Python Bytes is a weekly podcast hosted by Michael Kennedy and Brian Okken. The show is a short discussion on the headlines and noteworthy news in the Python, developer, and data science space.

#433 Dev in the Arena

May 26, 2025 00:28:40 4.76 MB ( 36.63 MB less) Downloads: 0
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Michael #1: git-flight-rules

  • What are "flight rules"?
    • A guide for astronauts (now, programmers using Git) about what to do when things go wrong.
    • Flight Rules are the hard-earned body of knowledge recorded in manuals that list, step-by-step, what to do if X occurs, and why. Essentially, they are extremely detailed, scenario-specific standard operating procedures. [...]
    • NASA has been capturing our missteps, disasters and solutions since the early 1960s, when Mercury-era ground teams first started gathering "lessons learned" into a compendium that now lists thousands of problematic situations, from engine failure to busted hatch handles to computer glitches, and their solutions.
  • Steps for common operations and actions

Brian #2: Uravelling t-strings

  • Brett Cannon
  • Article walks through
    • Evaluating the Python expression
    • Applying specified conversions
    • Applying format specs
    • Using an Interpolation class to hold details of replacement fields
    • Using Template class to hold parsed data
  • Plus, you don’t have to have Python 3.14.0b1 to try this out.
  • The end result is very close to an example used in PEP 750, which you do need 3.14.0b1 to try out.
  • See also:

Michael #3: neohtop

  • Blazing-fast system monitoring for your desktop
  • Features
    • Real-time process monitoring
    • CPU and Memory usage tracking
    • Beautiful, modern UI with dark/light themes
    • Advanced process search and filtering
    • Pin important processes
    • Process management (kill processes)
    • Sort by any column
    • Auto-refresh system stats

Brian #4: Introducing Pyrefly: A new type checker and IDE experience for Python

  • From Facebook / Meta
  • Another Python type checker written in Rust
  • Built with IDE integration in mind from the beginning
  • Principles
    • Performance
    • IDE first
    • Inference (inferring types in untyped code)
    • Open source
  • I mistakenly tried this on the project I support with the most horrible abuses of the dynamic nature of Python, pytest-check. It didn’t go well. But perhaps the project is ready for some refactoring. I’d like to try it soon on a more well behaved project.

Extras

Brian:

Michael:

Joke: Theodore Roosevelt’s Man in the Arena, but for programming