1. How come regex match objects aren't iterable even though they implement __getitem__? - [38/1]
2. Associating two item in a list - [12/6]
3. Store filtered output of cmd command in a variable - [9/2]
4. Pandas DataFrame check if column value exists in a group of columns - [8/5]
5. Merge tuples with the same key - [8/4]
6. Python's list comprehension: Modify list elements if a certain value occurs - [7/5]
7. Set half of the filters of a layer as not trainable keras/tensorflow - [7/1]
8. Removing duplicates on very large datasets - [6/4]
9. Pros and Cons of splitting development dependencies - [6/3]
10. Why do some regex engines match .* twice in a single input string? - [6/1]

An ESP2866 is never going to compete with an actual graphics card. It certainly won't produce anything approaching modern games. But it still makes a nice platform to explore the basics of 3D graphics. In this short tutorial we'll go through the basics of creating a 3D scene and displaying it on an OLED screen using MicroPython.

This kind of mono wireframe 3D reminds me of early ZX Spectrum 3D games, involving shooting one wobbly line at another, and looking at the resulting wobbly lines. It was awesome.

The 3D code here is based on this example for Pygame with some simplifications and the display code modified for working with framebuf.

Setting up

The display used here is a 128x64 OLED which communicates over I2C. We're using the ssd1306 module for OLED displays available in the MicroPython repository to handle this communication for us, and provide a framebuf drawing interface.

Upload the ssd1306.py file to your device's filesystem using the ampy tool (or the WebREPL).

ampy --port /dev/tty.wchusbserial141120 put ssd1306.py

With the ssd1306.py file on your Wemos D1, you should be able to import it as any other Python module. Connect to your device, and then in the REPL enter:

frommachineimportI2C,Pinimportssd1306

If the import ssd1306 succeeds, the package is correctly uploaded and you're good to go.

Wire up the OLED display, connecting pins D1 to SCL and D2 to SDA.Provide power from G and 5V.

To work with the display, we need to create an I2C object, connecting via pins D1 and D2— hardware pin 4 & 5 respectively. Passing the resulting i2c object into our SSD1306_I2C class, along with screen dimensions, gets us our interface to draw with.

frommachineimportI2C,Pinimportssd1306importmathi2c=I2C(scl=Pin(5),sda=Pin(4))display=ssd1306.SSD1306_I2C(128,64,i2c)

Modelling 3D objects

The simplest way to model objects in 3D space is to store and manipulate their vertices only — for a cube, that means the 8 corners.

To rotate the cube we manipulate these points in 3 dimensional space. To draw the cube, we project these points onto a 2-dimensional plane, to give a set of x,y coordinates, and connect the vertices with our edge lines.

Rotation along each axis and the projection onto a 2D plane is described below.

The full code is available for download here if you want to skip ahead and start experimenting.

3D Rotation

Rotating an object in 3 dimensions is no different than rotating a object on a 2D surface, it's just a matter of perspective.

Take a square drawn on a flat piece of paper, and rotate it 90°. If you look before and after rotation the X and Y coordinates of any given corner change, but the square is still flat on the paper. This is analogous to rotating any 3D object along it's Z axis — the axis that is coming out of the middle of the object and straight up.

The same applies to rotation along any axis — the coordinates in the axis of rotation remain unchanged, while coordinates along other axes are modified.

# Rotation along X
y' = y*cos(a) - z*sin(a)
z' = y*sin(a) + z*cos(a)
x' = x


# Rotation along Y
z' = z*cos(a) - x*sin(a)
x' = z*sin(a) + x*cos(a)
y' = y

# Rotation along Z
x' = x*cos(a) - y*sin(a)
y' = x*sin(a) + y*cos(a)
z' = z

The equivalent Python code for the rotation along the X axis is shown below. It maps directly to the math already described. Note that when rotating in the X dimension, the x coordinates are returned unchanged and we also need to convert from degrees to radians (we could of course write this function to accept radians instead).

defrotateX(self,x,y,z,deg):""" Rotates this point around the X axis the given number of degrees. Return the x, y, z coordinates of the result"""rad=deg*math.pi/180cosa=math.cos(rad)sina=math.sin(rad)y=y*cosa-z*sinaz=y*sina+z*cosareturnx,y,z

Projection

Since we're displaying our 3D objects on a 2D surface we need to be able to convert, or project, the 3D coordinates onto 2D. The approach we are using here is perspective projection.

If you imagine an object moving away from you, it gradually shrinks in size until it disappears into the distance. If it is directly in front of you, the edges of the object will gradually move towards the middle as it recedes. Similarly, a large square transparent object will have the rear edges appear 'within' the bounds of the front edges. This is perspective.

