Working on a new book. Fun stuff. It's going to cover Python 3.9.

I'm adding the type hints material. And that means PEP 585. Which means type hints for generics can use the generic types. We can use list[int] instead of List[int] and avoid from typing import …

Yes, that's what the email said.

I was -- well -- shocked. Too shocked to be polite. Content Warning: much snark follows.

This is glorious.

There was this sort of awkward shoving match between typing and collections.abc. Both had generic type definitions and it was -- often -- unclear how to use them.

See PEP 585. Now they are all unified into a much happier family.

And. We wind up writing things like …

Working on revisions to a book. Fun stuff. See https://www.packtpub.com/product/python-3-object-oriented-programming/9781849511261 I may have the privilege of working with Dusty.

I've been using mypy for all my 2nd edition changes, but not in --strict mode.

I've decided to ramp things up, and switch to strict …

I am not patient. I have been dismissed as one who does not suffer fools gladly.

This is a bad attitude, and I absolutely suffer from it. No denials here. I'm aware it limits my ability to help the deeply confused.

My personal failing is not being patient enough to …

Check out https://www.pythonpodcast.com/steven-lott-learn-to-code-episode-283/. This was a fun conversation on Python and learning.

We didn't talk about my books in detail. Instead, we talked about learning and what it takes to get closer to mastery.

It's a thing I worry about. I suspect other writers worry about …

See https://opendatascience.com/removing-items-from-a-set-remove-pop-and-difference/

This puts the focus on a few important set operations.

"... [I] am thinking of building an in house conda forge, or buying a solution, or paying someone to set something up."

The build v. Buy decision. This is always hard. Really hard.

We used to ask "What's your business? Is it building software or making widgets?"

And (for some) the …

Python 101, by Michael Driscoll. 545 pages, available from leanpub.com in a variety of formats. Available soon in hardcover.

The modern Python programming language is a large topic. A book on a programming language has to be seen as a collection of several large topics.

At its core, a …

See {filename}/blog/2014/03/2014_03_20-shiny_new_macbook_pro.rst

At the time (2014), the 8Gb machine was way more than adequate for all my needs as a writer.

Enter bloat.

Mac OS Catalina has essentially filled this machine to the breaking point. Six short years is the lifespan. Things (generally) work, but …