Oh this is fun :D

Also, remember:

⛔️ NEVER use `assert` with security-related or sensitive checks!

Like, never.

That's a sure-fire way of running into problems because `assert`s can be “turned off”...

And you don't want someone stealing your bank details because an `assert` didn't run!

In front of the expression, add a comma and then a custom string.

That custom string is the error message that will show up in front of the `AssertionError` if the assertion fails during runtime.

Make sure it's a good error message with helpful context!

I was thinking about those 6, yeah: upper, lower, title, capitalize, casefold, swapcase

Oh no! That's the type of bug I would take ages to find...

For example, ALL functions are Truthy, regardless of what they do.

Even a function that does nothing is Truthy.

```py
def foo():
pass

print(bool(foo)) # True
```

(By the way, you can check the Truthy/Falsy value of something with the built-in `bool`.)

Then, all other values are “Truthy”.

E.g., the empty list is Falsy but any other list is Truthy.

So, you can use the Truthy/Falsy value of a list to check if it's empty.

This is very idiomatic in Python.

Some other types don't have Falsy values!

I’ll write more about it tomorrow in my insider newsletter.

(Link in the bio.)

I’ll also share some examples so you can see what I’m talking about.

You'll learn to

👉 one-shot data (de)compression;
👉 write and read from compressed files; and
👉 compress and decompress data incrementally.

These are the most common and simpler scenarios.

If you want to give it a read, you can check it here: mathspp.com/blog/module...

The five modules have some pretty similar APIs...

Which was expected, since their purposes are essentially the same.

So, I wrote a short article that provides an overview of how to compress/decompress data using `compression`.

But `zstd` is a brand new compression module added in Python 3.14.

All of these modules can be accessed from `compression`:

```py
from compression import bz2, gzip, lzma, zlib, zstd
```

The older 4 can still be imported directly:

```py
import bz2, gzip, lzma, zlib
```

You still have some time to come up with that third idea.

They allow you to avoid using multiple `if` statements to append portions of the result to a final result string.

By using these fragments (and by using empty strings when the fragments are unnecessary), you keep your code flatter and cleaner.

I still have to submit my proposals! good job doing that early. I’ll likely end up doing it last minute, as per usual 😒

A similar thing happened to me the other day. Thankfully, it was just a 2 minute video, not a 30 minute one D:

Forgot to link to the issue/article from which I got the idea:

simonw.substack.com/p/building-a...

It's essentially a directory of standalone HTML files, yes.

My repo: github.com/mathspp/tools

It's a dumbed down/simplified version of github.com/simonw/tools

The tools live online at tools.mathspp.com