To recreate this in our 2D projection, we need to move points towards the middle of our screen the further away from our 'viewer' they are. Our x & y coordinates are zero'd around the center of the screen (an x < 0 means to the left of the center point), so dividing x & y coordinates by some amount of Z will move them towards the middle, appearing 'further away'.

The specific formula we're using is shown below. We take into account the field of view— how much of an area the viewer can see — the viewer distance and the screen height and width to project onto our framebuf.

x' = x * fov / (z + viewer_distance) + screen_width / 2
y' = -y * fov / (z + viewer_distance) + screen_height / 2

Point3D code

The complete code for a single Point3D is shown below, containing the methods for rotation in all 3 axes, and for projection onto a 2D plane. Each of these methods return a new Point3D object, allow us to chain multiple transformations and avoid altering the original points we define.

classPoint3D:def__init__(self,x=0,y=0,z=0):self.x,self.y,self.z=x,y,zdefrotateX(self,angle):""" Rotates this point around the X axis the given number of degrees. """rad=angle*math.pi/180cosa=math.cos(rad)sina=math.sin(rad)y=self.y*cosa-self.z*sinaz=self.y*sina+self.z*cosareturnPoint3D(self.x,y,z)defrotateY(self,angle):""" Rotates this point around the Y axis the given number of degrees. """rad=angle*math.pi/180cosa=math.cos(rad)sina=math.sin(rad)z=self.z*cosa-self.x*sinax=self.z*sina+self.x*cosareturnPoint3D(x,self.y,z)defrotateZ(self,angle):""" Rotates this point around the Z axis the given number of degrees. """rad=angle*math.pi/180cosa=math.cos(rad)sina=math.sin(rad)x=self.x*cosa-self.y*sinay=self.x*sina+self.y*cosareturnPoint3D(x,y,self.z)defproject(self,win_width,win_height,fov,viewer_distance):""" Transforms this 3D point to 2D using a perspective projection. """factor=fov/(viewer_distance+self.z)x=self.x*factor+win_width/2y=-self.y*factor+win_height/2returnPoint3D(x,y,self.z)

3D Simulation

We can now create a scene by arranging Point3D objects in 3-dimensional space. To create a cube, rather than 8 discrete points, we will connect our vertices to their adjacent vertices after projecting them onto our 2D surface.

Vertices

The vertices for a cube are shown below. Our cube is centered around 0 in all 3 axes, and rotates around this centre.

self.vertices=[Point3D(-1,1,-1),Point3D(1,1,-1),Point3D(1,-1,-1),Point3D(-1,-1,-1),Point3D(-1,1,1),Point3D(1,1,1),Point3D(1,-1,1),Point3D(-1,-1,1)]

Polygons or Lines

As we're drawing a wireframe cube, we actually have a couple of options — polygons or lines.

The cube has 6 faces, which means 6 polygons. To draw a single polygon requires 4 lines, making a total draw for the wireframe cube with polygons of 24 lines. We draw more lines than needed, because each polygon shares sides with 4 others.

In contrast drawing only the lines that are required, a wireframe of the cube can be drawn using only 12 lines— half as many.

For a filled cube, polygons would make sense, but here we're going to use the lines only, which we call edges. This is an array of indices into our vertices list.

self.edges=[# Back(0,1),(1,2),(2,3),(3,0),# Front(5,4),(4,7),(7,6),(6,5),# Front-to-back(0,5),(1,4),(2,7),(3,6),]

On each iteration we apply the rotational transformations to each point, then project it onto our 2D surface.

r=v.rotateX(angleX).rotateY(angleY).rotateZ(angleZ)# Transform the point from 3D to 2Dp=r.project(*self.projection)# Put the point in the list of transformed verticest.append(p)

Then we iterate our list of edges, and retrieve the relevant transformed vertices from our list t. A line is then drawn between the x, y coordinates of two points making up the edge.

foreinself.edges:display.line(*to_int(t[e[0]].x,t[e[0]].y,t[e[1]].x,t[e[1]].y,1))

The to_int is just a simple helper function to convert lists of float into lists of int to make updating the OLED display simpler (you can't draw half a pixel).

defto_int(*args):return[int(v)forvinargs]

The complete simulation code is given below.

