PyCoder’s Weekly

Issue #736: Polars Sort-Merge Joins, Zen, Resolving Lazy Imports, and More (2026-05-26)

2026-05-26T19:30:00+00:00

#736 – MAY 26, 2026
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Streaming Sort-Merge Joins in Polars

“Joins are often one of the most expensive parts of a query. Once tables get large, the join can heavily impact both runtime and memory usage… If the join keys are already sorted, Polars can now take a cheaper path: a streaming sort-merge join.”
THIJS NIEUWDORP

Tapping Into the Zen of Python

Explore the Zen of Python and its 19 guiding principles for writing readable, practical code. Learn its history, jokes, and meaning.
REAL PYTHON course

Quiz: Tapping Into the Zen of Python

REAL PYTHON

FREE Python Error Tracking From Honeybadger – all Signal, no Noise

Production bugs don’t arrive one at a time. Honeybadger groups similar errors into a single issue and lets you pause or ignore alerts in a single click. More signal. Less noise. ⚡ Sign Up for Your FREE Developer Account →
HONEYBADGER sponsor

Resolve a Lazy Import Manually

Learn how to work around the Python 3.15 machinery to resolve an explicit lazy import manually.
RODRIGO GIRÃO SERRÃO

Django 6.1 Alpha 1 Released

Posted by Jacob Walls on May 20, 2026
DJANGO SOFTWARE FOUNDATION

Nuitka Python Compiler Release 4.1

NUITKA.NET

Call for Onsite Volunteers: Make EuroPython 2026 Happen

EUROPYTHON.EU

PEP 831: Frame Pointers Everywhere: Enabling System-Level Observability for Python (Final)

This PEP proposes two things:
PYTHON.ORG

PEP 808: Including Static Values in Dynamic Metadata (Accepted)

PYTHON.ORG

Articles & Tutorials

PyCon US 2026 Packaging Summit Recap

Per-talk notes from the PyCon US 2026 Packaging Summit, including: Emma Smith on Wheel 2.0 and Zstandard compression, Mike Fiedler on PyPI abuse vectors, Mahe Iram Khan on ecosystems, lightning talks on PEP 772, mobile wheels, AI accelerator variants, and the roundtable discussions.
BERNÁT GÁBOR

Slim Down Python Docker Containers

Learn how SlimToolkit can reduce a Python Docker image by analyzing what your app actually uses at runtime. This tutorial walks through slimming a Chainlit LLM chatbot image, shows where container bloat comes from, and explains how to avoid breaking lazily loaded Python frameworks.
CODECUT.AI • Shared by Khuyen Tran

Object-Oriented Python: 5-Day Live Workshop, June 8 to 12

A new live cohort for Python developers comfortable with the basics who want to design classes that hold up under change. Across five 2-hour sessions, OOP features appear at the moment a growing project actually needs them. You leave with a working app and the judgment to know when a class earns its keep →
REAL PYTHON sponsor

What Types of Exceptions Should You Catch?

The trickiest programming bugs are often caused by catching exceptions that you didn’t mean to catch or handling exceptions in ways that obfuscate the actual error that’s occurring. Which exceptions should you catch and which should you leave unhandled?
TREY HUNNER

Reverse Geocoding With Overture Maps

Mark is working on a reverse geocoder that can fetch the 2-letter ISO country code for any point on a map in a country’s boundaries. This post talks about the prototype and his progress on the project.
MARK LITWINTSCHIK

Stop Writing Edge Case Tests. Use Hypothesis Instead

An introduction to property-based testing in Python with Hypothesis: the mental shift from ‘what input should I test?’ to ‘what invariant should always hold?’
PEYTON GREEN • Shared by Anonymous

Opaque Types in Python

Learn how to use the NewType to mask a private class while still providing a public construction mechanism for the users of your library.
GLYPH LEFKOWITZ

How to Use the Claude API in Python

Learn how to use the Claude API in Python to send prompts, control responses with system instructions, and get structured JSON output.
REAL PYTHON

