Sponsored by rollbar: rollbar.com/pythonbytes

Brian #1: Two part series on interactive terminal applications

Part 1: 4 terminal applications with great command-line UIs


For Comparison: both ok but could be better

MySQL REPL
Python REPL

bpython adds autocompletion and other goodies

also check out ptpython as a REPL replacement

mycli adds context aware completion to MySQL
mycli - pgcli for postgress that adds fuzzy search
fish : like bash, but has better search history


Part 2: 4 Python libraries for building great cli's


prompt_toolkit - for building a REPL like interface

includes command history, auto-suggestion, auto-completion

click

includes pager and ability to launch an editor

fuzzyfinder - make suggestions

article shows how to combine that with prompt_toolkit

pygments - syntax highlighting


Michael #2: How have you automated your life with python?


There is something magical about writing code that interacts with the physical world.
I have a script which runs every 5 minutes between 17:00 and 17:30 which scrapes the train times website and sends me desktop notifications saying whether or not my trains home are delayed / cancelled.
I recently wrote a quick python script that tells me when my girlfriend comes home: It sniffs the network for DHCP traffic, when her phone joins the wifi network outside it uses the say command to let me know.
Wrote a script to check if nearby ice cream shops are stocking my favourite (rare) flavour by scanning their menu page for keywords.
A script to check the drive time too/from work using a route with tolls or without tolls.. to try and save some money when the times aren't too different. Using google maps API and a flask site.
I have a script that generates weekly status update emails based off my git commit messages and pull requests. It also creates timesheets in Harvest based on the projects I'm assigned.
I have thrown together some python that automatically controls my reverse-cycle AC system so that it makes optimal use of my solar panels on my roof.


Brian #3: Building a Simple Birthday App with Flask-SQLAlchemy


Nice simple application with a clear need.

Keep track of upcoming birthdays
Avoid Faceboook
Build a simple Flask app
Try SQLAlchemy



Sponsored by Rollbar, try them at rollbar.com/pythonbytes and don't forget to visit their booth at PyCon!

Michael #4: Spelling with Elemental Symbols


How does it work?

Input: "Amputations"
Output: "AmPuTaTiONS", "AmPUTaTiONS"

Generating Character Groupings:

'AmPuTaTiONS' (2,2,2,2,1,1,1)
'AmPUTaTiONS' (2,1,1,2,2,1,1,1)
How many are there in general for a given word? fib(n + 1)!

Addressing Performance Issues: A few attempts don’t add much but
Memoization: The technique of saving a function's output and returning it if the function is called again with the same inputs. A memoized function only needs to generate output once for a given input. This can be very helpful with expensive functions that are called many times with the same few inputs, but only works for pure functions. → 30% faster
Algorithms: Switch to directed graphs and recursion, changes O(2^n) to O(n) and time from 16min to 10 sec.
Learned a great deal along the way. This project introduced:

Combinatorics
Performance profiling
Time complexity
Memoization
Recursion
Graphs and trees



Brian #5: IDE's for beginners


Recent discussion on Reddit about Thonny
I have mixed feelings about encouraging beginner IDE's.

Mostly negative feelings.
And yet there is IDLE, there is Thonny, ...

Are these useful? Anti-useful?
Isn't learning a decent editor part of learning to program?


Michael #6: PDF Plumber


Plumb a PDF for detailed information about each char, rectangle, line, et cetera — and easily extract text and tables.
Visual debugging with .to_image()
Extracting tables

pdfplumber's approach to table detection borrows heavily from Anssi Nurminen's master's thesis, and is inspired by Tabula. It works like this:
For any given PDF page, find the lines that are (