Have you decided how you’re going to deploy your Django project? Should you use a VPS or a PaaS? Christopher Trudeau is back this week, bringing another batch of PyCoder’s Weekly articles and projects. We also have organizers from PyCascades to share details about this year’s hybrid in-person and virtual conference.

Christopher shares an article about selecting an appropriate Django project deployment strategy. The guide compares VPS (virtual private server) and PaaS (platform as a service) systems. He also covers hosting providers for each and highlights potential pitfalls.

We share several other articles and projects from the Python community, including a news update, what’s new in SQLAlchemy 2.0, how to flush the output of the Python print function, the dangers behind image resizing for machine learning, a project that visualizes pathfinding algorithms, and a runtime executor project.

We also have three special guests from PyCascades 2023 to dig into the details of the conference. Conference chair Eliza Sarobhasa is CTO at Women Who Drone and Leadership Fellow (Python Track) & Python Developer Advocate at Women Who Code. Sprints chair Chethana Gopinath is a Software Engineer at realtor.com and a Senior Lead at Women Who Code Python. Speaker Support Chair Jolene Wong is a Senior Software Engineer at Cisco based in Vancouver. We discuss hosting a hybrid conference, participating in open-source sprints, and finding a local Python community.

Course Spotlight: The Python print() Function: Go Beyond the Basics

In this step-by-step course, you’ll learn about the print() function in Python and discover some of its lesser-known features. Avoid common mistakes, take your “hello world” to the next level, and know when to use a better alternative.

Topics:

• 00:00:00 – Introduction
• 00:02:47 – Django 4.2 beta 1 released
• 00:03:04 – What’s New in SQLAlchemy 2.0?
• 00:06:42 – How to Flush the Output of the Python Print Function
• 00:14:30 – The Essential Django Deployment Guide
• 00:21:37 – Sponsor: Snyk
• 00:22:30 – The Dangers Behind Image Resizing
• 00:29:40 – Pathfinding-Visualizer: Visualize Pathfinding With Pygame
• 00:32:40 – rtx: Runtime Executor (asdf Rust Clone)
• 00:36:19 – Video Course Spotlight
• 00:37:31 – PyCascades 2023 Details
• 00:38:53 – Hybrid conference
• 00:41:11 – How did Chethana get involved?
• 00:42:30 – Open-source sprints
• 00:45:19 – How did Jolene get involved?
• 00:46:31 – How did Eliza get involved?
• 00:50:21 – Venue details
• 00:52:32 – Scheduled talks
• 00:56:13 – Conference sponsors
• 00:57:48 – Advice for attendees
• 01:00:46 – Tickets and virtual platform
• 01:03:01 – What are you excited about in the world of Python?
• 01:06:13 – Thanks and goodbye

News:

• Django 4.2 beta 1 released | Weblog | Django
• SQLAlchemy 2.0 Released

Show Links:

• What’s New in SQLAlchemy 2.0? – SQLAlchemy 2.0 was launched in January. This article reviews the latest changes, whether it is worth the upgrade, and how to go about it.
• How to Flush the Output of the Python Print Function – In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to flush the output of Python’s print function. You’ll explore output stream buffering in Python using code examples and learn that output streams are block-buffered by default, and that print() with its default arguments executes line-buffered when interactive.
• The Essential Django Deployment Guide – Going from “it works on my machine” to deploying to the public can be a daunting task. This guide details the choices between VPS and PaaS systems, how to choose, what the options are, and what you need to know to get your Django code live.
• The Dangers Behind Image Resizing – When training an ML model on image data you likely want smaller, consistently sized images. That means image processing in your pipeline, but the expectation that image resizing is the same across libraries can cause unforeseen problems.

Projects:

• Pathfinding-Visualizer: Visualize Pathfinding With Pygame
• rtx: Runtime Executor (asdf Rust Clone)

PyCascades Links:

• Home - PyCascades 2023
• The Team - PyCascades 2023
• Schedule - PyCascades 2023
• Sprints - PyCascades 2023
• PyCascades 2023 - Sprints Sign Up Form
• COVID Policy - PyCascades 2023
• Venueless - PyCascades 2023
• Become A Sponsor - PyCascades 2023
• PyCascades - YouTube
• Episode #44: Creating an Interactive Online Python Conference for PyCascades 2021 – The Real Python Podcast

Additional Links:

• File Object - Glossary - Python Documentation
• The Python print() Function: Go Beyond the Basics – Real Python
• functools — Higher-order functions and operations on callable objects — Python 3.11.2 documentation
• Python - Women Who Code
• WWCodePython - Tiktok Creator & Bio Links - Beacons
• PyLadies – Women Who Love Coding in Python
• PyLadies Vancouver (Vancouver, BC) | Meetup

Level up your Python skills with our expert-led courses:

• The Python print() Function: Go Beyond the Basics
• SQLite and SQLAlchemy in Python: Moving Your Data Beyond Flat Files
• Deploy a Django App With Gunicorn and Nginx

Support the podcast & join our community of Pythonistas