In November of 2024 I wrote a blog post titled "Is Python Really That Slow?" , in which I tested several versions of Python and noted the steady progress the language has been making in terms of performance. Today is the 8th of October 2025, just a day after the official release of Python 3.14. Let's rerun the benchmarks to find out how fast the new version of Python is!
In the Q&A session following my EuroPython 2025 presentation about the Microdot web framework, a member of the audience asked me what the performance of MicroPython running on a microcontroller is. This took me a bit by surprise, because I really had no way to quantify it, I just knew it was, in vague terms, not great. I never questioned the low performance, because it was never a problem for me. My answer to the question was that microcontrollers cannot replace a computer, and that these devices are only useful for small, focused tasks that are not demanding in any way. But after returning from the conference I kept thinking about this question, which piqued my curiosity. So I decided to build a better mental image of the performance these little machines have. In this blog post I want to share some results that compare Python code running on a few microcontroller boards that I have collected through my experiments with hardware, along with my laptop and a Raspberry Pi 4 to help put things into perspective.
People keep asking me If I use Generative AI tools for coding and what I think of them, so this is my effort to put my thoughts in writing, so that I can send people here instead of having to repeat myself every time I get the question. From the title you already know that this isn't a pro-AI blog post. But it isn't an anti-AI post either, at least I don't think it is. There are already plenty of articles by AI promoters and AI critics, so I don't feel there is a need for me to write one more of those. While I'm definitely not neutral on the subject, in this article I'm just going to share my personal experience with these tools, from a strictly technical point of view.
My article on creating a React + Flask project is one of the most visited on this blog. Can you believe that I wrote it over 5 years ago? In this article and video I'm going to share how I'm building this type of project in 2025. The main change I've introduced since I documented my 2020 process is that now I'm using Vite (French word that is pronounced "veet" and means "quick") instead of to scaffold the React application, since the latter isn't maintained anymore.
The other day I shared my code editor window during a video call with a client, and he immediately did a double take. "How did you make your code look like that?", he wanted to know. Have a look at the following screenshot and see if like my client, anything calls your attention: If you are wondering what secret keyboard trick allows you to type , , and other unusual characters, and then how to get Python and other programming languages to accept them then read on, as this is much easier than you think and you can do it too!
I've been given a review copy of The Quick Python Book, Fourth Edition by Naomi Ceder, published by Manning. Since I often get asked for Python book recommendations, I thought it would be a good idea to share a review, in case you are looking for material to sharpen your Python skills.
A common need in web applications is to create a form that allows the user to enter a list of items, with the number of items not known in advance. This is a pattern often used when entering user information, specifically for phone numbers or addresses, but has a lot of other uses as well. In the example below you can see how the user dynamically adds more phone numbers to the form by clicking the "Add another" link. Implementing this with Flask is surprisingly tricky, as it requires a combination of back and front end techniques working together. In this article I will show you two possible solutions, a basic one that uses only Flask and a more complete one for the Flask-WTF form handling extension.
In this tutorial I'm going to show you how to extend SQLAlchemy so that you can define database columns that are stored encrypted. In the solution I'm going to share, the columns that are designated as encrypted will transparently encrypt and decrypt themselves as data moves to and from the database. For this tutorial I'm going to use SQLAlchemy version 2, the latest and greatest. All the techniques I will present can be adapted to SQLAlchemy 1.x if you need to work with legacy versions. If you are interested in updating your knowledge of SQLAlchemy, I have a SQLAlchemy 2 book that can help.
In this article I'm going to review the steps you need to take to obtain an A+ SSL security rating for your website, as mine has . This tutorial applies to any hosting solution that uses Nginx as web server or reverse proxy, running on a Debian based distribution of Linux such as Ubuntu . The SSL Certificate provider that I use is Let's Encrypt , which is trusted by all major web browsers and issues certificates for free.
I'm seeing a stream of "year in review" blog posts about all sorts of topics pop up to coincide with the start of 2025. I'm not sure if this is going to be a new tradition for me, but to follow this trend in this article I'm going to give you my review of the most interesting things that happened in the Flask ecosystem in 2024.
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