Configuring a Coding Environment on Windows & Using TOML With Python

Have you attempted to set up a Python development environment on Windows before? Would it be helpful to have an easy-to-follow guide to get you started? This week on the show, Christopher Trudeau is here, bringing another batch of PyCoder’s Weekly articles and projects.

We talk about a Real Python tutorial that covers configuring a Windows coding environment. The guide contains valuable suggestions, best practices, and powerful coding tools. It also covers how to use a package manager, the new Windows Terminal, PowerShell Core, and a program to manage multiple versions of Python.

Christopher covers another Real Python tutorial about using TOML in Python. TOML is a configuration format for building and distributing your own packages. We discuss how TOML parsing will be added to Python’s standard library in version 3.11.

We cover several other articles and projects from the Python community, on topics including technical writing for developers, a news round-up, a farewell to obsolete Python libraries, uncommon uses of Python in commonly used libraries, a prettier ls, and a project for advanced hot reloading in Python.

Topics:

• 00:00:00 – Introduction
• 00:02:13 – Python 3.10.6 Released
• 00:02:41 – Python 3.11.0rc1 Released
• 00:03:13 – Django 4.1 Released
• 00:04:07 – 10 malicious Python packages exposed in latest repository attack
• 00:05:12 – Protestware: Why Developers Sabotage Their Own Code
• 00:06:41 – Python and TOML: New Best Friends
• 00:16:19 – Say Goodbye to These Obsolete Python Libraries
• 00:25:51 – Video Course Spotlight
• 00:27:26 – Uncommon Uses of Python in Commonly Used Libraries
• 00:37:56 – Your Python Coding Environment on Windows: Setup Guide
• 00:48:20 – Technical Writing for Developers
• 00:55:24 – reloadium: Advanced Hot Reloading for Python
• 00:58:07 – pls: A Prettier ‘ls’
• 01:00:56 – Thanks and goodbye

News:

• Python 3.10.6 Released
• Python 3.11.0rc1 Released
• Django 4.1 Released
• 10 malicious Python packages exposed in latest repository attack | Ars Technica
• Protestware: Why Developers Sabotage Their Own Code

Topic Links:

• Python and TOML: New Best Friends – TOML is a configuration file format that’s becoming increasingly popular in the Python community. In this tutorial, you’ll learn the syntax of TOML and explore how you can work with TOML files in your own projects.
• Say Goodbye to These Obsolete Python Libraries – It’s time to say goodbye to os.path, random, pytz, namedtuple and many more obsolete Python libraries. Start using the latest and greatest ones instead.
• Uncommon Uses of Python in Commonly Used Libraries – To learn more about writing maintainable Python, Eugene has been reading code from some of the more popular Python libraries. This blog post talks about some of the coding patterns he has encountered along the way.
• Your Python Coding Environment on Windows: Setup Guide – With this opinionated guide to setting up a basic, fully featured, and flexible setup for Python coding and contributing to open-source projects when working from Windows, you’ll go from a fresh install to ready to contribute, and even check out a PowerShell script to automate much of the process.

Discussion:

• Technical Writing for Developers – “The way we write about and around code is arguably as important as the code itself.” This article outlines how programming and writing come together to take your developer skills to the next level.

Projects:

• reloadium: Advanced Hot Reloading for Python
• pls: A Prettier ‘ls’

Additional Links:

• Python 3.11 Preview: TOML and tomllib – Real Python
• Why you should be using pathlib
• No really, pathlib is great
• Episode #116: Exploring Functional Programming in Python With Bruce Eckel – The Real Python Podcast
• Episode #101: Tools for Setting Up Python on a New Machine – The Real Python Podcast
• pls: Documentation

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