Using Virtual Environments in Docker & Comparing Python Dev Tools | Real Python Podcast #222

Should you use a Python virtual environment in a Docker container? What are the advantages of using the same development practices locally and inside a container? Christopher Trudeau is back on the show this week, bringing another batch of PyCoder's Weekly articles and projects.

We share a recent post by Hynek Schlawack about building Python projects using Docker containers. Hynek argues for using virtual environments for these projects, like developing a local one. He's found keeping your code in an isolated, well-defined location and structure avoids confusion and complexity.

We also discuss our development setups, including Python versions, code editors, virtual environment practices, terminals, and customizations. We dig into how your programming history affects the tools you use.

We share several other articles and projects from the Python community, including a group of new releases, addressing the "why" in comments, comparing a data science workflow in Python and R, removing common problems from CSV files, and a project for creating HTML tables in Django.

This episode is sponsored by InfluxData.

Topics:

- 00:00:00 -- Introduction
- 00:02:55 -- Python Releases 3.12.6, 3.11.10, 3.10.15, 3.9.20, and 3.8.20
- 00:03:26 -- Python Release Python 3.13.0rc2
- 00:04:07 -- Django Security Releases Issued: 5.1.1, 5.0.9, and 4.2.16
- 00:04:36 -- Polars Has a New Lightweight Plotting Backend
- 00:05:49 -- Why I Still Use Python Virtual Environments in Docker
- 00:11:37 -- How to Use Conditional Expressions With NumPy `where()`
- 00:15:55 -- Sponsor: InfluxData
- 00:16:39 -- PythonistR: A Match Made in Data Heaven
- 00:23:44 -- Why Not Comments
- 00:26:48 -- Video Course Spotlight
- 00:28:10 -- Discussion: Personal development setups
- 00:51:01 -- csv_trimming: Remove Common Ugliness From CSV Files
- 00:53:01 -- django-tables2: Create HTML Tables in Django
- 00:54:39 -- Thanks and goodbye

[mathman]

One of the first things I do when starting to work on a new machine is to clone my git repo of config files for Vim, Bash, Zsh, tmux, etc.