classSimulation:def__init__(self,width=128,height=64,fov=64,distance=4,rotateX=5,rotateY=5,rotateZ=5):self.vertices=[Point3D(-1,1,-1),Point3D(1,1,-1),Point3D(1,-1,-1),Point3D(-1,-1,-1),Point3D(-1,1,1),Point3D(1,1,1),Point3D(1,-1,1),Point3D(-1,-1,1)]# Define the edges, the numbers are indices to the vertices above.self.edges=[# Back(0,1),(1,2),(2,3),(3,0),# Front(5,4),(4,7),(7,6),(6,5),# Front-to-back(0,4),(1,5),(2,6),(3,7),]# Dimensionsself.projection=[width,height,fov,distance]# Rotational speedsself.rotateX=rotateXself.rotateY=rotateYself.rotateZ=rotateZdefrun(self):# Starting angle (unrotated in any dimension)angleX,angleY,angleZ=0,0,0while1:# It will hold transformed vertices.t=[]forvinself.vertices:# Rotate the point around X axis, then around Y axis, and finally around Z axis.r=v.rotateX(angleX).rotateY(angleY).rotateZ(angleZ)# Transform the point from 3D to 2Dp=r.project(*self.projection)# Put the point in the list of transformed verticest.append(p)display.fill(0)foreinself.edges:display.line(*to_int(t[e[0]].x,t[e[0]].y,t[e[1]].x,t[e[1]].y,1))display.show()# Continue the rotationangleX+=self.rotateXangleY+=self.rotateYangleZ+=self.rotateZ

Running a simulation

To display our cube we need to create a Simulation object, and then call .run() to start it running.

s=Simulation()s.run()

You can pass in different values for rotateX, rotateY, rotateZ to alter the speed of rotation. Set a negative value to rotate in reverse.

s=Simulation()s.run()

The fov and distance parameters are set at sensible values for the 128x64 OLED by default (based on testing). So you don't need to change these, but you can.

s=Simulation(fov=32,distance=8)s.run()

The width and height are defined by the display, so you won't want to change these unless you're using a different display output.

Python 3 is the way!

Out of the top 360 packages, 357 support Python 3 (99%) https://t.co/x3w68GH5Jm

— Brett Cannon (@brettsky) September 15, 2018

Must Watch PyCon Videos

Submitted by @Erik

🐍📺 Top 10 Must-Watch PyCon Talks Get the inside scoop on the top 10 must-watch PyCon talks for both beginners and… https://t.co/hzYMhoELcU

— Real Python (@realpython) September 21, 2018

Learn about the OSI Model! Something every tech head should know!

RT @freeCodeCamp: Learn more about HTTP in this great introductory article https://t.co/YiEq0XJTXm

— TestDriven.io (@testdrivenio) September 22, 2018

Another quality TalkPy episode. Ned Batchelder this time round!

It's all about https://t.co/1ba1f96kAa with @nedbat on episode 178 of @talkpython. Check it out now at https://t.co/UBvtnQwMQX

— Talk Python Podcast (@TalkPython) September 21, 2018

AI that writes music, very interesting. Ha!

This new project promises to out-Tay-Tay Tay Tay and out-Bon Bon Iver. 🎶 🤖 https://t.co/0XUISn46e1

— Code.org (@codeorg) September 20, 2018

Speaking of music, this looks promising!

(work in progress) PyTheory: Music Theory for Humans by Kenneth Reitz https://t.co/1xuuzm8eyB by @kennethreitz

— Python LibHunt (@PythonLibHunt) September 18, 2018

Why we love the Python Community

RT @pumpichank: I am so proud of the community that @gvanrossum has built for Python. Lots of work to still do, but in general, we take cu…

— Kenneth ☤ Reitz (@kennethreitz) September 20, 2018

A Python program that plays Super Mario Bros!

Python program plays Super Mario Bros: Explained! https://t.co/J5MKlOQJ3I

— Python LibHunt (@PythonLibHunt) September 21, 2018

A walkthrough of unit testing in Python

Unit Testing with Python unittest ... https://t.co/8F0H6NuEDi#testing#python

— import python 🐍 (@importpython) September 20, 2018

It's all about the deliberate practice! Time for another Code Challenge right?

RT @degreed: No matter how busy successful people are, they always “set aside at least an hour a day (or 5 hours a week) over their entire…

— Anthony Shaw (@anthonypjshaw) September 16, 2018

I always forget about this!

Run simple #python code directly from the command line with the -c switch: python -c "import datetime; print(https://t.co/FXWDCB9dX6())"

— Daily Python Tip (@python_tip) September 18, 2018

Python 3 only Matplotlib. It's all happening!

RT @matplotlib: Happy to announce that Matplotlib 3.0 is up on pypi and ready for use! Matplotlib is Python 3 only The v2.2.x LTS branch…

— matt harrison (@__mharrison__) September 19, 2018

Cryptocurrency Predicting Neural Network in Python

Creating a Cryptocurrency-predicting finance recurrent neural network #machinelearning - https://t.co/LXNH3kQx4F…https://t.co/4gS5j13Wu8

— Harrison Kinsley🐍 (@Sentdex) September 16, 2018

OpenCV, OCR and Text Recognition

New tutorial!🚀 Learn how to use OpenCV OCR and Text Recognition by combining the EAST text detector with Tesseract'… https://t.co/YqJ3AnNVm4

— Adrian Rosebrock (@PyImageSearch) September 17, 2018

We have the power!!

“The trouble with programmers is that you can never tell what a programmer is doing until it’s too late.” - Seymour Cray

— Programming Wisdom (@CodeWisdom) September 21, 2018

>>>frompybitesimportBob,JulianKeepCalmandCodeinPython!

"""
all_substrings2.py
Function and program to find all substrings of a given string.
Author: Vasudev Ram
Copyright 2018 Vasudev Ram
Web site: https://vasudevram.github.io
Blog: https://jugad2.blogspot.com
Twitter: https://mobile.twitter.com/vasudevram
Product store: https://gumroad.com/vasudevram
"""

from __future__ import print_function
import sys
from error_exit import error_exit
from debug1 import debug1

def usage():
    message_lines = [\
"Usage: python {} a_string".format(sa[0]),
"Print all substrings of a_string.",
"",
    ]
    sys.stderr.write("\n".join(message_lines))

def all_substrings2(s):
"""
    Generator function that yields all the substrings 
    of a given string s.
    Algorithm used:
    1. len_s = len(s)
    2. if len_s == 0, return ""
    3. (else len_s is > 0):
       for substr_len in 1 to len_s:
           find all substrings of s that are of length substr_len
           yield each such substring 
    Expected output for some strings:
    For "a":
"a"
    For "ab":
"a"
"b"
"ab"
    For "abc:
"a"
"b"
"c"
"ab"
"bc"
"abc"
    For "abcd:
"a"
"b"
"c"
"d"
"ab"
"bc"
"cd"
"abc"
"bcd"
"abcd"
"""

    len_s = len(s)
    substr_len = 1
    while substr_len <= len_s:
        start = 0
        end = start + substr_len
        while end <= len_s:
            debug1("s[{}:{}] = {}".format(\
                start, end, s[start:end]))
            yield s[start:end]
            start += 1
            end = start + substr_len
        substr_len += 1

def main():
    if lsa != 2:
        usage()
        error_exit("\nError: Exactly one argument must be given.\n")

    if sa[1] == "":
        print("")
        sys.exit(0)

    for substring in all_substrings2(sa[1]):
        print(substring)

sa = sys.argv
lsa = len(sa)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

$ pyo a*2*y
Usage: python all_substrings2.py a_string
Print all substrings of a_string.

Error: Exactly one argument must be given.

$ pyo a*2*y a
a
$ pyo a*2*y ab
a
b
ab
$ pyo a*2*y abc
a
b
c
ab
bc
abc
$ pyo a*2*y abcd
a
b
c
d
ab
bc
cd
abc
bcd
abcd

$ pyo a*2*y abcd | wc -l
10
$ pyo a*2*y abcde
a
b
c
d
e
ab
bc
cd
de
abc
bcd
cde
abcd
bcde
abcde

$ pyo a*2*y abcde | wc -l
15
$ pyo a*2*y abcdef
a
b
c
d
e
f
ab
bc
cd
de
ef
abc
bcd
cde
def
abcd
bcde
cdef
abcde
bcdef
abcdef

$ pyo a*2*y abcdef | wc
     21      21      77

$ pyo a*2*y abcdefg | wc
     28      28     112
$ pyo a*2*y abcdefgh | wc
     36      36     156
$ pyo a*2*y abcdefghi | wc
     45      45     210

$ for s in a ab abc abcd
> do
>   echo All substrings of $s:
>   pyo al*2*py $s
> done

All substrings of a:
a
All substrings of ab:
a
b
ab
All substrings of abc:
a
b
c
ab
bc
abc
All substrings of abcd:
a
b
c
d
ab
bc
cd
abc
bcd
abcd

• My blog jugad2
• Gumroad
• LinkedIn
• Twitter

Summary

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.

Preface

• Hello and welcome to Podcast.__init__, the podcast about Python and the people who make it great.
• When you’re ready to launch your next app you’ll need somewhere to deploy it, so check out Linode. With private networking, shared block storage, node balancers, and a 40Gbit network, all controlled by a brand new API you’ve got everything you need to scale up. Go to podcastinit.com/linode to get a $20 credit and launch a new server in under a minute.
• Visit the site to subscribe to the show, sign up for the newsletter, and read the show notes. And if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions I would love to hear them. You can reach me on Twitter at @Podcast__init__ or email hosts@podcastinit.com)
• To help other people find the show please leave a review on iTunes, or Google Play Music, tell your friends and co-workers, and share it on social media.
• Join the community in the new Zulip chat workspace at podcastinit.com/chat
• Your host as usual is Tobias Macey and today I’m interviewing Andrew Godwin about Django Channels 2.x and the ASGI specification for modern, asynchronous web protocols

