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Brian #1: Frozen-Flask


“Frozen-Flask freezes a Flask application into a set of static files. The result can be hosted without any server-side software other than a traditional web server.”
2012 tutorial, Dead easy yet powerful static website generator with Flask
Some of it is out of date, but it does point to the power of Frozen-Flask, as well as highlight a cool plugin, Flask-FlatPages, which allows pages from markdown.


Michael #2: pipx


by Chad Smith
Last week we spoke about pythonloc
Execute binaries from Python packages in isolated environments
"binary" to describe a CLI application that can be run directly from the command line
Features

Safely install packages to isolated virtual environments, while globally exposing their CLI applications so you can run them from anywhere
Easily list, upgrade, and uninstall packages that were installed with pipx
Run the latest version of a CLI application from a package in a temporary virtual environment, leaving your system untouched after it finishes
Run binaries from the __pypackages__ directory per PEP 582 as companion tool to pythonloc
Runs with regular user permissions, never calling sudo pip install ... (you aren't doing that, are you? ?).

You can globally install a CLI application by running: pipx install PACKAGE
"Just the “pipx upgrade-all” command is already a huge win over pipsi"
Check out How does this compare to pipsi?


Brian #3: Data science is different now


Vicki Boykis
There’s lots of buzz around data science.
This has resulted in loads of new data scientists looking for junior level positions.

Coming from boot camps, MOOCs, self taught, remote degrees, and other training.

“.. now that data science has changed from a buzzword to something even larger companies outside of the Silicon Valley bubble hire for, positions have not only become more codified, but with more rigorous entry requirements that will prefer people with previous data science experience every time.”
“ … the market can be very hard, and very discouraging for the flood of beginners.”
Data science is a misleading job req

“The reality is that “data science” has never been as much about machine learning as it has about cleaning, shaping data, and moving it from place to place.”

Advice:

Don’t get into data science (this amuses me).
“Don’t do what everyone else is doing, because it won’t differentiate you.”

“It’s much easier to come into a data science and tech career through the “back door”, i.e. starting out as a junior developer, or in DevOps, project management, and, perhaps most relevant, as a data analyst, information manager, or similar, than it is to apply point-blank for the same 5 positions that everyone else is applying to. It will take longer, but at the same time as you’re working towards that data science job, you’re learning critical IT skills that will be important to you your entire career.”

Learn the skills needed for data science today

Creating Python packages
Putting R in production
Optimizing Spark jobs so they run more efficiently
Version controlling data
Making models and data reproducible
Version controlling SQL
Building and maintaining clean data in data lakes
Tooling for time series forecasting at scale
Scaling sharing of Jupyter notebooks
Thinking about systems for clean data
Lots of JSON


Data science is turning more and more into a mostly engineering field.
Data scientists need to have “good generalist engineering skills with a data background.”


Michael #4: RustPython


via Fredrik Averpil
A Python-3 (CPython >= 3.5.0) Interpreter written in Rust.
Seems pretty active: Latest commit ac95b61 an hour ago…
Goals

Full Python-3 environment entirely in Rust (not CPython bindings)
A clean implementation without compatibility hacks

Contributing

To start contributing, there are a lot of things that need to be done.
Most tasks are listed in the issue tracker. Check issues labeled with good first issue if you wish to start coding.