Brett Cannon

#Python core developer; principal software engineer for #Microsoft working on Python stuff (although opinions my own, etc., etc.); snarky #Canadian

Sponsor: https://github.com/sponsors/brettcannon/
Blog: https://snarky.ca
GitHub: https://github.com/brettcannon/
Notes: https://opensource.snarky.ca

Public Key

npub1nmmcjzfzv6ltn8fe6nka9v6ezgnsxzp30jm9j4zvkuxvqkdtdmgq4t0f6a

NIP-05 Address

brettcannon_at_fosstodon.org@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsfaaufpy3xd04en5uafmwjkdv3yfcrpqchedje23xtwrxqtx4ka5qpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0ds4ktuu7

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1nmmcjzfzv6ltn8fe6nka9v6ezgnsxzp30jm9j4zvkuxvqkdtdmgq4t0f6a

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Last Notes

2025-06-06 04:02:52 UTC

Heads up that I will be migrating this account to https://mastodon.social/@brettcannon shortly (assuming everything goes well). I believe the most visible thing that will happen is if I follow you I will show up as following you again from the new account.
The impetus for this was https://urbanists.social/@fancysandwiches/114628765770487011

2025-05-27 05:07:42 UTC

I was poking around the Mastodon APIs and I can't find a way to have a bot hide individual posts for me, only update my filters list. Am I missing something?

2025-05-23 23:07:53 UTC

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Is there to add a link via a GET request for use with e.g. Feedbin?
https://feedbin.com/help/sharing-read-it-later-services/

2025-05-22 20:49:24 UTC

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Does it provide a text-only view that strips out all the superfluous stuff on a page?

2025-05-22 19:01:21 UTC

Mozilla is shutting down Pocket.
https://getpocket.com/farewell
Where to next? @npub1rry…457c ?

2025-05-18 17:07:19 UTC

The trailer for the Python documentary is out!
https://youtu.be/pqBqdNIPrbo?si=9LLlghqZkJRAcnpF

2025-05-16 05:22:42 UTC

I wrote a blog post unravelling t-strings to help explain what they are doing -- providing syntactic access to the f-string parser -- while we wait on the official docs.
https://snarky.ca/unravelling-t-strings/
/cc @npub1p8l…anzv @npub1ep6…cx3c

2025-05-14 21:15:12 UTC

There were layoffs at MS yesterday and 3 #Python core devs from the Faster CPython team were caught in them. If you know of any jobs, please send them their way (they kind of know Python, CPython, and its internals well 😉):
Eric Snow: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericsnowcurrently/
Irit Katriel: https://www.linkedin.com/in/irit-katriel/
Mark Shannon: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-shannon-bb459551/

2025-05-09 23:45:20 UTC

If you open an issue and use "GPT" as a verb then I'm going to assume your solution is wrong. Not because using AI is inherently bad, but because I'm going to assume you don't understand the problem or solution and you just "prompted" the problem away.

2025-05-06 19:19:16 UTC

The spec for pylock.toml is up!
https://packaging.python.org/en/latest/specifications/pylock-toml/

2025-04-24 14:55:46 UTC

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because the OS vendors don't make money from it and the printer manufacturers don't have competition based on who helped make printing easier

2025-04-23 15:33:18 UTC

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out of context I thought you were talking about AI pricing.

2025-04-21 16:29:20 UTC

Uv has a PR open to add pylock.toml support!
https://github.com/astral-sh/uv/pull/12992

2025-04-10 17:40:04 UTC

t-strings are coming!
https://peps.python.org/pep-0750/
https://discuss.python.org/t/pep750-template-strings-new-updates/71594/130

2025-04-09 20:41:18 UTC

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We're a brown noise household.

2025-04-07 19:06:17 UTC

Anyone know of an amp for ceiling speakers that does multi-point Bluetooth? Our house came with https://www.arylic.com/products/a30-wireless-amplifier , but we can only connect one device at a time which is annoying when we want to use our Bluetooth turntable.

