This is Python Bytes, Python headlines and news deliver directly to your earbuds: episode 12, recorded on February 6th, 2017. In this episode we discuss expanding your Python mental model and serving millions of requests per second with Python.

This episode was brought to you by Rollbar: they help you take the pain out of errors.

BO 1: A couple of mental model articles


Python Functions aren’t what you think.

http://powerfulpython.com/blog/python-functions-arent-what-you-think/
Functions are objects. The name of a function is just a variable name referring to the object.

The Tao of Python

http://nbviewer.jupyter.org/github/akittas/presentations/blob/master/pythess/tao_mro/tao_of_python.ipynb
Jupiter notebook discussion of the relationship between objects, classes, and metaclasses.



Michael #2: Why Learn Python? Here Are 8 Data-Driven Reasons by Dan Bader


Is Python worth learning? We’ve interviewed experts and surveyed the job market to identify the key reasons why you should learn Python today.
Python is also one of the hottest skills to have according to research by Dice
The 2nd most popular programming language in the world based on the PYPL Popularity of Programming Language Index.


You Can Use Python for Pretty Much Anything


Python Is Widely Used in Data Science


Python Pays Well: Indeed’s salary calculator gives an even larger figure—a whopping $116,000 per year. (second only to ruby according to gooroo but has 3 times the job openings)


Demand for Python Developers Is High (And Growing)


Python Saves Time


Python Is Beginner Friendly


All the Big Names Use Python

Python could be your way into major tech companies: YouTube, IBM, Yahoo, Dropbox, Quora, Mozilla, Instagram, and many others

Python Has an Amazing Ecosystem

Segments from: Michael Kennedy, Ankur Gupta (Curator at ImportPython), and Sebastian Vetter (Python Engineer at Eventbase)



B*rian #*3: Testing Python Applications with Pytest - Kevin Ndung’u
How could I resist? Do a decent job explaining something about pytest, and I’m happy.
What I liked:


good really fast intro to pytest extreme basics
Refactoring test code with fixtures. Pulling out common starting state into a fixture.
Paramterizing tests to send multiple data sets into the same test function
Using both fixtures and paratmerization in the same test function


There’s so much power and functionality in pytest. But just starting to use it as a better test framework for Python is a good thing. This article is a good kick in the pants for someone new to pytest. Easy intro, plus a couple of cool goodies.

Michael #4: A million requests per second with Python


Screaming-fast Python 3.5+ web micro-framework integrated with pipelining HTTP server based on uvloop and picohttpparser.
We spoke about sanic recently. Apparently this is much faster.
https://github.com/squeaky-pl/japronto 2.6k stars
Is it possible to hit a million requests per second with Python? Probably not until recently.
Covers perf improvements found in 3.6 and coming in 3.7.
It lets you do both synchronous and asynchronous programming thanks to asyncio. And it’s shamelessly fast. Even faster than NodeJS and Go.
Japronto tries hard to delay creation of Python counterparts of its internal structures until asked explicitly. For example, a headers dictionary won’t be created until it’s requested in a view.


Brian#5: RethinkDB is alive and well


RethinkDB joins The Linux Foundation

https://rethinkdb.com/blog/rethinkdb-joins-linux-foundation/

The liberation of RethinkDB

https://www.joyent.com/blog/the-liberation-of-rethinkdb

Company behind RethinkDB shut down Sept 2016
Announced today that Cloud Native Computing Foundation purchased the rights to source code and contributed it to the Linux Foundation under Apache license ASLv2.
Website, GitHub org, social media accounts will continue to operate.
They can take donations, and stripe has ponied up 25k in donation matching.


Michael #6: Python Top 10 Articles for the Past