217 pointsby AlSweigart7 days ago12 comments
  • fireattack6 days ago
    > playsound

    This library is unfortunately effectively abandoned -- it hasn’t received any updates in over four years, and its latest version doesn’t work at all: https://github.com/TaylorSMarks/playsound/issues/101

    (A workaround exists: downgrading to version 1.2.2, but that comes with its own issues.)

    The last time I experimented with audio in Python, I was surprised by how lacking its multimedia libraries are.

    For example, when I needed to read audio files as data, I tried `SoundFile`, `librosa` (a wrapper around `SoundFile` or `audioread`), and `pydub`, and none of them was particularly satisfying or has seen much active development lately.

    If you need to read various formats, pydub is probably your best bet (it does this by invoking ffmpeg under the hood). I was hoping for a more "native" solution, but oh well. Unfortunately, `pydub` is also unmaintained and has some serious performance issues (for example: https://github.com/jiaaro/pydub/issues/518 )

  • bgwalter6 days ago
    This author is an apologist for the slander of Tim Peters:

    https://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/1f00qdo/no_vote_of_...

    He cites Glyph Lefkowitz to support him, who now gives advice on lunch vs. dinner networking strategies at PyCons. Which should be taken seriously: Being in the right circles and talking is all that matters in the Python ecosystem.

    • sfilmeyer6 days ago
      I'm not in near deep enough to have any ideas what you're talking about, and the link didn't really help. Can you explain?

      Who is Tim Peters? How were they slandered? What did the author do that you disliked? Who is Glyph Lefkowitz? Why is citing Glyph Lefkowitz an indictment of the author?

    • worthless-trash6 days ago
      Let the post stand on its own. I'm fucking sick and tired of people dragging unrelated politics into discussions.
  • amelius6 days ago
    > Playing a video file from your Python program is complicated.

    You can use PySide6. Here is an example:

        import sys
        from PySide6.QtWidgets import QApplication, QWidget, QVBoxLayout
        from PySide6.QtMultimedia import QMediaPlayer, QAudioOutput
        from PySide6.QtMultimediaWidgets import QVideoWidget
        from PySide6.QtCore import QUrl
    
    
        class VideoPlayer(QWidget):
            def __init__(self):
                super().__init__()
                self.setWindowTitle("Video Player - video.mp4")
                self.resize(800, 600)
    
                # Layout
                layout = QVBoxLayout()
                self.setLayout(layout)
    
                # Video widget
                self.video_widget = QVideoWidget()
                layout.addWidget(self.video_widget)
    
                # Media player
                self.media_player = QMediaPlayer(self)
                self.audio_output = QAudioOutput(self)
                self.media_player.setAudioOutput(self.audio_output)
                self.media_player.setVideoOutput(self.video_widget)
    
                # Load video file
                self.media_player.setSource(QUrl.fromLocalFile("video.mp4"))
    
                self.media_player.play()
    
    
        if __name__ == "__main__":
            app = QApplication(sys.argv)
            player = VideoPlayer()
            player.show()
            sys.exit(app.exec())
  • alabhyajindal7 days ago
    I learned Python from your Udemy course of the same name. Congrats on the new edition of the book!
    • AlSweigart6 days ago
      I know I've been saying this for years, but I seriously will get around to updating the videos in the Udemy course this year.
  • jmlim005 days ago
    Back in school, after taking an intro to programming language course as an elective, I've been struggling to understand the missing link between knowing a programming language and writing a program. This book bridged that gap, and everything finally clicked. I'll definitely be checking out the new content as well. Thanks for changing my life!
  • bix67 days ago
    One of my favorite programming books of all times. Cheers Al!
  • cortical_iv7 days ago
    I'm curious why you didn't end up including this material?
    • AlSweigart6 days ago
      Page count. Automate the Boring Stuff with Python is supposed to be a beginner book for people with no coding experience, but it's almost 600 pages. The biggest hurdle to coding isn't being "smart" enough, but rather getting over the intimidation factor.

      The editor recommended we cut this chapter. It made me realize that even though I work with multimedia stuff all the time, this isn't really something most office workers do (at least, not at the scale where you'd want to write Python scripts).

      A lot of teaching people to code is hiding details so you don't fire hose them with information they don't need yet. So many software nerds don't get this, and they're excited about all these cool advanced techniques without realizing that beginners don't need to know about recursion or operator overloading. (I completely skip OOP in the book.)

      • cortical_iv5 days ago
        Makes sense: OpenCV is amazing, but has many rabbit holes and pitfalls. Thanks for posting the draft for us to peruse!
    • globalnode7 days ago
      When I saw yt-dlp I thought "risky", wasn't there was a lot of complaining from YT back in the day about this programs predecessor?
  • Simon_O_Rourke6 days ago
    Love it, that's where I direct all our new hires who want to pick up the basics of Python. I'll be reading this chapter myself this weekend too.
  • xbmcuser7 days ago
    I was never able to get my head around programing despite my interest over the years. But LLM and python scripts in the last 3-4 years have changed my life.
    • ymck7 days ago
      What thing have you found most interesting or impactful for you?
  • analog317 days ago
    This is fantastic. I've gotten so much out of cv2 and Python, and just a perusal of the page suggests that there's lots more to learn.
  • ajot6 days ago
    As others here have already said, thank you for your book, and for having it for free on your website. After years of thinking about leraning to program, I finally started with you book a couple of years ago. It is so much fun, and it's been super helpful on my day to day job.
  • geophph7 days ago
    And a transit nerd supporter!