1 day agoMember-onlyAdd Comments To Your CommandsA quick tip: when you write an important command in shell, put a comment next to it so you can easily find it later or remember what it does: pytest -m slow --durations=10 # Run slow tests, return the slowest Why?Cli3 min readCli3 min read
Jan 20Member-onlyPython Versions Management With pyenvUsing the latest version of Python is always a good idea. First of all - you get the new features like the f-strings (Python 3.6), ordered dictionaries (officially guaranteed from Python 3.7, but already present in Python 3.6), or the union operator (Python 3.9). But even if you don't use…Python7 min readPython7 min read
Published in Python in Plain English·Jan 29, 2021Member-only25 IPython Tips for Your Next Advent of CodeI’ve decided to skip last year’s Advent of Code edition. Mostly because I didn’t have time, but I also knew that I probably wouldn’t finish it. I’ve never finished any edition. I’m not very good at code katas, and I usually try to brute force them. With AoC, that works…Python10 min readPython10 min read
Published in Python in Plain English·Oct 22, 2020Member-onlySorting Lists in PythonThere are at least two common ways to sort lists in Python: With sorted function that returns a new list With list.sort method that modifies list in place Which one is faster? Let’s find out! sorted() vs list.sort() I will start with a list of 1 000 000 randomly shuffled integers. …Python3 min readPython3 min read
Published in Python in Plain English·Oct 15, 2020Member-onlyPython: For Loop vs. List ComprehensionMany simple “for loops” in Python can be replaced with list comprehensions. You can often hear that list comprehension is “more Pythonic” (almost as if there was a scale for comparing how Pythonic something is, compared to something else 😉). …Python5 min readPython5 min read
Published in Python in Plain English·Oct 8, 2020Member-onlyShould We Still Use OrderedDict in Python?If you worked with Python 2 or an early version of Python 3, you probably remember that, in the past, dictionaries were not ordered. If you wanted to have a dictionary that preserved the insertion order, the go-to solution was to use OrderedDict from the collections module. In Python 3.6…Python3 min readPython3 min read
Published in Python in Plain English·Oct 1, 2020Member-onlyEasy Python Speedup Wins With NumbaIf you have functions that do a lot of mathematical operations, use NumPy or rely heavily on loops, then there is a way to speed them up significantly with one line of code. Ok, two lines if you count the import. Numba and the @jit decorator Meet Numba and its @jit decorator. It changes how…Python3 min readPython3 min read
Published in The Startup·Sep 24, 2020Member-onlyPython: The Fastest Way to Find an Item in a ListIf you want to find the first number that matches some criteria, what do you do? The easiest way is to write a loop that checks numbers one by one and returns when it finds the correct one. Let’s say we want to get the first number divided by 42…Python5 min readPython5 min read
Aug 19, 2020Member-onlyAsk for Forgiveness or Look Before You Leap?“Ask for forgiveness” and “look before you leap” (sometimes also called “ask for permission”) are two opposite approaches to writing code. If you “look before you leap”, you first check if everything is set correctly, then you perform an action. For example, you want to read text from a file…Python4 min readPython4 min read
Jul 16, 2020Member-onlyLet’s Write an IPython Extension the Hard WayI love IPython. I love using it, I love writing about it, I love taking pictures with its core contributors (Hi Paul!). If I ever get invited to the “Talk Python To Me” podcast (not that I have anything interesting to talk about), and Michael Kennedy is going to ask…Python12 min readPython12 min read
