Interviews

Developing in Python is the dream job of many developers out there. According to the latest survey from StackOverflow, Python is the second most 'loved' language, and the 'most wanted' one. Now, imagine working for a Python software house where you have the opportunity to be part of many different projects, sometimes even simultaneously? It sounds amazing, right? But, of course, it also brings some challenges. You need to communicate more, be aware of different project scopes, take decisions under different technology requirements, and much more. Complexity is also closely related to productiv

I've long been a big fan of pydantic by the prolific Samuel Colvin. In 2018, the package added support for dataclasses by providing its own decorator which "creates (almost) vanilla python dataclasses with input data parsing and validation." Alas, the "almost" was a sticking point. In particular, PyCharm's code insight only treated the built-in decorator as something providing dataclass support. A PyCharm plugin was needed, first to make PyCharm treat pydantic dataclasses like regular ones, then to fill in coding assistance for the other aspects. Enter Koudai Aono. Despite

In the past few years, Python has made a big push into data science and PyCharm has as well. Years ago we added Jupyter Notebook integration, then 2017.3 introduced Scientific Mode for workflows that felt more like an IDE. In 2019.1 we re-invented our Jupyter support to also be more like a professional tool. PyCharm and data science are thus a hot topic. Dan Tofan very recently published a Pluralsight course on using PyCharm for data science and we invited him for a webinar next week. To help set the stage, below is an interview with Dan. Thursday, April 25 7PM GMT+3, 9AM Pacific

JetBrains IDEs have a lot that’s “integrated” into the “development environment.” At some times, it seems daunting: there’s an infinity of features, with useful new things to learn at every corner. At other times, though, there’s something missing, something unique to what you do or how you do it. Fortunately the IntelliJ platform for IDEs has a powerful plugin model. In fact, most of PyCharm is done as plugins, either specific to PyCharm or reusable across all IntelliJ IDEs. Getting started can be daunting though, which is why we set up this webinar, to show writing a simple-but-useful PyCha

Python has long distinguished itself with a culture of testing. In the last decade, two libraries have combined to give powerful testing in isolation -- pytest and tox. The latter combines easily with pytest to give you a clean environment across test runs, including across multiple versions of Python. tox certainly counts as one of those things lots of PyCharm customers know they should know, but don’t yet know. To make it easy to break the ice we’ve invited Oliver Bestwalter to introduce tox in a PyCharm webinar. Oliver is the maintainer of tox and advocate for release automation in projects

Python’s combination of power and simplicity has long been one of its key selling points. This includes its data model. Luciano Ramalho, who is our guest presenter for the next webinar, recently wrote about this in Fluent Python, an O’Reilly book widely considered one of the best recent books on Python. There’s another well-known strength of Python: its community, and Luciano is one of those long-time key people who is warm, inviting, smart, and part of Python’s appeal. We’re lucky to have him with us for the last webinar before PyCon and decided to do a quick interview with him. Give us a sn

In this interview with Robert Raposa and Ned Batchelder, software architects at edX, we’re going to look under the hood of the edX project, where more than 95% of the entire codebase is in Python. Robert is a core contributor to the Open edX LMS and Studio products, as well as their supporting infrastructure. Ned is on the Open edX team, advocating for the community using the software. We’re going to learn about the project, how they develop, what their technology preferences are, and some of the reasons they chose Python as the main language. Many edX core developers are using PyCharm, so we’

Web development has long been a key part of Python’s appeal. In modern web apps, rich frontends work with Python backends over REST. But even that’s getting re-examined, with recent interest in GraphQL as a query language for web data. Want an introduction to what GraphQL means for Python? We’re fortunate to have Quazi Nafiul as the presenter for the “GraphQL in the Python World” October 31st webinar on October 31st. Quazi is known in PyCharm as the author of Mastering PyCharm, is a long-time Python web developer, and currently a software engineer at Suitsupply. To set the scene for the webin

Imagine working for a development consultancy: dozens of different projects, constant communication with customers, each of which has their own preferences on technology stacks, coding standards, and unique sets of requirements – not to mention expectations on project performance, robustness, and completion schedules. Keeping a balance between maintaining the existing code base and promoting best development practices can be daunting, but that’s what the people at Caktus Group have mastered through the years. We spoke to two professional Python developers with diverse backgrounds and experienc