying this and people, if they want to try to go down this path so far,

16:29 I'm liking it.

16:30 I've been messing with my phone.

16:32 It's been effective.

16:33 I've been like stuck in my phone less.

16:35 I'm not a person like, oh, I can't have my phone with me.

16:37 I have it with me all the time.

16:38 But when I go and like check my messages, I don't end up somewhere else as often, let's say.

16:43 So I did, I just like took, I've just got a handful of things like those sorts of things

16:49 on my home screen, but I just have a few on my, on the first screen and everything else

16:54 is on some other page.

16:55 Yeah, that makes sense.

16:56 So that I can just see my, and then I have a background picture of my lovely wife there

17:00 so I can see.

17:00 Yeah, I did have to give it my background.

17:03 I guess I could put a background, but it wouldn't look right because the way this thing works.

17:06 Also, I took off all of the badges.

17:10 The, the, the, the only thing that I, the only thing that gets a little number that

17:15 I still left was the phone messages because I, I actually don't check that very much.

17:21 So I'd like to see if there's a message.

17:22 Not, not actual.

17:24 Oh yeah.

17:25 Actual messages and, you know, phone, like somebody left a voicemail.

17:29 Like who does that anymore anyway?

17:31 But, but at the same time, I don't answer my phone.

17:34 So if, if I don't recognize it, so the doctor might leave it messages anyway.

17:39 Yeah, exactly.

17:40 But I'll be curious to see how long you can deal with that.

17:42 You could also just get a cheap phone, but you know, maybe you can, but that's hard to

17:48 do now.

17:48 It's super.

17:49 Well, it's like, okay, well, I also want to have, you know, a nice GPS if I'm somewhere

17:54 and I want to have CarPlay in my car because I have like a big display that's like a beautiful

17:59 screen while I'm driving.

18:00 And yeah, it's like.

18:01 And occasionally you're stuck somewhere and you want to read something or whatever.

18:06 Yeah.

18:06 Yeah.

18:06 Yeah.

18:06 I'm not trying to not use.

18:07 I'm just trying to like, when I open and I look at it, I don't want it to be a black hole.

18:11 And right now, oddly, it's like a very dark gray, not black, but.

18:15 It's a gray hole.

18:15 It's a gray hole.

18:16 That has no interest to me.

18:18 Okay.

18:19 I will see.

18:19 I'll report back.

18:20 I'll report back.

18:21 Either I give up or I do that.

18:23 And then one more thing.

18:24 We're coming up on the last time for the Code in a Castle.

18:29 So if you want to come to Italy with me and talk about Python and databases and APIs and

18:35 all sorts of fun stuff, got a couple of weeks to sign up.

18:39 So codeinacastle.com and I hope to see you there.

18:43 Nice.

18:43 Cool.

18:44 The extra I've got is I want to say, hey, I finally got the new course done.

18:50 So Hello pytest is available.

18:52 I got to figure out how to take this away.

18:54 It says 16 lessons, but it's not.

18:56 It's 12 lessons.

18:58 Some of the things, it's like counting the intro and the source code as lessons.

19:04 Those aren't really lessons.

19:05 Anyway.

19:05 So 16 lessons under 90 minutes, I think.

19:10 Slightly under 90 minutes, including the intro and outro.

19:13 So there are only a few minutes of video there.

19:15 But check it out.

19:17 You can have full, the full content, table of contents is there at courses.pythontest.com.

19:26 And yeah, loved it.

19:27 Loved to hear what people think.

19:29 And I'm going to just stick it with 10 bucks for a while.

19:32 I've had a lot of great feedback that said that's about, that's a cool price point.

19:35 So I'm going to leave it for a while.

19:37 Awesome.

19:38 Anyway.

19:38 And congratulations.

19:39 That's a big deal.

19:40 Thanks.

19:41 And I'm kind of, we talked about this a little bit.

19:44 I used Camtasia to record this.

19:46 And I'm going to, I think I'm going to try to try working with OBS Studio a little bit.

19:54 Yeah, you definitely should.

19:55 There's some stuff I love about Camtasia though that OBS doesn't seem like it does.

20:01 Let's talk after.

20:03 Yeah.

20:04 Let's talk after.

20:04 There's some really neat stuff.

20:05 I know you have a little mini stream deck as well.

20:07 And that's really awesome for like swapping up the views while you're doing recording and stuff.

20:11 So.

20:12 Yeah.

20:12 Yeah.

20:13 Cool.

20:13 Well, do you have anything funny for us?

20:15 I will let you be the judge.

20:17 I have philosophy for us.

20:19 Okay.

20:19 So previously we've talked about the Tau of programming and I want to come back to the Tau of programming.

20:24 And this is like a parody, ancient philosophy, sort of Eastern philosophy, sort of thing here.

20:31 So this one is 4.3 from the Tau.

20:35 Okay.

20:35 Okay.

20:36 A master was explaining the nature of Tau to one of his novices.

20:39 The Tau is embodied in all software, regardless of how insignificant, said the master.

20:44 Is the Tau in a handheld calculator?

20:47 Asked the novice.

20:48 It is, came the reply.

20:50 Is the Tau in a video game?

20:51 Continued the novice.

20:52 It is even in a video game, said the master.

20:55 Is the Tau in the DOS or a personal computer?

20:58 The master coughed and shifted position slightly.

21:01 The lesson is over for today, he said.

21:02 Yeah.

21:05 Pretty good.

21:08 Yeah.

21:08 Yeah.

21:09 That's good.

21:09 And you can be okay with like joking about DOS.

21:14 Because it doesn't even exist anymore.

21:16 Yeah, exactly.

21:16 Exactly.

21:17 It's not going to hurt anybody.

21:19 Nobody's.

21:20 Except for those three people who are still on their 386 and won't give it up.

21:23 Word perfect is perfect for me.

21:26 I love it.

21:27 Come on.

21:28 I remember getting my 386.

21:30 I'm like, gosh, I don't think I can.

21:32 I don't think I'll need another computer for a really long time.

21:34 I know.

21:34 I got a 486 DX33.

21:36 Not the SX25 megahertz.

21:39 The DX33.

21:41 And it had a turbo button.

21:42 And it was amazing.

21:43 A turbo button.

21:44 Like, why would you turn it off?

21:45 Because if you wanted to play the games written for the 286, they went really fast and you couldn't play them at all.

21:50 It was out of control.

21:51 So if you hit, if you disable turbo, it was more of a slow it down button, but they didn't want to call it that.

21:56 So you could play the ones that just use the frame rate instead of real time or frame.

22:01 Like MechWarrior and stuff, I think was out of control.

22:04 It was like those old record players that you had that speed controls on them.

22:08 Yes, exactly.

22:09 For the small ones or the big ones.

22:10 Yeah.

22:11 45s and whatever.

22:12 Okay.

22:13 Nice.

22:13 Okay.

22:14 Well, thanks again for our wonderful Python bytes.

22:17 And we'll see everybody next week.

22:19 See you later.