Topics covered in this episode: Has the cost of building software just dropped 90%? More on Deprecation Warnings How FOSS Won and Why It Matters Should I be looking for a GitHub alternative? 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 Supporters Connect with the hosts Michael: @mkennedy@fosstodon.org / @mkennedy.codes (bsky) Brian: @brianokken@fosstodon.org / @brianokken.bsky.social Show: @pythonbytes@fosstodon.org / @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. HEADS UP: We are taking next week off, happy holiday everyone. Michael #1: Has the cost of building software just dropped 90%? by Martin Alderson Agentic coding tools are collapsing “implementation time,” so the cost curve of shipping software may be shifting sharply Recent programming advancements haven’t been that great of a true benefit: Cloud, TDD, microservices, complex frontends, Kubernetes, etc. Agentic AI’s big savings are not just code generation, but coordination overhead reduction (fewer handoffs, fewer meetings, fewer blocks). Thinking, product clarity, and domain decisions stay hard, while typing and scaffolding get cheap. Is it the end of software dev? Not really, see Jevons paradox: when production gets cheaper, total demand can rise rather than spending simply falling. (Historically: the efficiency of coal use led to the increased consumption of coal) Pushes back on “only good for greenfield” by arguing agents also help with legacy code comprehension and bug-fixing. I 100% agree. #Legacy code for the win. Brian #2: More on Deprecation Warnings How are people ignoring them? yep, it’s right in the Python docs: -W ignore::DeprecationWarning Don’t do that! Perhaps the docs should give the example of emitting them only once -W once::::DeprecationWarning See also -X dev mode , which sets -W default and some other runtime checks Don’t use warn, use the @warnings.deprecated decorator instead Thanks John Hagen for pointing this out Emits a warning It’s understood by type checkers, so editors visually warn you You can pass in your own custom UserWarning with category mypy also has a command line option and setting for this --enable-error-code deprecated or in [tool.mypy] enable_error_code = ["deprecated"] My recommendation Use @deprecated with your own custom warning and test with pytest -W error Michael #3: How FOSS Won and Why It Matters by Thomas Depierre Companies are not cheap, companies optimize cost control. They do this by making purchasing slow and painful. FOSS is/was a major unlock hack to skip procurement, legal, etc. Example is months to start using a paid “Add to calendar” widget! It “works both ways”: the same bypass lowers the barrier for maintainers too, no need for a legal entity, lawyers, liability insurance, or sales motion. Proposals that “fix FOSS” by reintroducing supply-chain style controls (he name-checks SBOMs and mandated processes) risk being rejected or gamed, because they restore the very friction FOSS sidesteps. Brian #4: Should I be looking for a GitHub alternative? Pricing changes for GitHub Actions The self-hosted runner pricing change caused a kerfuffle. It’s has been postponed But… if you were to look around, maybe pay attention to These 4 GitHub alternatives are just as good—or better Codeburg, BitBucket, GitLab, Gitea And a new-ish entry, Tangled Extras Brian: End of year sale for The Complete pytest Course Use code XMAS2025 for 50% off before Dec 31 Writing work on Lean TDD book on hold for holidays Will pick up again in January Michael: PyCharm has better Ruff support now out of the box, via Daniel Molnar This is from the release notes of 2025.3: "PyCharm 2025.3 expands its LSP integration with support for Ruff, ty, Pyright, and Pyrefly.” If you check out the LSP section it will land you on this page and you can go to Ruff. The Ruff doc site was also updated. Previously it was only available external tools and a third party plugin, this feels like a big step. Fun quote I saw on ExTwitter: May your bug tracker be forever empty. Joke: Try/Catch/Stack Overflow Create a super annoying linkedin profile - From Tim Kellogg, submitted by archtoad
