Adding AI to legacy code doesn’t have to be a challenge. Many devs are hearing this right now: “We need to add AI to the app.” And for many of them, panic ensues. The assumption is that you have to rip your existing architecture down to its foundation. You start having nightmares about standing up […]
Tag Archive
python
-
-
3 Questions to go from thinking like a Scrappy to Senior Dev
·
·
2 min readHow do you know if you’re actually growing as a dev? Last week I was chatting with a developer who’d hit a wall. (I talk to a lot of devs now that I think about it!) Like him, you might consider yourself a scrappy coder. You’re an all-rounder, can generally figure things out and write […]
-
How Even Senior Developers Mess Up Their Git Workflow
·
·
4 min readThere are few things in software engineering that induce panic quite like a massive git merge conflict. You pull down the latest code, open your editor, and suddenly your screen is bleeding with <<<<<<< HEAD markers. Your logic is tangled with someone else’s, the CSS is conflicting, and you realise you just wasted hours building […]
-
The issue with traditional performance tracking is that it is often an afterthought. We treat performance as a debugging task, (something we do after users complain), rather than a quality gate. Worse, when we try to automate it, we run into the “Noisy Neighbour” problem. If you run a benchmark in a GitHub Action, and […]
-
The missing 66% of your skillset
·
·
2 min readBob and I have spent many years as Python devs, and 6 years coaching with Pybites and we can safely say that being a Senior Developer is only about 1/3 Python knowledge. The other 60% is the ecosystem. It’s the tooling. It’s all of the tech around Python that makes you stand out from the rest. This is […]
-
Try an AI Speed Run For Your Next Side Project
·
·
7 min readThe Problem I have for as long as I can remember had a bit of a problem with analysis paralysis and tunnel vision. If I’m working on a problem and get stuck, I have a tendency to just sit there paging through code trying to understand where to go next. It’s a very unproductive habit […]
-
Case Study: Developing and Testing Python Packages with uv
·
·
11 min readStructuring Python projects properly, especially when developing packages, can often be confusing. Many developers struggle with common questions: To help clarify these common challenges, I’ll show how I typically set up Python projects and organise package structures using the Python package and environment manager, uv. The challenge A typical and recurring problem in Python is […]
-
Python generators provide an elegant mechanism for handling iteration, particularly for large datasets where traditional approaches may be memory-intensive. Unlike standard functions that compute and return all values at once, generators produce values on demand through the yield statement, enabling efficient memory usage and creating new possibilities for data processing workflows. Generator Function Mechanics At […]
-
The Mutable Trap: Avoiding Unintended Side Effects in Python
·
·
5 min readEver had a Python function behave strangely, remembering values between calls when it shouldn’t? You’re not alone! This is one of Python’s sneakiest pitfalls—mutable default parameters. Recently someone asked for help in our Pybites Circle Community with a Bite exercise that seemed to be behaving unexpectedly. It turned out that this was a result of modifying a mutable parameter […]
-
Bridging the Skills Gap Across Africa with Pybites
·
·
4 min readWhen Bob and I first started Pybites, there was no way I could have imagined it’d grow to what it is today. Launching our first products was a massive moment for us both, not just because these were ways to sustain the business, but because we were actually HELPING people. People were coming to us […]