REST – eli4d.com

Interesting results from a 2018 Python Developers Survey

JetBrains, the makers of many IDEs teamed up with Python Software Foundation to run developer survey for 2018 (this is similar to the State of JavaScript survey for JS developers).

The 2018 survey can be found here: https://www.jetbrains.com/research/python-developers-survey-2018/ (There’s also a 2017 survey too)

Some interesting survey points:

Python 3 adoption is inching closer to 100 percent. Considering that Python 3 was released in 2008, the adoption curve has been very very slow.
The key take aways is a nice summary of the current state of Python development. It’s interesting to note that data science has overtaken web development among Python users. This is not completely surprising considering the availability of Jupyter notebook in conjunction with excellent tooling available through data science frameworks and libraries like NumPy, Pandas, Matplotlib, and SciPy.

Neat REST API Testing Resources

I came across these interesting REST testing resources:

https://reqres.in/: a hosted REST API that is ready to go
- advantages: no setup needed
- disadvantages: no guarantees of where your data resides (privacy, etc…)
JSON Server: an easy way to locally deploy a fake REST server
- advantages: you can put whatever data you want since it’s on your machine (so no worries about privacy)
- disadvantages: need to set it up (though the setup seems very easy using Node.js)

You can find the newsletter archive at https://eli4d.com/category/newsletter/ and the blog at eli4d.com.

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Tech Pick

Have you ever had to build a documentation website? It’s certainly a pain if you do it from scratch. You could use something like Google Sites, but that’s not so professional besides the Google product graveyard possibility. So what can you do?

There are many static site generators but how well are these particular projects maintained? Also, since they’re generalized tools – a particular generator may not fit the requirements of a documentation website (like the need for translations).

Some fine open source engineers at Facebook have created Docusaurus – a site generation tool that is geared for the creation and maintenance of documentation websites. The motivation for Docusaurus and how the tool can be updated without breaking an already created site can be found in the first blog posting.

With Facebook’s use of Docusaurus for its open source projects this is a tool that is likely to be maintained and enhanced over time.

Media Pick

Lots of web application and website development centers around API development (and this is becoming more of a norm). Content management systems like WordPress are de-coupling the backend (i.e. database) from their frontend using APIs (WordPress’s API info can be found here: https://developer.wordpress.org/rest-api/). This allows web applications/sites to create customized front-ends that are more customized to the application’s purpose and it allows for future expansion of the application’s data (for example a mobile app that needs to use the site’s database). To communicate to API endpoint a particular “language” needs to be spoken by both client (for example web browser) and server. This is where REST and GraphQL come in.

A recent episode of the Syntax.fm podcast explains GraphQL (another Facebook open source effort) and how it’s likely to replace REST. It’s a great episode for both beginners and experts, and the show notes are fantastic.

My recent Holiday Review

If you’re looking for battle-tested products and services/products to avoid (i.e. CrashPlan, Drobo, O’Reilly Media), then check out my 2017 Holiday Review.