2025-03-19 22:04:10 UTC

I FINALLY asked for pronouncement on PEP 751 -- lock files for #Python : https://peps.python.org/pep-0751/
It does contain what is, I believe, necessary to have multi-use lock files. If that gets to stay in (@npub16na…98m2 has said that at this point he will ask me to remove stuff instead of rejecting the PEP outright), then @npub1zgm…dan3 is off the hook for making a video. 😉

2025-03-07 01:08:37 UTC

Due to the actions of the US government towards Canada, I will not be attending #PyCon US this year.
https://snarky.ca/why-i-wont-be-attending-pycon-us-this-year/

2025-03-05 23:49:05 UTC

Mousebender 2025.0 is out with PEP 740 support (index support for digital attestations).
https://pypi.org/project/mousebender/

2025-02-20 16:38:45 UTC

It looks like sometime around Feb 9 my follower count on Bluesky surpassed my follower count on Mastodon.
https://github.com/brettcannon/brettcannon/commit/f963c06577bda0e76a6c6dd6f849586d177c21f7

2025-02-19 19:57:55 UTC

Great video, partially made possible thanks to Python being used to help process the video using I believe ffmpeg before being sent back to Earth.
https://fosstodon.org/@stim3on/114026793346585973

2025-02-13 19:37:40 UTC

What mapping apps/platforms do people prefer that are not Google or Apple?
Paid is fine. Good business details are the most important to me, then directions.

2025-02-12 21:42:02 UTC

For those of you on both Bluesky and Mastodon, where do you prefer to be followed? ("don't care" is not an option unless you don't want me following you at all.)

2025-02-07 23:47:30 UTC

With PEP 2026 rejected, how do you remember what year a Python version is/was/will be released? Remember that Python 3 turns everything up to 11 (slight Spinal Tap reference); take 3.N, add 11 to N, and that's the year of initial release. E.g. 3.14 is coming out in 2025 (this year): 14+11 = 25.
Note this only works since Python started doing annual releases.

2025-01-30 20:56:44 UTC

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Sure, but are their users thinking about how they are launching a Python *interpreter* or running Python *code* and the interpreter is an implementation detail they don't know/care about?

2025-01-29 05:46:35 UTC

If the Python Launcher starts to run code like `hatch run`, `uv run`, etc. does, should it still be called the Python Launcher?

2025-01-27 22:32:14 UTC

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Have you talked to Russell?

2025-01-05 05:43:12 UTC

I finally listened to https://realpython.com/podcasts/rpp/228/ where @npub1p8l…anzv said I was one of his "heroes" ( @npub1r2a…wq68 also had some kind words for me). Well, I hope Paul knows he's one of my heroes in the Python community for spending over 30 years being such a friendly, welcoming person who promotes others before himself.

2024-11-27 00:28:53 UTC

I wrote a blog post explaining what the #PSF Conduct WG does since I have heard some people get it wrong https://snarky.ca/what-the-psf-conduct-wg-does/

2024-11-19 22:12:31 UTC

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I haven't, but I will say that Bluesky makes adding words so much easier than Mastodon I haven't had to worry. Toss in labelers and I haven't been upset about not porting my muted words list over.

2024-11-06 19:27:01 UTC

"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."
If the election result bothers you, one way to be active about addressing it outside of the US is to push your national government to divest what they can from depending on the US (e.g., diversify your economy). You can also try to support more non-American companies so the US has less of a stranglehold on key things.
Make the US an option, not a requirement for anything.

2024-11-02 22:09:15 UTC

While https://snarky.ca/my-proof-of-concept-record-type/ never got enough support, I wonder if I leaned into a class-like structure would garner more support?
```
record InventoryItem:
name
price
quantity
```
Add type annotations and it looks like a dataclass. Add in support for * and ** for attributes to control how the `__init__()` would work and then you keep the flexibility of my proposal from my blog w/o the awkward situation of how it looks without a docstring.
Thoughts?

2024-11-02 22:02:01 UTC

Wrote up a blog post and why I think you shouldn't user named tuples in new APIs unless you're wrapping an old one: https://snarky.ca/dont-use-named-tuples-in-new-apis/

2024-10-30 20:01:28 UTC

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I had not realized the plushie thing was a negative to anyone. And I didn't know where Kelsey had been to begin with. Shows you how plugged in I am thanks to checking both here and Bluesky once a weekday. 😁

2024-10-29 21:00:00 UTC

OK, what's happened to cause all the Mastodon/Bluesky chatter? Is it the series A funding for Bluesky, or something else? There's been an uptick of followers for me (https://bsky.app/profile/snarky.ca) as well as general commenting about the two here.

2024-10-25 20:33:08 UTC

I'm working on a new draft of my lock file PEP (751), and the one thing I hope that comes of it is @npub1zgm…dan3 takes advantage of PEP 735 and drops all of the development-related extras in `attrs`. 😉

2024-10-17 18:26:44 UTC

Any recommendations on web or Windows desktop clients for Mastodon? I realize one of the reasons I'm liking Bluesky is I'm liking the UI more.

