#219 HTMX: Dynamic and live HTML without JavaScript

Sponsored by us! Support our work through: Our courses at Talk Python Training pytest book Patreon Supporters Special guest: Jennifer Stark - @_JAStark & guest on talkpython.fm/259 Watch on YouTube Brian #1: Do you really need a virtualenv? Frost Ming doesn’t think so, based on the article You don't really need a virtualenv The link slug is “introducing-pdm”, which I think would be a better title, but the first did work to get people to talk about it. Also, “Try PEP 582 today” may have been appropriate. Teaching new people is a problem: Telling them to first type python -m venv venv Then type source venv/bin/activate or . venv/bin/activate Unless you’re on windows, then type venv\scripts\activate.bat Then type pip install -r requirements.txt Yeah. It’s not pretty, not fun, and good luck not having anyone ask questions about why this is necessary. Also the Python version is specified in the venv. So if you upgrade Python versions, what happens to existing venvs? The article also discusses levels of venvs, and global tools that maybe you want not tied to each venv. But we have pipx for that, so I don’t think that’s a real issue. Enter PEP 582, still in draft mode. Instead of a venv directory, your project has a __pypackage__ directory. If you python -m pip install in your project directory, stuff just goes there instead of to the global Python. So it kinda acts like a venv for local packages, it just doesn’t include local copies of the Python executables, and such. This is probably a horrible description of 582, but oh well. Something like that. pdm supports 582 today PDM stands for Python Development Master “It installs and manages packages in a similar way to npm that doesn't need to create a virtualenv at all!” Has a workflow that reminds me of Poetry, but doesn’t use a venv, uses a package directory instead. Conclusion: Huge props to Frost for this. It’s cool to see a tool that supports 582 and glimpse a possible Python future. However, this doesn’t solve the “teaching Python” problem. The setup is more complex than venv. I’m personally sticking with venv, well virtualenv, until (and if) 582 is supported by Python and pip. Michael #2: Copier - like cookiecutter A library for rendering project templates. Works with local paths and git URLs. Your project can include any file and Copier can dynamically replace values in any kind of text file. It generates a beautiful output and takes care of not overwrite existing files unless instructed to do so. To use as a CLI app: pipx install copier To use as a library: pip install copier Has a simple Python API Main advantage: Can update existing projects Runs from basic YAML files Jennifer #3: Pandarallel - run pandas apply in parallel! simple install `pip install pandarallel [--upgrade] [--user]`` import from pandarallel import pandarallel initialise pandarallel.initialize(), set progress bar BOOL, set number of workers … (defaults to all cores) just use parallel_apply where you’d usually put apply Brian #4: Stop Using Print to Debug in Python. Use icecream Instead Khuyen Tran print(f``"``{x=}``"``) is better than print(f``"``x: {x}``"``) but it’s still a lot of typing. With icecream, you can type ic(x) insted and git this nice output: ic| x: 5 It’s less typing and just as nice. There’s more. ic() with no arguments logs the file, function, line number when it’s hit. Easy program flow tracing without a debugger. You can configure it to do this cool context thing even if you do pass in a value to print. You can configure custom prefix formatting with a callback function, so you can include the time or the user that’s logged in, or whatever else state you want to track. Since all output is prefixed with ic|, you can see it easily Writes to stderr by default, so it doesn’t muck up stdout stuff Clean it out of your code by searching for ic() statements. If you have normal print statements in your code, you don’t want to use print for debugging also. Michael #5: HTMX: Dynamic and live HTML without JavaScript htmx allows you to access AJAX, CSS Transitions, WebSockets and Server Sent Events directly in HTM Best seen via the examples section - try some out live on their site Has a cool Server Requests pane for seeing what’s happening in the example Jennifer #6: PyLDAvis - Interactive Topic Model Visualisation Port of LDAvis R package (does this mean PyLDAvis is a wrapper? A translation?) by Carson Sievert and Kenny Shirley User calls pyLDAvis with fitted model made with your favourite library (eg Gensim, sklearn, GraphLab) Outputs include: term frequency within topic bar chart term frequency within whole corpus bar chart next to each bar is a word. You hover over the word and the topic circles adjust size to reflect representation of that term in that topic. topic circles - one for each topic, whose areas are setto be proportional to the proportions of the topics across the N total tokens in the corpus term-topic circles, with area proportional to the frequencies with which a given term is estimated to have been generated by the topics of whole corpus slider to adjust relevance metric (0 = terms very specific to currently selected topic; 1 = terms frequently seen in many topics). Extras: Brian: I’m also speaking to a group of NOAA people next week. I’m speaking the Aberdeen Python User Group on the 10th of Feb. It’s virtual, so everyone can come. Excited about both. My kids are more impressed with the NOAA thing. It’s fun to impress your kids. Michael: Jet Brain’s fifth annual Developer Ecosystem survey Joke: Engineer helping a designer https://twitter.com/EduardoOrochena/status/1306944019268861953