Quiz: How to Use the Claude API in Python

REAL PYTHON

`uv` Is Fantastic, but Its Package UX Is a Mess

This opinion piece talks about how uv’s CLI feels surprisingly clunky compared to its peers like pnpm or Poetry.
KEVIN RENSKERS

Python Built-in Functions: A Complete Guide

Use Python’s built-in functions for math, data types, iterables, and I/O to write shorter, more Pythonic code.
REAL PYTHON

Projects & Code

agent-memory-guard: OWASP ASI06 AI Agent Memory Guard

GITHUB.COM/OWASP • Shared by Vaishnavi Gudur

Events

PyCon Italia 2026

May 27 to May 31, 2026
PYCON.IT

Weekly Real Python Office Hours Q&A (Virtual)

May 27, 2026
REALPYTHON.COM

PyLadies Amsterdam: Scalable Data Harvesting for AI

May 28, 2026
MEETUP.COM

Python Leiden User Group

May 28, 2026
PYTHONLEIDEN.NL

PyDelhi User Group Meetup

May 30, 2026
MEETUP.COM

PyLadies El Alto: Flash Talks

May 30 to May 31, 2026
MEETUP.COM

Happy Pythoning!
This was PyCoder’s Weekly Issue #736.
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Issue #735: Agentic Architecture, Python is Weird, 3.15, and More (2026-05-19)

2026-05-19T19:30:00+00:00

#735 – MAY 19, 2026
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Agentic Architecture: Why Files Aren’t Always Enough

What are the limitations of using a file-based agent workflow? Why do massive context windows tend to collapse? This week on the show, Mikiko Bazeley from MongoDB joins us to discuss agentic architecture and context engineering.
REAL PYTHON podcast

Python Is Weird

Here is a collection of things that surprised Maciej about Python. Some you might know and some that might surprise you too.
MACIEJ KOWALSKI

Harness Orchestration: The Next Primitive for AI Agents

A Python SDK that lets you compose Claude Code, Codex, and Gemini as one autonomous harness - agents become FastAPI-style routes you can wire, version, and deploy. Open source. Fork SWE-AF (a 100+ agent software factory) or our cloud-security harness as starter kits. Clone a Recipe →
AGENTFIELD sponsor

Python 3.15: Features That Didn’t Make the Headlines

Every release there are changes that don’t make the headlines, here are a few in the upcoming Python 3.15 release
CHANGS.CO.UK • Shared by Jamie Chang

Python 3.15.0 Beta 1 Released

PYTHON.ORG

Python 3.14.5 Released

PYTHON.ORG

Announcing PSF Community Service Award Recipients

PYTHON SOFTWARE FOUNDATION

PEP 830: Add Timestamps to Exceptions and Tracebacks (Deferred to 3.16)

PYTHON.ORG

PEP 788: Protecting the C API From Interpreter Finalization (Final)

PYTHON.ORG

PEP 813: The Pretty Print Protocol (Deferred to 3.16)

PYTHON.ORG

2026 Django Developers Survey

DJANGO SOFTWARE FOUNDATION

DjangoCon US 2026 Tickets Available

DJANGOCON.US • Shared by Aayush Gauba

Articles & Tutorials

PyCon US 2026 Typing Summit Recap

Per-talk notes from the PyCon US 2026 Typing Summit. Includes info on: Pyrefly and AI agents, ty constraint sets, Lean formalization, tensor shape types, intersection types, PEP 827, Guido on the direction of typing, and the Typing Council Q&A.
BERNÁT GÁBOR

Event Sourcing Design Pattern

Talk Python interviews Chris May and they discuss the event sourcing design pattern: a mechanism for databases to work like git with immutable, replayable events. Learn what libraries help you do this in Python and when to use the pattern.
TALK PYTHON podcast

Strategic Planning at the PSF

The Python Software Foundation Board has been developing a strategic plan to guide the foundation’s direction over the next five years. This post describes the process and future goals.
PYTHON SOFTWARE FOUNDATION

How Python’s GIL Actually Works (And When It Bites You)

