Today, the first signs of winter are falling from the sky. We can’t avoid winter forever, although it was pleasant that it showed up after halloween. Also very fortunate that I changed my winter tires earlier this week. Maybe I jinxed this whole thing by putting them on. Anyways, let’s jump into some links.
1. Let’s Build A Web Server. Part 2. (20 minutes)
Have you ever wondered what happens under the hood of a WSGI server? WSGI is the glue that makes your python web framework available to the web. Ruslan Spivak walks us through what is all involved with pictures and code examples. It’s easy to take the tech we use daily for granted. Sometimes it’s fun to pull back the sheet and see what’s lurking underneath.
2. The Many Layers of Packaging (26 minutes)
As much as I love Python, it’s no secret that it’s packaging story has been a bit of a sore spot for developers. You would think getting code from your computer to someone else’s would be simple, right? It all stems from an unfortunate cludge of too many tools, confusing standards, and late improvements. In this article, Mahmoud Hashemi takes us on a tour of the numerous ways to attack the packaging problem. One thing that’s refreshing to see is that the ecosystem has made great steps since this was released (circa 2017). Tools like astral’s uv are making great strides to rectify this.
3. uv is the best thing to happen to the Python ecosystem in a decade (6 minutes)
Speaking of uv, it’s getting some high praise from developers. Dr. Emily L. Hunt walks us through some of the basics and highlights some of it’s features. Uv solves a lot of problems, namely the bootstrap problem. Before uv, if you wanted to install python software, you needed to install python first. Uv is written in rust and uses Python Standalone Builds to avoid compiling from source. It truly is a wondrous time for python packaging.
4. 996 Just Means You Have No Leverage (5 minutes)
If you haven’t heard about 996 before, it means working 9:00 am to 9:00 pm, 6 days per week. It’s a schedule that’s practised by some companies in China that is starting to gain traction in Silicon Valley. Joan Westenberg drops some good quotes that resonate:
the reason some people have to work twelve hours a day is because their ideas aren’t good enough to survive on eight.
If your ideas don’t have leverage, pouring more hours is only going to lead to burnout.
5. AI is making us work more (9 minutes)
In a similar vein, and also mentioning an interesting interview with uv author Armin Ronacher, Tawanda talks about AI’s effect on pushing us to work more. For people who love to build, it’s intoxicating to have a tool that can build anything you can think of. It can feel like you are falling behind every minute you aren’t utilizing this unlimited potential. But, I think the closing sentences wonderfully capture what many of us may be feeling:
So, maybe, the challenge of the AI era isn’t just learning how to leverage these tools. It’s learning to live with them in a healthy way that doesn’t allow them to enslave us.
6. Identifying Life-Changing Books with LLMs (20 minutes)
I’m not all doom and gloom about AI, there are some pretty rad developments. How about finding books that could change your life? Joel Lehman talks about building a system using GoodReads to find books with the most impact. I’m a sucker for book lists so this one hooked me instantly. I was also happy to see a number of my own “to read” books make the list. Time to get away from this screen and enjoy a book.