Interview

• Introductions
• How did you get introduced to Python?
• Can you start with an overview of the problem that Channels is aiming to solve?
• Asynchronous frameworks have existed in Python for a long time. What are the tradeoffs in those frameworks that would lead someone to prefer the combination of Django and Channels?
• For someone who is familiar with traditional Django or working on an existing application, what are the steps involved in integrating Channels?
• Channels is a project that you have been working on for a significant amount of time and which you recently re-architected. What were the shortcomings in the 1.x release that necessitated such a major rewrite?
  • How is the current system architected?
• What have you found to be the most challenging or confusing aspects of managing asynchronous web protocols both as an author of Channels/ASGI and someone building on top of them?
  • While reading through the documentation there were mentions of the synchronous nature of the Django ORM. What are your thoughts on asynchronous database access and how important that is for future versions of Django and Channels?
• As part of your implementation of Channels 2.x you introduced a new protocol for asynchronous web applications in Python in the form of ASGI. How does this differ from the WSGI standard and what was your process for developing this specification?
  • What are your hopes for what the Python community will do with ASGI?
• What are your plans for the future of Channels?
• What are some of the most interesting or unexpected uses of Channels and/or ASGI?

Keep In Touch

• @andrewgodwin on Twitter
• Website
• andrewgodwin on GitHub

Picks

• Tobias
  • Nobody Listens To Paula Poundstone
• Andrew
  • Literary Appreciation Of The Olson Timezones Database

Links

• Channels
• ASGI
• Django
• South
• Django Migrations
• PHP
• Turbogears
• WSGI
• Websockets
• Eventlet
• HTTP
• WebRTC
• IPFS
• Twisted
• Tornado
  • Podcast Episode
• Daphne
• Redis
• Uvicorn
• Heisenbugs
• Deadlock
• CherryPy
• Flask
• WSGI 2
  • Podcast Episode
• Starlette
• Django Rest Framework
• Thom Christie
• PEP Process Episode

The intro and outro music is from Requiem for a Fish The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA

What makes you excel in your career? Become an expert in x, y, z. Sure, you need to learn technical skills, quite a lot of them. However there is a lot more to it. If you want to succeed in your job, business and life, you want to build a portfolio, share your learning, become a reader and a good writer, and last but not least stick to daily exercising. I published this article on my blog 2 years ago and find a lot is still relevant today and will serve our community. I also added an updated towards the end.

Success is a matter of choice, not chance ~ Deepak Mehra

How to improve your programming career:

• The first thing obviously is to code. A lot. I was reminded of this again reading this great post this morning:

  wakeUp();
  
  workOut();
  
  var currentHour = new Date().getHours();
  
  var bedtimeHour = 22;
  
  while(currentHour < bedtimeHour) {
    code();
    currentHour = new Date().getHours();
  };
  

  Source: myLife.js. I bought an ABC t-shirt to remind myself of this as well (OK also because I like Baldwin's sales speech in Glengarry Glen Ross lol ... Always Be Closing = Always Be Coding!). Wether the 10,000-Hour Rule is true or not, with practice comes skill, and generally the more (challenged) practice the more skills.

• Related: build side projects. For example I was learning some new Python tricks and idioms the other day, but it was not until using it that this stuff really sunk in. I needed nested defaultdicts, * unpacking to a named tuple, and I went to StackOverflow a few times more. Books are a good foundation, but skills come from getting your hands dirty. It's then that exceptions happen and need creativity to solve emerging problems. Yesterday I wrote a Twitter bot. I had done this before, yet I still learned new things: using the requests and logging modules, writing my own exceptions, hiding credentials in a github repo, to name a few. Deploying a solution to a remote server (different environment) causes challenges too. So practice, practice, practice! Aim everyday to improve yourself's yesterday version.

• Read the passionate programmer. I made some notes here. The Developer's code is also a great read. Books to reread from time to time.

• Share you learning. Start a blog. It has a myriad of advantages. Technical blogging is a great resource. I can also recommend Show your work.

• Become a time management freak. One thing John Sonmez recommends in Soft Skills is keeping a log of time spent. We loose a lot of time on trivia especially in this highly interruptive social media society. I probably will give this one a try ...

• Muscles need stimulation to grow, equally a software developer needs constant challenge to stretch to new levels. The mentioned 10,000-Hour Rule is only as good as you finding yourself new challenges!

  Your comfort zone is a place where you keep yourself in a self-illusion and nothing can grow there but your potentiality can grow only when you can think and grow out of that zone." - Rashedur Ryan Rahman.

