#375 Pointing at Countries

Python Bytes

Topics covered in this episode:

• pycountry
• Does Python have pointers?
• ingestr
• Make your terminal nice
• Extras
• Joke

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• Brian: @[e-mail]
• Show: @[e-mail]

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Michael #1: pycountry

• A Python library to access ISO country, subdivision, language, currency and script definitions and their translations.
• pycountry provides the ISO databases for the standards:
  • 639-3 Languages
  • 3166 Codes for representation of names of countries and their subdivisions
  • 3166-1 Countries
  • 3166-3 Deleted countries
  • 3166-2 Subdivisions of countries
  • 4217 Currencies
  • 15924 Scripts

Brian #2: Does Python have pointers?

• Ned Batchelder
• Turns out, this is really the description of “what’s a variable in Python?” that helps to make sense of the “variables as names” model in Python, especially for people coming from languages that use pointers a lot.
• You can use id() to find out what a variable points to
• You just can’t do the reverse of access it given an id.
• There’s no “dereference” operator.
• See also Python Names and Values, also by Ned
  • Should be required reading/viewing for all Python curriculum.

Michael #3: ingestr

• ingestr is a command-line application that allows ingesting or copying data from any source into any destination database.
• Works on both MongoDB and Postgres and many more.
• incremental loading: append, merge or delete+insert

Brian #4: Make your terminal nice

• David Lord
• David’s switched to Fish and Starship
• I tried switching to Fish several times, and I guess I’m good with zsh.
  • Although I admire the brave comic sans motto: “Finally, a command line shell for the 90s”
• But I’m finally ready for Starship, and it takes almost no time to set up
• Plus it’s fast. (Has it always been Rust?)

Extras

Brian:

• Doing some groundwork for a SaaS project, using SaaS Pegasus
  • I just talked with Cory from Pegasus for an upcoming PythonTest episode
  • I haven’t decided whether to save up SaaS episodes for one big series, or spread them out.
  • But mostly I’m excited to get my project started.

Michael:

• Excellent video about “cloud exit”
• uv - The Next Evolution in Python Packages?
• Python 3.13 a5
• Target’s Open Source Fund via Pat Decker

Joke: Anti-social engineer