Best of Python — December 2025

  1. 1
    Article
    Avatar of lobstersLobsters·21w

    I’m a former CTO. Here is the 15 sec coding test I used to instantly filter out 50% of unqualified applicants. – Jose Zarazua

    A former CTO shares a simple coding screening question used to filter job applicants. The test presents basic code logic that qualified developers can solve mentally in seconds, while unqualified candidates resort to copy-pasting into interpreters or AI tools. The question includes a hidden character that produces different results when copy-pasted versus solved manually. Results showed 50% of applicants used automated tools, 47% answered correctly, and 3% answered incorrectly, effectively halving the candidate pool requiring deeper review.

  2. 2
    Article
    Avatar of bytebytegoByteByteGo·23w

    How Reddit Migrated Comments Functionality from Python to Go

    Reddit migrated their comments functionality from a legacy Python monolith to a Go microservice, handling their largest dataset and highest write throughput. The migration used "tap compare" for read operations and "sister datastores" for writes, allowing validation with real traffic while maintaining zero risk. Key challenges included cross-language serialization issues, database access pattern differences, and race conditions in verification. The migration succeeded with zero user disruption and delivered an unexpected bonus: p99 latency was cut in half, dropping from occasional 15-second spikes to consistently under 100 milliseconds.

  3. 3
    Article
    Avatar of weprodevWeProDev·19w

    Learn Python in 2026.

    Python remains essential in 2026, particularly for AI workflows. The best approach is learning by writing and running code rather than passive consumption. A structured, example-driven GitHub repository provides a roadmap from fundamentals to advanced topics. Python skills compound over time, enabling better understanding of AI ecosystems, faster code adaptation, and effective debugging of integrations. Recommended learning resources include Codebasics and Corey Schafer YouTube channels for practical, engineering-focused tutorials.

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    Article
    Avatar of lpythonLearn Python·21w

    What’s the best resource you’ve used to learn Python programming?

    A discussion prompt asking the community to share their most effective resources for learning Python programming, including websites, apps, courses, books, and YouTube channels.

  5. 5
    Article
    Avatar of lobstersLobsters·23w

    Use Python for Scripting!

    Python 3 offers significant advantages over shell scripts for automation tasks, particularly for cross-platform compatibility. While Bash scripts often fail between Linux and Mac due to GNU vs BSD tool differences, Python's standardized library works consistently across systems. Python provides better readability with human-readable method names, a comprehensive standard library covering JSON, HTTP, and data structures, and is pre-installed on most machines. The article demonstrates practical examples comparing Bash's cryptic syntax with Python's clearer alternatives, recommending Python for scripts that grow beyond 10-20 lines or become difficult to maintain.

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    Article
    Avatar of simonwillisonSimon Willison·22w

    JustHTML is a fascinating example of vibe engineering in action

    JustHTML is a pure Python HTML5 parser that passes all 9,200+ browser vendor tests and achieves 100% test coverage. The library was built over several months using AI coding agents (Claude Sonnet, Gemini Pro, Claude Opus) in VS Code, but with extensive human engineering oversight. The developer established the API design, integrated comprehensive test suites, built custom profilers and fuzzers, and made all architectural decisions while letting the AI handle code implementation. This represents "vibe engineering"—using AI agents professionally with proper code review, testing, and engineering practices—rather than "vibe coding" which produces unvetted prototypes. The project demonstrates how experienced engineers can leverage AI as a typing assistant while maintaining responsibility for design, quality, and architectural decisions.

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    Article
    Avatar of freecodecampfreeCodeCamp·20w

    Christmas gifts for you from the freeCodeCamp community: Learn Python, SQL, Spanish, and more

    freeCodeCamp launched Version 10 of its curriculum with four new free certifications: Python, JavaScript, Responsive Web Design, and Relational Database/SQL. Each certification includes dozens of projects and a final exam. Two additional certifications (Front End Libraries and Back End Development) will launch in 2026. The platform also released English for Developers certifications (A2 and B1 levels) and beta A1 level courses for Spanish and Mandarin Chinese. The community published 129 video courses, 45 books, 452 tutorials, and merged over 4,000 commits to their open source platform in 2025.

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    Video
    Avatar of bigboxswebigboxSWE·22w

    Programming principles that altered my brain chemistry

    Three core programming principles can improve code quality: avoid overusing null by rethinking design and using proper types instead of raw primitives; choose appropriate data structures (like enums and classes) to make algorithms naturally follow and code more maintainable; and prioritize writing clear, readable code for humans over clever one-liners. These principles, inspired by legendary programmers like Tony Hoare and Rob Pike, emphasize simplicity as the key to managing programming complexity.