• Use idle time for rest, but it never hurts to listen to podcasts or do some video courses. Any success starts with a thought, and feeding your mind with good ideas can have surprising effects. I devour podcasts on my walks.

• Collaborate with other developers (and do code reviews). It is not until you have to explain your code, or make it maintainable/ extensible, that you really start thinking about the underlying design. When you manage to explain your skill to another person you generally master it. Blogging is a great tool for this.

• Become a better writer. Apart from an essential skill in many areas of life, clear writing has a lot in common with good coding. And read! Good reading is a precursor to good writing. Similarly, reading lot of source code makes you a better coder (I picked up this advice in the fascinating book Coders at work).

• Try new things. I have been using Python a lot which I love, but there are a lot of other good languages out there. I certified in Java which has very good parts. I'd like to learn more Ruby. In terms of concepts Machine Learning is a hot topic, worth checking out (as well as NLP). Or do you code solely in PHP? Try Django, or full stack JS. You get the point. Even within a language you already use you can always learn more, for example to learn more Python: collections, iterators, generators, data science modules like NumPy and Pandas, functional programming constructs, Unicode, advanced OOP features, etc. The important thing is to never become complacent.

• Jump on things others don't like. You can gain specialization, persistence skills and relatively high reward. Take data analysis for instance: everybody loves the analytics part, however data is usually not delivered in a ready-to-use format. Data cleaning is not the sexiest job but it is what makes the fun stuff possible. You see this in Big Data as well: everybody talks about nice tools like Spark/ Hive/ Pig, but what about getting the a good copy of the data loaded in? ETL (Extract, Transform and Load) is a non-trivial part of the total effort. Same story with Excel).

• Don't ignore the marketing side. We all love the tech side, but sometimes we have to step out of this mindset and wonder who the customer is and what is the need, the problem we're trying to solve. Sometimes we build stuff before checking the audience. Understanding the market is a fundamental skill. And more generally becoming effective (solve the right problem) before focusing on more efficiency per se (become proficient at a skill).

• Have a liability partner. I note that when you are held accountable by a friend or colleague you perform much better. And the joined learning is fun and fruitful. Update: read Darren Hardy's The Compound Effect where he states:

  To up your chances of success, get a success buddy, someone who’ll keep you accountable as you cement your new habit while you return the favor.

• Last but not least: exercise! Daily exercise instantly pays for itself: you feel better, you have a good health (your most important asset), and sharpen your mind (= better code). It's like garbage collection: you can only hold that many things at once, and stress increases with time, so you need to clear your mind periodically. Besides, oftentimes it's when we leave our desk that we actually solve a problem we're stuck on. Getting in shape can be overwhelming, this book is a good start.

Remember you are in charge of your career, it's not up to your boss or even family and close friends to tell you what to do. You have to seek opportunities, and when they present themselves, grab them with both hands.

Secondly, technical skills alone only get you so far. Often a decently skilled and personable guy outperforms a super expert who lacks people skills. In that regard I highly recommend Soft Skills which deals with a lot of this. I am also reading John Sonmez' second book - The Complete Software Developer’s Career Guide - which he is publishing on his blog. Update: this book went to press since and is on to-read list.

What are you consistently doing to get ahead in your career? Share your thoughts in the comments below ...

Update 23rd of Sept 2018:

Difficult roads often lead to beautiful destinations. The best is yet to come ~ Zig Ziglar

• I missed the words habit and goals above. Both are paramount to achieve any form of success. Goals keep you focussed and you should regularly measure you performance and the necessary adjustments to your plan to stay on track. Secondly I think any success strongly depends on your habits. I highly recommend reading Charles Duhigg's The Power of Habit.

• Since this article appeared I made an internal job transfer and can confirm that getting familiar with a new large and complex code base can be daunting. It was uncomfortable at times but after biting through (I did not think Bites of Py would help me verbally one day lol), I realized: 1. I have read more code than ever before, 2. by looking at more experienced developers, I significantly improved how I write code and think about design, and 3. getting into uncharted waters grows your confidence. So again: seek new opportunities, even if they seem scary at first. I like what Tim Ferriss says in this context:

  A person's success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have.

• This article was written exactly 6 months before we founded PyBites (scary)! I feel that a lot of these points were central to getting where we are today. I am also proud and happy that we have been able to provide the tools to help developers write more code, share their progress and guest post to our blog.

• Leaders are readers, and to become succesful you need a constant stream of inspiration, ideas and knowledge. We made a Django app to keep track of your reading: PyBites My Reading List. Looking for titles? Check out my reading list which has some other pointers as well. Never stop learning!

Keep Calm and Code in Python!

-- Bob

Dear EuroPython’istas,

We are in preparations of our venue RFP for the EuroPython 2019 edition and are asking for your help in finding the right locations for us to choose from.