2024-10-10 18:07:03 UTC

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And if https://github.com/wntrblm/nox/issues/848 happens then you get a virtuous cycle!

2024-10-09 21:22:37 UTC

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changelog at https://nox.thea.codes/en/stable/CHANGELOG.html#id1

2024-10-04 21:02:09 UTC

Echo chambers are bad. If you're feeling a bit rage-y about something, please try to take the time to understand why you feel that way and why the other side thinks what they think.
And if you are witnessing someone raging, stop and think about why that person is upset and whether they have done the above work before shaking your head in agreement.

2024-10-02 23:13:24 UTC

Ever find the parentheses around the exception classes unnecessary since we stopped worrying about Python 2? Yeah, Pablo and I agree, so we wrote PEP 758.
https://discuss.python.org/t/allow-except-and-except-expressions-without-parentheses/66453

2024-09-16 17:46:27 UTC

I've seen multiple posts today around uv installing Python for you. Now, for those that don't know, those Python builds come from https://github.com/indygreg/python-build-standalone , not python.org.
Now my question is do people care that the Python builds are not from python.org? Would it just be a preference to get builds from python.org? Or it is a showstopper for folks?
I ask because I was thinking of tackling this issue, but if people don't care then I have other packaging things to put my time into post lock files.

2024-09-06 20:08:14 UTC

If you are or have been an Exercism user, they could use some financial help: https://exercism.org/blog/september-2024-restructure .
I just donated $50 since I'm currently doing the Gleam track.

2024-09-05 04:41:04 UTC

While uv has been getting a lot of attention lately (and I'm not saying Astral doesn't deserve it), don't forget all the projects that came before it and continue to be maintained. For instance, PEP 723 was first implemented by pipx, we all know what came before `uv pip`, Hatch has a unified UX, etc. And all of these projects are written in Python, so while maybe not as fast as uv, they do run everywhere Python can.

2024-08-31 22:11:56 UTC

https://bsky.app/profile/snarky.ca
I decided to join Bluesky to try it out and join the country of Brazil over there. 😉 If you happen to be over there, please let me know what your profile is over there.
I do appreciate I can use my own domain as my username to make it obvious that it's me w/o having to run my own infrastructure like I would for the same result on Mastodon. I'm also interested in their approach to moderation. Lastly, I appreciate it's a public benefit LLC.

2024-08-29 23:15:37 UTC

Starting after Labour Day my role at work is changing! I will be going back to being an IC and I will be working on #Python in general, packaging stuff, internal consulting around Python, and keeping #WASI for #VSCode working.
Back to more coding! 😊

2024-08-29 17:31:31 UTC

I don't know how new this is, but @npub19rt…adh9 accepts donations: https://login.vivaldi.net/profile/donations .
I'm now giving them $5/month to directly support the browser I'm using -- since I'm a Kagi user and thus Vivaldi doesn't make any money off of me -- and I'm still giving $5/month to @npub1nvf…cpws to work towards more browser engine diversity.

2024-08-25 13:51:56 UTC

I don't know if I will ever publish it, but writing the outline for a blog post about how to respond to a conduct warning was definitely cathartic (summary: take a deep breath, learn from the feedback, apologize, and move on)

2024-08-20 21:00:01 UTC

Asking moderators to debate moderation actions publicly feels like it's destined to have an outcome that's as fair as Socrates' trial.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Socrates

2024-08-19 20:46:47 UTC

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This is why I have an emoji in my name on LinkedIn

2024-08-15 17:22:41 UTC

For #Django developers using #VSCode , the pre-release of the #Python extension has support for Django tests!
https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-python/issues/73#issuecomment-2291629074
If you can, please help us test it before we ship this live.

2024-08-14 03:11:31 UTC

If you want to delete your Best Buy Canada account (their privacy policy update says 3rd party sellers can give my data to data brokers), it seems you have to use https://privacyportal-ca.onetrust.com/webform/6d0f84db-4990-42e0-a979-33e77454100a/bb4e8b38-8178-4191-b9b3-e71a521179d3 . Got that from calling their support centre.

2024-07-30 18:57:22 UTC

It's always worth evaluating if your beliefs have shifted along with society.
I think some people hold beliefs that were considered progressive in the past (this could be a decade or more ago), but society has either caught up and so it's now mainstream, or has even surpassed those beliefs and made them conservative. And I think some people don't take well to having this pointed out and thus effectively being told they are not as progressive as they thought they were / used to be.