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    Article
    Avatar of simplethreadSimple Thread·24w

    Getting Back to Basics

    A hands-on exploration of building machine learning models from scratch, starting with a trading algorithm using regression trees that achieved 220% returns on historical stock data. The author then tackles energy demand forecasting by implementing a feed-forward neural network with backpropagation before upgrading to LSTM networks to handle temporal patterns. Key challenges include addressing gradient explosion through data scaling, switching from ReLU to tanh activation functions, and implementing the Adam optimizer. The final LSTM model with 50 neurons successfully predicts hourly energy interconnection flows without overfitting, demonstrating that foundational ML techniques remain powerful tools for practical time-series forecasting problems.

  10. 10
    Article
    Avatar of mlmMachine Learning Mastery·23w

    The Roadmap for Mastering Agentic AI in 2026

    A comprehensive learning path for building autonomous AI systems that can plan, reason, and act independently. Covers foundational mathematics and programming, machine learning fundamentals, autonomous agent architectures, specialization areas like robotics and workflow automation, deployment strategies using Docker and cloud platforms, and portfolio development. Includes curated resources from beginner prerequisites through advanced topics like multi-agent systems, transformer-based decision-making, and reinforcement learning with human feedback.

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    Article
    Avatar of c8e54637d3ee4126a9c503737169de61Keshav Ashiya·22w

    Docify: Building a Production RAG System for Knowledge Management

    Docify is an open-source RAG system that processes documents locally while maintaining AI capabilities. The architecture uses 11 specialized services including async embedding generation with Celery, hybrid search combining pgvector and BM25, multi-factor ranking with citation verification, and token-aware context assembly. Built with PostgreSQL pgvector for vector storage, Redis for task queuing, and Ollama for local LLM inference, it supports heterogeneous document formats and implements deduplication via SHA-256 hashing. The system uses HNSW indexing for sub-200ms vector search, reciprocal rank fusion for search result merging, and citation verification to reduce hallucinations.

  12. 12
    Article
    Avatar of duckdbDuckDB·22w

    Announcing DuckDB 1.4.3 LTS

    DuckDB 1.4.3 LTS is now available with important bugfixes addressing correctness issues in HAVING clauses, JOIN operations, and indexed table updates. The release introduces beta support for Windows ARM64, including native extension distribution and Python wheels via PyPI. Benchmarks on TPC-H SF100 show 24% performance improvement for native ARM64 compared to emulated AMD64 on Snapdragon-based systems. Additional fixes include race condition crashes, memory management improvements during WAL replay, and various edge cases in Unicode handling and Parquet exports.

  13. 13
    Article
    Avatar of platformaticPlatformatic·22w

    Python-Node: Streaming and WebSocket Now Supported

    @platformatic/python-node v2.0.0 introduces HTTP streaming and WebSocket support, enabling real-time bidirectional communication between Python ASGI applications and Node.js. The release implements ASGI 3.0 protocol with new handleStream() method for incremental response processing, request body streaming with backpressure, and full WebSocket support. This enables use cases like server-sent events, live dashboards, chat applications, and ML model inference while maintaining backward compatibility. The streaming architecture provides proper backpressure between languages, reduces memory footprint for large responses, and allows immediate access to headers before body completion.

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    Article
    Avatar of lpythonLearn Python·23w

    VSCode Disaster

    A developer seeking Python learning resources after encountering difficulties with VSCode as their development environment. They're looking for alternative recommendations to get started with Python programming.

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    Article
    Avatar of cloudflareCloudflare·23w

    Python Workers redux: fast cold starts, packages, and a uv-first workflow

    Cloudflare Python Workers now support any Pyodide-compatible package with significantly faster cold starts than competitors. Using memory snapshots and WebAssembly architecture, Workers achieve 2.4x faster cold starts than AWS Lambda and 3x faster than Google Cloud Run when loading common packages. The platform integrates with uv for package management through pywrangler tooling, enabling easy deployment of Python applications globally. Technical innovations include memory snapshot restoration, careful entropy handling for randomness, and function pointer table management to eliminate Python initialization overhead during cold starts.

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    Article
    Avatar of infoworldInfoWorld·21w

    Python type checker ty now in beta

    Astral's ty, a Rust-based Python type checker, has entered beta with extremely fast incremental updates. It can be installed via uv or as a VS Code extension, with a stable release planned for 2026. Built around incrementality, ty selectively re-runs computations when code changes, making live updates significantly faster than alternatives like Mypy, Pyright, and Pylance. The tool features Rust-inspired diagnostic messages that provide context across multiple files and can run orders of magnitude faster than other Rust-based language servers on large projects.