If you know of a larger venue - hotel or conference center - that can accommodate at least 1400 attendees, please send the venue details to board@europython.eu. We will then make sure to include them in our RFP once we send it out.

The more venues we gather to reach out to, the better of a selection process we can guarantee, which in return, will ultimately result in a better conference experience for everybody involved.

When sending us venue suggestions, please make sure to provide us with the following: name and URL of the venue, country and city, as well as the contact details of the sales person in charge of inquiries (full name, email and phone).

We were planning to start the RFP process in the coming days, so please make sure you send us your recommendations as soon as possible.

Thank you,
–
EuroPython Society Board
https://www.europython-society.org/

Dear EuroPython’istas,

We are in preparations of our venue RFP for the EuroPython 2019 edition and are asking for your help in finding the right locations for us to choose from.

If you know of a larger venue - hotel or conference center - that can accommodate at least 1400 attendees, please send the venue details to board@europython.eu. We will then make sure to include them in our RFP once we send it out.

The more venues we gather to reach out to, the better of a selection process we can guarantee, which in return, will ultimately result in a better conference experience for everybody involved.

When sending us venue suggestions, please make sure to provide us with the following: name and URL of the venue, country and city, as well as the contact details of the sales person in charge of inquiries (full name, email and phone).

We were planning to start the RFP process in the coming days, so please make sure you send us your recommendations as soon as possible.

Thank you,
–
EuroPython Society Board
https://www.europython-society.org/

In this article we review last week's Analyse NBA Data with SQL/sqlite3 code challenge.

Our solution

Check out our solution for this challenge.

Some learnings:

• Use cursor.executemany to bulk insert records.

• We were using cursor.fetchall but to get one record/row you can use fetchone (thanks @clamytoe)

• Practice GROUP BY (year_with_most_drafts)

• Simple SQLite arithmetic (games/active AS games_per_year)

• Probably don't need CAST if you add types to DB columns (looking at other PRs!)

Community solutions

Check out solutions PR'd by our community.

Some learnings taken from these Pull Requests:

• Refreshed SQL. Learned about sqlite command line. Learned PyCharm DataSource integration and querying. Refreshed git commands.

• I used this challenge as a chance to experiment with Jupyter notebook to help visualize the data

Read Code for Fun and Profit

You can look at all submitted code here and/or pulling our Community branch.

Other learnings we spotted in Pull Requests week: itertools, difflib / similarity measures, collections, pytest and patch.

Thanks to everyone for your participation in our blog code challenges!

Need more Python Practice?

Subscribe to our blog (sidebar) to get a new PyBites Code Challenge (PCC) in your inbox each Monday.

And/or take any of our 50+ challenges on our platform.

Prefer coding self contained exercises in the comfort of your browser? Try our growing collection of Bites of Py.

Want to do the #100DaysOfCode but not sure what to work on? Take our course and/or start logging your progress on our platform.

Keep Calm and Code in Python!

-- Bob and Julian

It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer. - A. Einstein

Hey Pythonistas,

It's TIME for another Code Challenge! (Pun totally intended!)

We're keeping it simple this week. Create your own Pomodoro Timer!

Pomodoro?

What's a Pomodoro Timer? We're glad you asked! (If you didn't ask, you can read anyway!)

A Pomodoro Timer is a countdown timer that enables you to focus on a given task. You set the timer for a specific duration, 20 minutes for example, and for that duration you are completely offline and focused. No email, no phone, no texts, no kids (a man can dream!)... no interruptions. Just pure, focus. This is the Pomodoro Technique.

At the end of the timer, you're back online.

The idea is that the minutes of focus time allow you to achieve more than you otherwise would given the usual swathe of interruptions we all suffer.

The real fanatics will do a set period of the Pomodoro Technique followed by a short break, then another Pomodoro set and repeat.

The Challenge

Now for the challenge:

• At its simplest, create a timer for a set duration (eg 20 minutes) that "alarms" or notifies you at completion.

• Go a step further and allow the user to specify the amount of time the Pomodoro Timer goes for.

• Again, further develop the app by allowing it to loop. That is, Pomodoro Time > break time > Pomodoro Time > break time. Just like the pros!

• Create a user interface if you have the time! PyGame or argparse perhaps? Maybe even make it web based with Flask or your other favourite web framework.

Here's an example: Tomato Timer!

It doesn't matter how complex or simple you make your app - just that you get coding.

If you need help getting ready with Github, see our new instruction video.

PyBites Community

A few more things before we take off:

• Do you want to discuss this challenge and share your Pythonic journey with other passionate Pythonistas? Confirm your email on our platform then request access to our Slack via settings.

