Building A Game In Python At PyWeek with Daniel Pope - Episode 182

Many people learn to program because of their interest in building their own video games. Once the necessary skills have been acquired, it is often the case that the original idea of creating a game is forgotten in favor of solving the problems we confront at work. Game jams are a great way to get inspired and motivated to finally write a game from scratch. This week Daniel Pope discusses the origin and format for PyWeek, his experience as a participant, and the landscape of options for building a game in Python. He also explains how you can register and compete in the next competition.

Managing Application Secrets with Brian Kelly - Episode 181

Any application that communicates with other systems or services will at some point require a credential or sensitive piece of information to operate properly. The question then becomes how best to securely store, transmit, and use that information. The world of software secrets management is vast and complicated, so in this episode Brian Kelly, engineering manager at Conjur, aims to help you make sense of it. He explains the main factors for protecting sensitive information in your software development and deployment, ways that information might be leaked, and how to get the whole team on the same page.

Django, Channels, And The Asynchronous Web with Andrew Godwin - Episode 180

Once upon a time the web was a simple place with one main protocol and a predictable sequence of request/response interactions with backend applications. This is the era when Django began, but in the intervening years there has been an explosion of complexity with new asynchronous protocols and single page Javascript applications. To help bridge the gap and bring the most popular Python web framework into the modern age Andrew Godwin created Channels. In this episode he explains how the first version of the asynchronous layer for Django applications was created, how it has changed in the jump to version 2, and where it will go in the future. Along the way he also discusses the challenges of async development, his work on designing ASGI as the spiritual successor to WSGI, and how you can start using all of this in your own projects today.

The Business Of Technical Authoring With William Vincent - Episode 179

There are many aspects of learning how to program and at least as many ways to go about it. This is multiplicative with the different problem domains and subject areas where software development is applied. In this episode William Vincent discusses his experiences learning how web development mid-career and then writing a series of books to make the learning curve for Django newcomers shallower. This includes his thoughts on the business aspects of technical writing and teaching, the challenges of keeping content up to date with the current state of software, and the ever-present lack of sufficient information for new programmers.

Keep Your Code Clean Using pre-commit with Anthony Sottile - Episode 178

Maintaining the health and well-being of your software is a never-ending responsibility. Automating away as much of it as possible makes that challenge more achievable. In this episode Anthony Sottile describes his work on the pre-commit framework to simplify the process of writing and distributing functions to make sure that you only commit code that meets your definition of clean. He explains how it supports tools and repositories written in multiple languages, enforces team standards, and how you can start using it today to ship better software.

Infection Monkey Vulnerability Scanner with Daniel Goldberg - Episode 177

How secure are your servers? The best way to be sure that your systems aren’t being compromised is to do it yourself. In this episode Daniel Goldberg explains how you can use his project Infection Monkey to run a scan of your infrastructure to find and fix the vulnerabilities that can be taken advantage of. He also discusses his reasons for building it in Python, how it compares to other security scanners, and how you can get involved to keep making it better.

Fast Stream Processing In Python Using Faust with Ask Solem - Episode 176

The need to process unbounded and continually streaming sources of data has become increasingly common. One of the popular platforms for implementing this is Kafka along with its streams API. Unfortunately, this requires all of your processing or microservice logic to be implemented in Java, so what’s a poor Python developer to do? If that developer is Ask Solem of Celery fame then the answer is, help to re-implement the streams API in Python. In this episode Ask describes how Faust got started, how it works under the covers, and how you can start using it today to process your fast moving data in easy to understand Python code. He also discusses ways in which Faust might be able to replace your Celery workers, and all of the pieces that you can replace with your own plugins.

Don't Just Stand There, Get Programming! with Ana Bell - Episode 175

Writing a book is hard work, especially when you are trying to teach such a broad concept as programming. In this episode Ana Bell discusses her recent work in writing Get Programming: Learn To Code With Python, including her views on how to separate the principles from the implementation, making the book evergreen in its appeal, and how her experience as a lecturer at MIT has helped her maintain the perspectives of beginners. She also shares her views on the values of learning about programming, even when you have no intention of doing it as a career and ways to take the next steps if that is your goal.

The Masonite Web Framework With Joe Mancuso - Episode 174

Masonite is an ambitious new web framework that draws inspiration from many other successful projects in other languages. In this episode Joe Mancuso, the primary author and maintainer, explains his goal of unseating Django from its position of prominence in the Python community. He also discusses his motivation for building it, how it is architected, and how you can start using it for your own projects.

Helping Teacher's Bring Python Into The Classroom With Nicholas Tollervey - Episode 173

There are a number of resources available for teaching beginners to code in Python and many other languages, and numerous endeavors to introduce programming to educational environments. Sometimes those efforts yield success and others can simply lead to frustration on the part of the teacher and the student. In this episode Nicholas Tollervey discusses his work as a teacher and a programmer, his work on the micro:bit project and the PyCon UK education summit, as well as his thoughts on the place that Python holds in educational programs for teaching the next generation.