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    Article
    Avatar of hnHacker News·23w

    Tongyi-MAI/Z-Image

    Z-Image is a 6B parameter image generation model featuring three variants: Z-Image-Turbo (distilled for sub-second inference with 8 NFEs on H800 GPUs), Z-Image-Base (foundation model for fine-tuning), and Z-Image-Edit (specialized for image editing). Built on a Scalable Single-Stream DiT architecture, it excels at photorealistic generation, bilingual text rendering (English/Chinese), and instruction following. The model uses Decoupled-DMD distillation algorithm and DMDR (combining DMD with reinforcement learning) for few-step generation optimization. Available on Hugging Face and ModelScope with PyTorch and Diffusers support.

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    Article
    Avatar of lonely_programmerLonely Programmer·20w

    Top Five Languages in 2025

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    Article
    Avatar of lobstersLobsters·24w

    ty

    ty is a new Python type checker written in Rust that emphasizes speed. It can be run via uvx or installed directly, and checks Python files in a project directory for type errors. The tool automatically discovers virtual environments and installed packages, with configuration options available through CLI commands. An online playground is available for quick testing.

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    Video
    Avatar of TechWithTimTech With Tim·19w

    FastAPI + React B2B SaaS Full Project Build - Orgs, Users, Billing, Roles & More...

    A comprehensive tutorial demonstrating how to build a B2B SaaS application with organizations, team members, billing, subscriptions, permissions, and role-based access control. The implementation uses FastAPI for the backend and React for the frontend, with Clerk handling authentication, organization management, and billing. The tutorial covers database modeling with SQLAlchemy, JWT token verification, permission systems, API route creation, and integrating Stripe-style subscription tiers with member limits.

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    Article
    Avatar of newstackThe New Stack·20w

    Java Developers Get Multiple Paths To Building AI Agents

    Java is emerging as a strong contender to Python for enterprise AI development, with multiple frameworks now available for building AI agents. LangChain4j, Embabel, Koog, and Crew4J provide Java developers with tools for integrating LLMs and building agentic systems. While Python remains dominant for research and prototyping, Java's advantages in scalability, performance, concurrency, and enterprise integration position it well for production AI deployments. Industry analysts and framework creators predict Java could match or surpass Python for enterprise AI within 18 months to three years, particularly as the technology matures and production requirements become more critical.

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    Article
    Avatar of ae9yxnk5iMiguel Ángel Durán·23w

    JavaScript, TypeScript and Python coding challenges every day of December

    AdventJS offers daily coding challenges throughout December for JavaScript, TypeScript, and Python developers. Each challenge includes built-in tests, scales in difficulty to accommodate all skill levels, and provides opportunities to compare solutions with other developers. It's designed to help developers build consistent practice habits and improve their coding skills.

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    Article
    Avatar of djangoDjango·19w

    DSF member of the month - Clifford Gama

    Clifford Gama is featured as DSF member of the month for December 2025. He has contributed over 5 merged PRs to Django core and serves on the Triage and Review Team. The interview covers his journey from discovering Django through CS50 and its comprehensive documentation, his current work optimizing PDF generation with WeasyPrint, and his path to becoming a contributor. He emphasizes the value of code review and triage work, highlighting how the Django community's collaborative approach and high standards create excellent learning opportunities. Clifford shares his appreciation for Django's ORM, documentation, and welcoming community, particularly through Djangonaut Space.

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    Article
    Avatar of roadmaproadmap.sh·20w

    The Most Practical Intro to Python Multithreading

    Python multithreading enables concurrent execution of tasks within a single process by using the threading module. The Global Interpreter Lock (GIL) limits true parallelism for CPU-bound tasks, making threads most effective for I/O-bound operations like network requests or file handling. Key concepts include creating threads with Thread class or ThreadPoolExecutor, managing thread synchronization with locks and semaphores, and understanding daemon threads. Best practices involve using context managers for locks, avoiding shared state when possible, and considering multiprocessing for CPU-intensive workloads.

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    Article
    Avatar of hnHacker News·21w

    ty: An extremely fast Python type checker and language server

    Astral announces the Beta release of ty, a Rust-based Python type checker and language server that's 10-60x faster than mypy and Pyright without caching. Built with an incremental architecture for extremely fast live updates in editors, ty features advanced type system capabilities including first-class intersection types, sophisticated type narrowing, and reachability analysis. The tool includes a diagnostic system inspired by Rust's error messages and supports all standard language server features. Available via uv or VS Code extension, ty is open source under MIT license and aims for a Stable release next year.

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