• PyBites is here to challenge you because becoming a better Pythonista requires practice, a lot of it. For any feedback, issues or ideas use GH Issues, tweet us or ping us on our Slack.

>>>frompybitesimportBob,JulianKeepCalmandCodeinPython!

Today I’m joined by Mahdi Yusuf, one of the founders of Pycoder’s Weekly.

By day he’s the CTO of Gyroscope, the OS for the human body. By night, he’s a sports and movie fan with a controversial opinion on who is the best Batman… Let’s get into it.

Ricky:Let’s start with an easy one. How’d you get into programming, and when did you start using Python?

Mahdi: I was actually quite a late bloomer. I didn’t even know what a pointer was until I was in university studying computer engineering, but I was always into computers and always playing around with machines. (Mostly Windows. Gasp!)

I started using Python in the last couple years of university, and I really enjoyed how simple and “batteries included” it was. Almost everything I wanted to do had a library for it, and in the last 10 years it’s only gotten better.

What drew me to it was that you could do anything you wanted. You weren’t niched into a specific role like you would be with some other programming languages.

Ricky:People may know you as one of the founders of Pycoder’s Weekly. For those reading who may not be aware of Pycoder’s Weekly, can you briefly explain what you offer to your readers, and how it came to fruition?

Mahdi: It was actually just a by-product of having no way to get Python news in a nice, curated manner that was consistent.

Mike (co-founder) and I were just chatting and thought it would be something cool to do, so we just got it started. I bought the domain and created our first landing page, and we were off to the races.

Next thing you know, before we even sent out the first issue, we had 2,000 subscribers.

Ricky:You gave a talk at PyCon Canada 2013, titled “How to Make Friends and Influence Developers.” It’s a great talk where you emphasize how developers can grow their community and products by focusing on the value they can offer and not just the problems they can solve. Do you still feel this is an area that developers can work on in 2018? What challenges do you think developers will be facing in 2019?

Mahdi: Absolutely. Moving forward, I think most problems have been trivialized, from racking your own servers in the early 2000s to points in click in the 2010s. Things are only getting easier, but the problems people have will always be there, so focusing on user goals instead of problems is always the best way to think.

Ricky:For your day job, you work as the CTO for Gyroscope. I first heard about the app in your interview with the legendary Scott Hanselman on the Hanselminutes Podcast. It’s an amazing app that has quite clear benefits for its users. Could you tell us a bit about the app and the plans you have for it going forward?

Mahdi:Gyroscope is essentially the operating system for your body. It helps people keep track of their bodies much like they would their computers. Tracking important health metrics like their heart rate, blood pressure, and blood sugar in addition to simpler things like where they are spending all their time and how productive they are during work hours.

We are working on a few things that are going to bridge the gap between your health and all the data you are generating and be a part of your everyday life. Stay tuned! You can follow us @gyroscope_app if this is something that interests you, or you can reach out to me @myusuf3.

Ricky:What other projects do you have going on that you’d like to share? What takes up your time outside of Gyroscope and Pycoder’s?

Mahdi: I have been playing with building an AI-powered home monitoring system that can identify members of my family with trained pictures of them gathered around the house. It could fire notifications of who is around the house and potentially detect when people it doesn’t know enter the camera’s field of view and ignore my family members as they pass throughout the house.

It’s been on the shelf for a couple of weeks. I’ve been busy with work, but it’s getting me writing more Python lately.

Ricky:And now for my last question: there’s more to us than coding, so what other hobbies and interests do you have? Any you’d like to share and/or plug?

Mahdi: I love playing sports and am a huge movie guy.

I have been playing basketball since I was young, and it’s the sport I enjoy playing the most, but as I am getting older, I am spending more time icing my knees than I would like.

As for movies, the summer is just wrapping up, and there was tons of great stuff this summer, but I am just going to put it out there… I am Team Marvel. Ben Affleck is the real Batman.

Thank you Mahdi for the interview. You can follow Mahdi on Twitter here. If you haven’t already, you can sign up to the Pycoder’s Weekly newsletter here.

If there is someone you would like me to interview in the future, reach out to me in the comments below, or send me a message on Twitter.

[ Improve Your Python With 🐍 Python Tricks 💌 – Get a short & sweet Python Trick delivered to your inbox every couple of days. >> Click here to learn more and see examples ]

Pgcli is a command line interface for Postgres database that does auto-completion and syntax highlighting. You can install this version using:

$ pip install -U pgcli

A very small release this time, but coming next is pgcli migration to Python Prompt Toolkit 2.0.

The other day, while reviewing the Assignment Section exercises for a training course I was about to deliver, wanting to type dir() into a Python REPL, my fingers went for del() instead. At first I didn’t even notice it but then, something in the back of my head called …