Python Bytes - #439 That Astral Episode

Topics covered in this episode:
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Michael #1: ty documentation site and uv migration guide

Brian #2: uv build backend is now stable + other Astral news

  • The uv build backend is now stable

    • Tim Hopper via Python Developer Tooling Handbook
  • From Charlie Marsh

    • “The uv build backend is now stable, and considered ready for production use. An alternative to setuptools, hatchling, etc. for pure Python projects, with a focus on good defaults, user-friendly error messages, and performance. When used with uv, it's 10-35x faster.”
    • “(In a future release, we'll make this the default.)”

      [build-system]
      requires = ["uv_build>=0.7.19,<0.8.0"]
      build-backend = "uv_build"
      
    • I believe it’s faster, but I agree with Brett Cannon in asking “What's being benchmarked? I'm not sure what a "backend sync" is referring to other than maybe installing the build back-end?”

  • See also: uv: Making Python Local Workflows FAST and BORING in 2025 - Hynek

Brian #3: Refactoring long boolean expressions

  • Trey Hunner

  • This is applied boolean logic, and even folks who learned this in a CS program probably did so early on, and may have forgotten it.

  • How can you improve the readability of long Boolean expressions in Python?

    • Put parens around the whole expression and separate clauses onto different lines

    • Where to put boolean operators between clauses? at the end of the line or the beginning?

      • PEP8 recommends the beginning
        if (expression1
        and expression2
        and expression3):
        ...
        
    • Naming sub-expressions with variables

      • Odd downside that wouldn’t occur to me. All expressions are evaluated, thus not taking advantage of expression short-circuiting.
    • Naming operations with functions

      • Less readable, but takes advantage of short-circuiting
    • Using De Morgan’s Law : replacing a compound expression with a similar (and hopefully easier to read) expression

      # neither: we want both to be false
      not (a or b) == (not a) and (not b)
      
      # never_both: at least one false
      not (a and b) == (not a) or (not b)
      

Michael #4: fastapi-ml-skeleton

  • FastAPI Skeleton App to serve machine learning models production-ready.
  • This repository contains a skeleton app which can be used to speed-up your next machine learning project.
  • The code is fully tested and provides a preconfigured tox to quickly expand this sample code.
  • A sample regression model for house price prediction is included in this project.
  • Short write up on "What does set -a do?"

Extras

Brian:

Michael:

  • via Wei Lee

  • Extra Airflow ruff rules:

    Starting from Ruff version 0.11.13, most changes from Airflow 2 to Airflow 3 can be automated using AIR3. (It’s still in preview so a “—-preview” flag is needed)

    e.g., if you have the following Airflow 2 code

    import datetime
    
    from airflow.models import DAG
    from airflow.operators.empty import EmptyOperator
    
    with DAG(
      dag_id="my_dag_name",
      start_date=datetime.datetime(2021, 1, 1),
      schedule_interval="@daily",
    ):
    EmptyOperator(task_id="task")
    

    it can be fixed with uvx ruff check --select AIR3 --fix --unsafe-fixes --preview

    import datetime
    
    from airflow.sdk import DAG
    from airflow.providers.standard.operators.empty import EmptyOperator
    
    with DAG(
      dag_id="my_dag_name",
      start_date=datetime.datetime(2021, 1, 1),
      schedule="@daily",
    ):
    EmptyOperator(task_id="task")
    

    which works with Airflow 3.

Joke:

Big Technology Podcast - $100 Million AI Engineers, Vending Machine Claude, Legend Of Soham

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover: 1) Meta's reported $100 million offers to AI engineers 2) If those reports are false, who planted the rumor? 3) Why talent might be all that matters in AI right now 4) Will Meta's bet work? 5) Anthropic's project vend 6) If AI can't stock a fridge, will it take your job? 7) Claudius' identity crisis 8) ChatGPT's hilarious Wealthfront hallucination 9) The Legend of Soham 10) Happy July 4th!

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Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders - S11 Bonus: Keren Fanan, MyOp

Keren Fanan doesn't come from a tech based family, yet has worked in tech for the last 15 years. She's not a developer herself, but has always been drawn to software in general, as in her words, software runs the world. She studied Industrial Engineering, but quickly moved into product roles, working for AT&T, Gett and Moon Active in the past. Deep down, she always wanted to found a company of her own. Outside of tech, she lives near Tel Aviv in Israel, and has lived there her whole life. Her and her 3 kids like to travel, go camping, and be in nature as much as possible.

Keren and her co-founders felt similar pains in the industry, all from different angles. No matter how good their ideas were, no matter the initiative, there is always a long process in software dev to bring it to life. This was especially true for non technical founders. They wanted a way to bring their ideas straight to production, without having to wait on the full life cycle.

This is the creation story of MyOp.

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Big Technology Podcast - Is AI Really Taking Our Jobs? — With Noah Smith

Noah Smith is a star economics writer behind the “Noahpinion” blog and co-host of the Econ 102 podcast. Smith joins Big Technology to discuss whether generative AI is actually boosting productivity or still waiting for its “electricity moment.” Tune in to hear his contrarian take on the so-called AI jobs apocalypse and how businesses will need to reorganize before the gains show up in earnings. We also cover immigration crackdowns, tariff uncertainty, wage-inequality myths, and how China’s military buildup reshapes economic strategy. Hit play for a sharp, no-hype dive into AI, economics, and geopolitics.




