#435 Stop with .folders in my ~/
25:34 Share

Topics covered in this episode:

- [**platformdirs**](https://pypi.org/project/platformdirs/?featured_on=pythonbytes))

• poethepoet) - **“**Poe the Poet is a batteries included task runner that works well with poetry or with uv.”

• Python Pandas Ditches NumPy for Speedier PyArrow)

• pointblank: )Data validation made beautiful and powerful)

• Extras

• Joke

Watch on YouTube)

About the show

Sponsored by us! Support our work through:

• Our courses at Talk Python Training)

• The Complete pytest Course)

• Patreon Support)ers)

Connect with the hosts

• Michael: @[email protected]) / @mkennedy.codes) (bsky)

• Brian: @[email protected]) / @brianokken.bsky.social)

• Show: @[email protected]) / @pythonbytes.fm) (bsky)

Join us on YouTube at pythonbytes.fm/live) to be part of the audience. Usually Monday at 10am PT. Older video versions available there too.

Finally, if you want an artisanal, hand-crafted digest of every week of the show notes in email form? Add your name and email to our friends of the show list), we'll never share it.

Michael #1: platformdirs)

• A small Python module for determining appropriate platform-specific dirs, e.g. a "user data dir".

• Why the community moved on from appdirs to platformdirs

• At AppDirs:

• Note: This project has been officially deprecated. You may want to check out pypi.org/project/platformdirs/) which is a more active fork of appdirs. Thanks to everyone who has used appdirs. Shout out to ActiveState for the time they gave their employees to work on this over the years.

• Better than AppDirs:

• Works today, works tomorrow – new Python releases sometimes change low-level APIs (win32com, pathlib, Apple sandbox rules). platformdirs tracks those changes so your code keeps running.

• First-class typing – no more types-appdirs stubs; editors autocomplete paths as Path objects.

• Richer directory set – if you need a user’s Downloads folder or a per-session runtime dir, there’s a helper for it.

• Cleaner internals – rewritten to use pathlib, caching, and extensive test coverage; all platforms are exercised in CI.

• Community stewardship – the project lives in the PyPA orbit and gets security/compatibility patches quickly.

Brian #2: poethepoet) - **“**Poe the Poet is a batteries included task runner that works well with poetry or with uv.”

• from Bob Belderbos)

• Tasks are easy to define) and are defined in pyproject.toml

Michael #3: Python Pandas Ditches NumPy for Speedier PyArrow)

• Pandas 3.0 will significantly boost performance by replacing NumPy with PyArrow as its default engine, enabling faster loading and reading of columnar data.

• Recently talked with Reuven Lerner about this on Talk Python too).

• In the next version, v3.0, PyArrow will be a required dependency), with pyarrow.string being the default type inferred for string data.

• PyArrow is 10 times faster.

• PyArrow) offers columnar storage), which eliminates all that computational back and forth that comes with NumPy.

• PyArrow paves the way for running Pandas, by default, on Copy on Write) mode, which improves memory and performance usage.

Brian #4: pointblank: )Data validation made beautiful and powerful)

• “With its … chainable API, you can … validate your data against comprehensive quality checks …”

Extras

Brian:

• Ruff rules)

• Ruff users, what rules are using and what are you ignoring?)

• Python 3.14.0b2) - did we already cover this?

• Transferring your Mastodon account to another server), in case anyone was thinking about doing that)

• I’m trying out Fathom Analytics) for privacy friendly analytics

Michael:

• Polars for Power Users: Transform Your Data Analysis Game Course)

Joke: Does your dog bite)?