What are the core lessons you’ve learned along your Python development journey? What are key takeaways you would share with new users of the language? This week on the show, Duarte Oliveira e Carmo is here to discuss his recent talk, “Four Years of Python.”

Duarte works at the crossroads of machine learning, data science, and software engineering. He began using Python in his graduate studies and never looked back. In 2021, he wrote a blog post about some of the valuable lessons he’s learned. Then he decided the lessons and concepts in the post might make a good conference talk.

We cover the steps in his process of crafting the presentation, practicing it at a smaller conference, and finally presenting it at PyCon Italia last year. We also dig into the four major themes of the talk. Along the way, we share a collection of resources to help you continue learning on your Python journey.

Course Spotlight: Building a URL Shortener With FastAPI and Python

In this video course, you’ll build an app to create and manage shortened URLs. Your Python URL shortener can receive a full target URL and return a shortened URL. You’ll also use the automatically created documentation of FastAPI to try out your API endpoints.

Topics:

00:00:00 – Introduction
00:02:38 – Four years of Python
00:04:18 – Why did you create a blog?
00:06:19 – A singular vs wide focus for the blog
00:09:19 – Pitching the talk to conferences
00:13:02 – Resources for preparing your talk
00:16:03 – What was your programming and Python background?
00:19:00 – Sponsor: InfluxData
00:19:47 – Reading is better than Googling
00:26:23 – What are some of your favorite docs?
00:28:48 – Thoughts on GPT and Copilot
00:31:45 – Keep it stupid simple
00:36:07 – What’s extensible code?
00:38:29 – Video Course Spotlight
00:39:54 – Learning testing techniques & testing data science code
00:46:05 – Continuous learning
00:51:46 – What do you use for RSS?
00:53:06 – Resources for machine learning
00:57:20 – What are you excited about in the world of Python?
00:58:57 – What do you want to learn next?
01:00:55 – How can people follow the work you do?
01:01:20 – Thanks and goodbye

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