~pycoders | Issue #672: Binary Data, Tail Calls, Pickles, and More (March 11, 2025) (25)

Bytes Objects: Handling Binary Data in Python In this tutorial, you’ll learn about Python’s bytes objects, which help you process low-level binary data. You’ll explore how to create and manipulate byte sequences in Python and how to convert between bytes and strings. Additionally, you’ll practice this knowledge by coding a few fun examples. REAL PYTHON

Python Interpreter Adds Tail Calls As part of the on-going performance improvement work, Python 3.14 is likely to include an optimization known as a “tail call”. Submitted changes are showing a 10% general speedup for some architectures. Read this article to learn the details. DAROC ALDEN

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Exploiting Python Pickles Python has a built-in mechanism for serializing and deserializing objects known as “pickling”. It comes with the caveat that you should never use it with untrusted data, it can lead to remote code execution. DAVID HAMANN

Python while Loops: Repeating Tasks Conditionally In this tutorial, you’ll learn about indefinite iteration using the Python while loop. You’ll be able to construct basic and complex while loops, interrupt loop execution with break and continue, use the else clause with a while loop, and deal with infinite loops. REAL PYTHON

Positron is Now Available for Beta Testing Positron is a next-gen data science IDE built by Posit PBC. It’s an extensible tool for writing python & exploring data, designed for reproducible research & publishing. Consider trying Positron & offering the devs feedback in this beta period. POSIT sponsor

Maybe Don’t Start With Unit Tests Should you always start testing your code with unit tests? When does it make sense to look at integration or end-to-end testing as a first step instead? This week on the show, we speak with previous guest Eric Matthes about where to begin testing your code. REAL PYTHON podcast

Open Graph Images in Django for Social Media The Open Graph protocol specifies metadata for a webpage that gives third party sites information about the page. The most common use is to provide a preview image for social media sites. This post explains how to combine this into your Django projects. AIDAS BENDORAITIS

Working With Python Polars Welcome to the world of Polars, a powerful DataFrame library for Python. In this video course, you’ll get a hands-on introduction to Polars’ core features and see why this library is catching so much buzz. REAL PYTHON course

Beating LinkedIn “Queens” With Python LinkedIn publishes a daily logic puzzle called “Queens” that is a cross between a chess queen placement puzzle and Sudoku. This article shows how to write a Python script to solve the puzzles. RODRIGO GIRÃO SERRÃO

ASCII Control Characters in My Terminal Ever wonder about those ASCII control characters in your terminal, like CTRL-C to kill a program? Well wonder no more, Julia breaks down what they are and how they can be used. JULIA EVANS

A Map of Python View an interactive graph of the packages at PyPI, showing how many packages depend on each. The post also briefly describes the methodology for producing the chart. FIEFDOM OF FILES

Pokémon With Reinforcement Learning David and his colleagues have been using reinforcement learning to beat “Pokemon Red”, a single player JPRG from 1996. Learn about how they did it and see the code. RUBENSTEIN, ET AL

Good Programmers Worry About Data Structures and Their Relationships This opinion piece discusses a quote from Linus Torvalds, that good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships. LEONARDO CREED

Which Python GUI Library Should You Use in 2025? This post compares the Python GUI libraries available in 2025, including PyQT, PySide, TKinter, and Kivy. MARTIN FITZPATRICK