Talk Python To Me - #512: Building a JIT Compiler for CPython

Do you like to dive into the details and intricacies of how Python executes and how we can optimize it? Well, do I have an episode for you. We welcome back Brandt Bucher to give us an update on the upcoming JIT compiler for Python and why it differs from JITs for languages such as C# and Java.

Episode sponsors

Posit
Talk Python Courses

Brandt Bucher: github.com/brandtbucher

PyCon Talk: What they don't tell you about building a JIT compiler for CPython: youtube.com
Specializing, Adaptive Interpreter Episode: talkpython.fm
Watch this episode on YouTube: youtube.com
Episode #512 deep-dive: talkpython.fm/512
Episode transcripts: talkpython.fm

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Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders - S11 E6: Michael Sacca, Leadpages

Michael Sacca didn't start out coding - he started out as a musician. In college, he studied music business and wanted to go into that world. Eventually, he figured out that people didn't care that you had a music business degree, and he ended up waiting tables for a few years. After watching his roommate write software and get paid well to do it, he decided to learn to code himself. Outside of tech, he lives in Vancouver with his wife and 2 kids, coaching soccer and flag football. He mentioned it can be a pain to go out to eat with him cause he has celiac, and avoids gluten.

Prior to his current role, Michael was the Chief Product Officer at Dribbble. After he left that company and dabbled in some other ventures, he was approached about a CEO role at a well known darling company in Minneapolis.

This is Michael's creation story at Leadpages.

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The Stack Overflow Podcast - Programming problems that seem easy, but aren’t, featuring Jon Skeet

Jon Skeet, for those not in the know, is legendary here at Stack Overflow. He even got his own Chuck Norris Facts-style jokes

Jon has graced the podcast before in the early days on episodes 4, 72, and 123.

He’s so good at answering Stack Overflow questions that he appeared at Stack Overflow’s old NYC office and answered them in person

While he’s not the only million rep user, he was the first, so we ran the numbers on him

Have a question? Jon Skeet has probably answered it on Stack Overflow. You can also find him on Blue Sky.

Looking for C# 3.5? Spoiler alert: you won’t find it. Learn why from Jon’s very helpful question What are the correct version numbers for C#?

Python Bytes - #438 Motivation time

Topics covered in this episode:
Watch on YouTube

About the show

Sponsored by Posit: pythonbytes.fm/connect

Connect with the hosts

Join us on YouTube at pythonbytes.fm/live to be part of the audience. Usually Monday at 10am PT. Older video versions available there too.

Finally, if you want an artisanal, hand-crafted digest of every week of the show notes in email form? Add your name and email to our friends of the show list, we'll never share it.

Brian #1: Python Cheat Sheets from Trey Hunner

Michael #2: Automatisch

  • Open source Zapier alternative
  • Automatisch helps you to automate your business processes without coding.
  • Use their affordable cloud solution or self-host on your own servers.
  • Automatisch allows you to store your data on your own servers, good for companies dealing with sensitive user data, particularly in industries like healthcare and finance, or those based in Europe bound by General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Michael #3: mureq-typed

  • Single file, zero-dependency alternative to requests. Fully typed. Modern Python tooling.
  • Typed version of mureq (covered in 2022 on episode 268)
  • Intended to be vendored in-tree by Linux systems software and other lightweight applications.
  • mureq-typed is a drop-in, fully API compatible replacement for mureq updated with modern Python tooling:
  • Type checked with mypy, ty, and pyrefly.
  • Formatted with black, no ignore rules necessary.
  • Linted with ruff (add these rules for mureq.py to your per-file-ignores).

Brian #4: My CLI World

  • Frank Wiles
  • Encouragement to modify your command line environment
  • Some of Franks tools
  • Also some aliases, like gitpulllog
  • Notes
    • We covered poethepoet recently, if just just isn’t cutting it for you.
    • I tried to ilke starship, bit for some reason with my setup, it slows down the shell too much.

Extras

Brian:

Joke:

  • Brian read a few quotes from the book

    Disappointing Affirmations, by Dave Tarnowski

    • “You are always just a moment away from your next worst day ever. Or your next best day ever, but let’s be realistic.”
    • “You can be anything you want. And yet you keep choosing to be you. I admire your dedication to the role.”
    • “Today I am letting go of the things that are holding me back from the life that I want to live. Then I’m picking them all up again because I have separation anxiety.”

Big Technology Podcast - The Web’s ‘Existential’ AI Threat, OpenAI’s Microsoft Office Competitor, Tesla Robotaxi Launch

Reed Albergotti is the technology editor at Semafor. He's back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover 1) Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince says AI is disappearing the web 2) Will there be new business models that replace the current web-based models? 3) Is the AI Agent thing really happening? 4) Vibecoding riches 5) Court rules Anthropic can train on books (but not steal them) 6) Anthropic will study AI’s economic impact 7) Is chatbot companionship good for us? Anthropic says yes 8) OpenAI works on office productivity tools 9) Why OpenAi and Microsoft have tension 10) Will Stargate work? 11) Mira Murati’s Think Machines plan 12) Tesla Robotaxi Rollout 13) Jeff Bezos gets married, who's coming??

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