Execute multiple tasks concurrently in Python with Asyncio: Python’s built-in async library. — It’s fair to say that most Hackers and Slackers readers share one thing in common: we like writing stuff in Python. This does not make us unique; it’s reflective of a well-known and easily explainable phenomenon as Data Scientists/Engineers enter (and more recently, leave) a space previously reserved for software…

Install and manage multiple versions of Python on Ubuntu 20.04 or newer. — There are a number of subtle differences in managing versions of Python on older distributions of Ubuntu. If you’re running Ubuntu 18.04 or older, go here. One of my earliest frustrations with Python development had nothing to do with Python itself but rather the needlessly esoteric act of deploying a…

Handle your application’s data layer with SQLAlchemy’s powerful ORM. Define data models, add/remove records, and execute queries purely in Python. — Utilizing ORMs as a data layer is a concept as old as object-oriented programming itself; by abstracting SQL concepts, developers avoid dreaded “context switches” by modifying objects instead of queries. …

Leverage the iconic SQLAlchemy Python library to effortlessly handle database connections and queries in software. — When we think about software interacting with databases directly, many envision a similar pattern of managing connections, explicitly committing queries, and similarly tiresome boilerplate. Python libraries like PyMySQL and Psycopg2 do a fine job fitting this paradigm and upholding the status quo of what we’ve come to accept. …

Use Pandas and Plotly to create cloud-hosted data visualizations on-demand in Python. — Given the success of Plotly Dash and Plotly Express, it’s easy to forget that Plotly’s rise to success began with a product that was neither of these household names. Dash has cornered the interactive dashboard market, while Plotly Express has become the defacto Python library generating inline charts, particularly for…

Write and deploy Golang Lambda Functions to for your GatsbyJS site on Netlify. — The race to monetize static-site hype was over before it began — if you’re a JAMStack developer, you’re a Netlify customer. Surprisingly, the outcome of this unintentional vendor lock-in has been working out pretty well. JAMStack’s paradigm of webhook-driven actions rewrites the narrative of static sites as dynamic entities. …

Supercharge your scraper to extract quality page metadata by parsing JSON-LD data via Python’s extruct library. — Unless you’re entirely oblivious to scraping data in Python (and probably ended up here by accident), you’re well-aware that scraping data in Python library begins and ends with BeautifulSoup. BeautifulSoup is Python’s scraping powerhouse: we first demonstrated this in a previous post where we put together a script to fetch…

Create and compile LESS, SASS, and JS files for your Flask app’s frontend using Flask-Assets. — You’re probably not a frontend developer, and I’m guessing you have no desire to become one. …

Speed up Gatsby by utilizing Netlify features like CDN, asset compression, redirects, caching, and analytics. — Static site generators are experiencing a respectable rise in popularity amongst developers, yet we’re likely only seeing the beginning of a paradigm that has yet to fully explode. GatsbyJS and NextJS have tantalized the JavaScript community by effectively incorporating trendy paradigms, while Hugo speaks to the swaths of developers embracing…