This post explains how Python’s GIL limits the amount of concurrency you can get through threading alone, why it is there, and how it is changing as Python evolves.
ATHREYA AKA MANESHWAR

Concurrency: A Deep Dive Into Multithreading With Python

“This article explains concurrency in Python including topics like multithreading, multiprocessing, race conditions, and synchronization mechanisms such as locks.”
NIKOS VAGGALIS

Shipping Django as a Desktop App

This is a summary of Jochen Wersdörfer’s talk at DjangoCon EU where he outlined how his team used Electron to turn a Django project into an installable app.
REINOUT VAN REES

Pydantic Forks `httpx`

The Pydantic team has forked httpx and named it httpx2. The folks who created httpxyz have decided to let the larger organization take the reins.
MICHIEL BEIJEN

How to Flatten a List of Lists in Python

Learn how to flatten a list of lists in Python using for loops, list comprehensions, itertools, functools, NumPy, and recursion.
REAL PYTHON

Quiz: How to Flatten a List of Lists in Python

REAL PYTHON

Building Type-Safe LLM Agents With Pydantic AI

Build type-safe LLM agents in Python with Pydantic AI using structured outputs, function calling, and dependency injection.
REAL PYTHON course

Pyrefly v1.0 Is Here!

Pyrefly has reached stable version 1.0 status, read about the new features and how to get started.
PYREFLY.ORG

Projects & Code

kubex: Python Asynchronous Client for Kubernetes

GITHUB.COM/CODEMAGEDDON

gh-profiler: Examine GitHub User’s Profile

GITHUB.COM/EHMATTHES

presidio: Detect, Redact, & Anonymize Sensitive Data (PII)

GITHUB.COM/MICROSOFT

fotomagoufis: CLI Photo Correction Tool

GITHUB.COM/DIMATOSJ

DiffSinger: Advanced Singing Voice Synthesis

GITHUB.COM/OPENVPI

Events

Weekly Real Python Office Hours Q&A (Virtual)

May 20, 2026
REALPYTHON.COM

PyData Bristol Meetup

May 21, 2026
MEETUP.COM

PyLadies Dublin

May 21, 2026
PYLADIES.COM

Python Sheffield

May 26, 2026
GOOGLE.COM

PyCon Italia 2026

May 27 to May 31, 2026
PYCON.IT

Python Southwest Florida (PySWFL)

May 27, 2026
MEETUP.COM

Happy Pythoning!
This was PyCoder’s Weekly Issue #735.
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Issue #734: Dunder-Gets, Django Tasks in Prod, Codex CLI, and More (2026-05-12)

2026-05-12T19:30:00+00:00

#734 – MAY 12, 2026
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Do You Get It Now?

Learn about Python’s .__getitem__(), .__getattr__(), .__getattribute__(), and .__get__(): how they’re different and where to use them.
STEPHEN GRUPPETTA

Using Django Tasks in Production

Django added a generic API for dealing with concurrent tasks in version 6. This post talks about how it has been used in production.
TIM SCHILLING

Use Codex CLI to Enhance Your Python Projects

Learn how to use Codex CLI to add features to Python projects directly from your terminal, without needing a browser or IDE plugins.
REAL PYTHON course

Depot CI: Built for the Agent era

Depot CI: A new CI engine. Fast by design. Your GitHub Actions workflows, running on a fundamentally faster engine — instant job startup, parallel steps, full debuggability, per-second billing. One command to migrate →
DEPOT sponsor

PEP 828: Supporting ‘Yield From’ in Asynchronous Generators (Deferred to 3.16)

PYTHON.ORG

PEP 797: Shared Object Proxies (Deferred to 3.16)

PYTHON.ORG

Django Security Releases: 6.0.5 and 5.2.14

DJANGO SOFTWARE FOUNDATION

Articles & Tutorials

Handling Schema Issues in Polars

You’ve got this great data pipeline going until one day it stops working. A schema error causes by a column upstream has stopped you in your tracks. This post talks about the four different causes of schema errors and what to do about them.
THIJS NIEUWDORP

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