Python

We regularly update and improve our upgrades and sustainability service offerings at Caktus, and a recent upgrade for a client precipitated a solution that I felt might be worth sharing. At Caktus, the preferred approach for addressing upgrades and sustainability is to make incremental updates to a project over time, trying to keep both Django and the servers themselves on a long-term support version. These are select versions of Django and Ubuntu, for example, that generally have much longer support periods than other versions, i.e., they are a good fit for applications that you will need to continue maintaining well into the future.

PyCon US 2021 will be completely virtual this year. For the first time ever you’ll be able to enjoy this popular event from the comfort of your favorite armchair!

Last year, Apple announced that they would transition their entire Mac line from Intel processors to their ARM64 Apple Silicon chip called the M1. Several weeks ago, I started testing development on MacBook Air with the Apple M1 chip (pictured above).

At Caktus, we maintain some open source packages, which are usually pieces of code that we’ve found useful when building an application, and we figure they might be useful to others. From time to time, those open source projects need a little maintenance: Maybe a bug fix has been provided from a community member, or we need to update to support a new version of Python or Django. I always hesitate to do this because I know there are multiple steps involved to ensure that any updates are properly tested, documented, versioned, and released. One of my silly blockers is that I always seem to forget how to upload a release to PyPI, which is the Python Package Index, a repository of software for Python. I call it silly because it shouldn’t really be a blocker, seeing how simple it actually is, but I still forget it each time and have to walk through the documentation step by step to make sure I do it properly. I recently found a tool that helps with this process.

This is how to set up the One True Development Environment for Python.

Haha, just kidding, there is no such thing. Here's one way to do it that works for me, and an attempt to explain the benefits of doing it this way.

We’ve published summaries of our most popular blog posts before (see Top 19 of 2019 and Top 18 of 2018), but this time, we’re taking it a step further. We’re sharing the 20 most popular posts in 2020, regardless of the year the post was originally published. And some of these have been around a while! Based on total pageviews, here are the blogs that rose to the top of the popularity list, from most viewed to least viewed.

I keep up with what's happening in my field by following a number of blogs and an occasional email list. I don't read everything posted in all of these, but by scanning the topics in a feed reader, I can keep up with what's going on, without wasting a lot of time.

Last August, our CTO Colin Copeland wrote about how to import multiple Excel files in your Django project using pandas. We have used pandas on multiple Python-based projects at Caktus and are adopting it more widely.

In my previous line of work as an archivist, the question of what to do about email archives was an ongoing and deeply-considered topic. Email is everywhere. Yes, even Gen Z and millennials use it, despite thousands of think pieces that would have you believe that the old ways are giving way to business meetings conducted on fixed-gear bicycles, over avocado toast and Instagram.

During the last year we gave our popular technical blog an official name: Developer Access. We published 32 posts on the blog, including technical how-to’s, conference information, web development best practices and detailed guides. Among all those posts, 19 rose to the top of the popularity list (based on total pageviews):