PythonDigest - 2014, the results of our work in numbers and links

    In anticipation of the New Year, we summarize the work on the digest and display the trends identified in the process of collecting news on the Python language.

    Over the year, brought to mind and automated news gathering to the maximum. Every day, 19 sources are automatically monitored daily and an average of 10-15 relevant news is collected from which, subsequently, the best ones are selected and announcements for the digest are prepared.
    Digest readers make a significant contribution, not a single issue goes without the news they have added.
    Over the six months that have passed since the weekly digest of news about the python programming language and nearby technologies ceased to be published on the hub constantly published in a popular public on this topic in VKontakte, translated and published interesting articles.

    Those interested in details and figures, you are welcome under cat.



    How to keep abreast of all the news.



    The main goal for which the digest was created is to create an aggregator of news and information, both in the python programming language, and in branches or modules. During the existence of the digest, approximately 5,235 materials were collected, 1,776 news items were translated and published.

    Useful information was distributed as follows:



    At the same time, “Different Sources” is, for the most part, twitter and what guests sent to us through a special form. Social networks (VKontakte, Google+) create noise, but as a source of useful news are practically useless.
    As a result, it turns out that if you do not want to lag behind life boiling in the python community, you need to subscribe and read the key twiiter accounts, read the top r / Python in a week, subscribe to two main mailing lists, and of course do not ignore the hub For the djangists and their associates, the django line aggregator may be interesting, based on the trends of google requests on a given topic.


    Year of interesting news and trends



    During the time spent in searching for news, reading articles and participating in public discussions (and this is already more than a year), it was impossible not to highlight news- stars and not to catch some trends. Below is a small analysis of the current situation and a selection of interesting articles that we praised throughout the year.
     
    The main trend is the strong development of python in the direction of scientific computing and data analysis. Not the last place is occupied by the wonderful IPython project , which, with the support of the powerful computing libraries pandas , numpy , SciKits, allows interactive research and convenient sharing of research and calculation / research methods. This was also noticed in JetBrains - inPyCharm 4 improved IPython support and debugging. Here are some good articles about this that have been featured in digest releases throughout the year:
     


    Faster! Higher! Stronger!



    Another trend is concern for the performance of calculations and algorithms in general. Here are some interesting approaches. In addition to the above modules, which have already implemented many numerical algorithms, apply, for example, techniques for converting code into machine. The Nuitka project, which claims to be able to assemble any python code into native one by converting it to a similar c ++ code and then compiling it, shows itself remarkably here . A slightly different approach in the Cython project - its idea is to compile a subset of the python language into code, which is convenient to use later as a plug-in. Another approach is jit compilation at runtime in a special PyPy interpreter. The version of pypy-stm using the Software Transactional Memory model got to the point where it can actually be used on projects with 2.7. A number of articles about these technologies and their application in practical tasks were really very interesting and even translated into a hub:
     


    2.x vs 3.x



    Since 2011, the battle of branches 2.x and 3.x continues. On the one hand, almost all libraries already have acceptable 3.x support, and on the other, developers are still in no hurry to switch to the future branch. This is facilitated by the extension of support for the 2.x branch until 2019, as well as the backporting of features from the third branch.
     


    Going deep in python



    The programming language begins to die as soon as they stop writing deep technical articles about it and create training courses. Both of them were abundant in a year, and some projects claimed revolutionary spirit.
     


    Is the web our everything?



    The shift in emphasis towards web development, including on mobile platforms, has become a global trend. This is also evident in the composition of the articles announced in PythonDigest. Most of them are about the web or near it. Here are just a few random articles:
     


    And in conclusion - wishes



    This is far from all that I would like to tell, but already the new year on the nose is the time to take stock and make wishes. So, since we have been good boys and girls all year, we ask Grandfather Frost for separate pieces of the Russian-speaking python community to come together and communicate more; so that python2 fans find a compromise with python3 fans; make kivy the number one platform for mobile applications; so that pythondigest makes even more friends, helps newcomers and gurus unite to develop the community in discussions and create new projects, and continues to be a consolidating platform and an aggregator of fresh knowledge of Python. Well, world peace just in case - all of a sudden, at least this time it will work out.

    Happy New Year!

    Thanks a lot owlman75 for co-authorship and illustration for the article

    Only registered users can participate in the survey. Please come in.

    Do you support the idea of ​​a Python news digest?

    • 80.2% Yes! This is useful and necessary work, I am writing in Python 366
    • 19% Yes! I specialize in other technologies, but the digest keeps up to date on a neighboring front 87
    • 0.2% No, this is a futile undertaking and if you do something like that, then obviously not 1
    • 0.4% No, I'm just not interested in Python 2

    Also popular now: