#317 Most loved and most dreaded dev tools of 2022

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About the show

Sponsored by Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub.

Connect with the hosts

• Michael: @mkennedy@fosstodon.org
• Brian: @brianokken@fosstodon.org
• Show: @pythonbytes@fosstodon.org

Michael #1: StackOverflow 2022 Developer Survey

• Last year we saw Git as a fundamental tool to being a developer. This year it appears that Docker is becoming a similar fundamental tool for Professional Developers, increasing from 55% to 69%.
• Language: Rust is […] the most loved language with 87% of developers saying they want to continue using it.
• JS Frameworks: Angular.js is in its third year as the most dreaded.
• Let me Google that for you: 62% of all respondents spend more than 30 minutes a day searching for answers or solutions to problems. 25% spending more than an hour each day.
• The demise of the full-stack developer is overrated.
• I do wish there were more women in the field.
• Databases: Postgres is #1 and MongoDB is still going strong.
• The “which web framework do you use?” question is a full on train wreck. Why is this so hard for people to write the question? Node.js or Express (built on Node) vs. FastAPI or Flask (but no Python?)
• Most wanted / loved language is Rust (wanted) and Python/Rust tied for most wanted.
• Worked with vs. want to work with has some interesting graphics.

Brian #2: PePy.tech - PyPI download stats with package version breakdown

• Petru Rares Sincraian
• We’ve discussed pypistats.org before, which highlights
  • daily downloads
  • downloads per major/minor Python version
  • downloads per OS
• PyPy is a bit more useful for me
  • default shows last few versions and total for this major version
  • “select versions” box is editable.
    • clicking in it shows dropdown with downloads per version already there
    • you can add * for graph of total
    • or other major versions if you want to compare
  • daily/weekly/monthly is nice, to round out some noise and see larger trends
  • Oddity I noticed - daily graph isn’t the same dates as the table.
    • off by a day on both sides
    • not a big deal, but I notice these kinds of things.

Michael #3: Codon Python Compiler

• via Jeff Hutchins and Abdulaziz Alqasem
• A high-performance, zero-overhead, extensible Python compiler using LLVM
• You can scale performance and produce executables, even when using third party libraries such as matplotlib.
• It also supports writing and executing GPU kernels, which is an interesting feature.
• See how it works at exaloop.io
• BTW, really terrible licensing.
  • Free for non-commercial (great)
  • “Contact us” for commercial use (it’s fine to charge, but give us a price)

Brian #4: 8 Levels of Using Type Hints in Python

• Yang Zhou (yahng cho)
• A progression of using type hints that seems to track how I’ve picked them up

1. Type Hints for Basic Data Types.
   • x: int
2. Define a Constant Using Final Type
   • DB: Final = '``PostgreSQL'
   • (ok. I haven’t used this one at all yet)
3. Adding multipe type hints to one variable.
   • int | None
4. Using general type hints.
   • def func(nums: Iterable)
   • Also using Optional
5. Type hints for functions
   • def func(name: str) → str:
   • (I probably would put this at #2)

6. Alias of type hints (not used this yet, but looks cool) PostsType = dict[int, str]

   new_posts: PostsType = {1: 'Python Type Hints', 2: 'Python Tricks'}

7. Type hints for a class itself, i.e. Self type from typing import Self

   class ListNode: def __init__(self, prev_node: Self) -> None: pass

8. Provide literals for a variable. (not used this yet, but looks cool) from typing import Literal weekend_day: Literal['Saturday', 'Sunday'] weekend_day = 'Saturday' weekend_day = 'Monday' # will by a type error

Extras

Brian:

• I hear a heartbeat for Test & Code, so it must not be dead yet.

Michael:

• New article: Welcome Back RSS
  • From this I learned about Readwise, Kustosz, and Python’s reader.
• Year progress == 100%
• PyTorch discloses malicious dependency chain compromise over holidays (of course found over RSS and reeder — see article above)

Joke: vim switch