How can we quickly learn a new programming language? In this article, we'll share our weekend experience of learning Python by building a complete project.
Logto, as an identity service, providing a smooth experience across various programming languages and frameworks is essential. This often involves creating Software Development Kits (SDKs). However, when the programming language lies outside our tech stack and our team lacks familiarity, crafting a robust SDK becomes a challenge.
Python posed such a challenge for us. Despite having many Python users, we lacked a Python SDK, a lingering concern. Determined to address this, I started to bridge this gap.
Although I have years of programming experience, Python remains relatively uncharted territory for me. While I'd tinkered with Python 2 briefly for simple scripts years ago, my knowledge was outdated. Nevertheless, it was time to dive in!
In my experience, the most effective approach to learning a new programming language is to build a complete project. Fortunately, our goal was clear: construct a Logto Python SDK for web applications.
Rather than jumping into code, let's break it down. Here's the list:
Looks like task 1 has the most work, so we need to confirm the scope and continue to break it down. This step is crucial to secure the boundary of the project, and avoid scope creep and over-engineering.
Previous work by our team saved me tons of time:
Referencing these resources, I can see a clear picture of what to do. While specifics are beyond this article's scope, let's move forward.
I'm using a Mac, so Python is already installed. However, I was wondering if there's a better way to manage the Python versions (I've heard the pain of version compatibility), just like nvm for Node.js. Quickly, I found pyenv and directly started to install it.
Next on the agenda: a package and dependency manager. Usually they are coupled. So why not pip (the Python default)? If you take a look at the requirements.txt, you'll find that it's just a list of packages with versions. This is not enough for an SDK which may be used by other projects. For example, we may need to add some packages for development, but we don't want to include them in the final SDK. The requirements.txt is too simple to handle this.
One of the benefits when you have other programming languages in your tech stack is that you can search for the "Python equivalent". So I searched for "package.json Python equivalent" and found Poetry, a stellar candidate:
pyproject.toml file, akin to package.json in Node.js.Modern CLIs often encompass an init command tailored for new projects. So does Poetry. I ran the command and it created a pyproject.toml file for me.
At last, the moment to write code had arrived. Initiating with the classic "Hello, World!" program is always a good choice. When learning a programming language, full-featured IDEs aren't always essential; an editor backed by a strong community, such as VS Code, is entirely adequate.
Given our SDK's focus on web applications, I started with a simple web server utilizing the popular framework Flask.
Leveraging Poetry's capabilities, installing Flask can be easily done by running poetry add flask. Then, following Flask's official quickstart guide, I composed a 'hello.py' file with the following snippet:
Launching the server via flask --app hello run and navigating to http://localhost:5000 on my browser yielded the desired outcome. It worked!
As a beginner, I was not hurry for writing more code. Instead, there are plenty of information to receive from the code snippet:
from x import y to import a module or a class.new keyword.@app.route serves as a decorator that registers a function as a route handler.
def keyword.As you can see, if we try to understand every line of code instead of "just make it work", we can learn a lot from it. Meanwhile, Flask's official documentation further explained the snippet in details.
Now it's time to start the project. Soon I defined a LogtoClient class and tried to add some properties and methods to feel the language:
Subsequently, integrate the class with Flask:
It started to feel like a real project. But I felt something was missing: a type system.
Since it's a SDK, incorporating a type system will help users to understand the API and reduce the chance of errors when developing.
Python introduced type hints in version 3.5. It's not as powerful as TypeScript, but it's better than nothing. I added some type hints to the LogtoClient class:
Looks much better now. But the challenge raised when it comes to a complex type like an object with predefined keys. For example, we need to define a LogtoConfig class to represent the config object:
It looks okay, but soon we'll need to face the problems of encoding, decoding, and validating the object from JSON.
After some research, I chose pydantic as the solution. It's a data validation library which works with type hints. It supports diverse JSON functionalities without following tedious boilerplate code.
Thus, the LogtoConfig class can be rewritten as:
It also taught me about class inheritance in Python by appending parentheses after the class name.
Within the Logto SDK, we need to make HTTP requests to the Logto server. If you have experience with JavaScript, the phrase "callback hell" likely rings a bell. It's a common problem when dealing with asynchronous operations. Modern programming languages present similar solutions like Promise or coroutine.
Luckily, Python has a built-in solution of async and await. Before using them, ensure the compatibility with popular frameworks. In Flask, this can be done by installing the async extra and using async def instead of def:
Then we can use await to wait for the result of an asynchronous operation.
HTTP requests is an interesting topic. Almost every programming language has a native solution, but developers usually use a third-party library if for ease of use. Some examples:
XMLHttpRequest vs. fetch vs. axiosURLSession vs. AlamofireHttpURLConnection vs. OkHttpThis is also true for Python. My decision was to use aiohttp as it supports async and await, coupled with its popularity.
Before Copilot, we should now come to the tedious part of writing business logic. With the help of the SDK convention and other SDKs, I can write the descriptive comments for each method before writing the code.
It adds more code readability, also helps developers to understand the API right in the IDE or editor via code intelligence.
For instance, consider the generateCodeChallenge method, the comments can be written as:
This posed a great prompt for Large Language Models (LLMs): comprising method definitions by clear comments. And Copilot didn't disappoint:
Some tweaks might be required, but it doesn't matter. It already changed the game.
That's pretty much the progress achieved on the first day. It was a long day, but with modern tools and technologies, it was way better than I expected.
Based on the work of the first day, business logic was done rapidly. But for an SDK, it's still insufficient. Here are the tasks for the second day:
Unit tests saved us many times, so I won't skip it. Here are common considerations when writing unit tests:
With these questions in mind, I found the built-in unittest module fell short for some cases. So I chose pytest as the test framework. It supports asynchronous tests and looks mature enough.
The journey revealed some interesting new concepts like fixture to me. This can also benefit the mindset when writing code in other languages.
Every language has its own code formatting styles. Personally, consistent formatting can make me happy and comfortable; it's also helpful for code review and collaboration.
Rather than browsing the argument of the "best" style, I decided to pick an opinionated formatter and stick to it.
Black looks like a good choice. The only frustration is the unmodifiable tab size. But it's not a big deal, I chose to accommodate it.
As an SDK, it should be compatible across prevalent Python versions. By searching "python version usage statistics", I determined to use Python 3.8 as the minimum version.
The virtue of environment manager now shows up. I can easily toggle the Python version by running pyenv local 3.8 and poetry env use 3.8. I could then run the tests to unveil compatibility issues.
Continuous integration guarantees the quality of every code change. As our repository was hosted on GitHub, GitHub Actions presented the natural choice.
The core workflow follows straightforward principles:
GitHub Actions has a good community, so it only takes a few minutes to construct the workflow.
By employing matrix strategies, we can run the workflow on different Python versions, even on different operating systems.
The final step is to publish the SDK. For public packages, this can be typically done by submitting to the official language-specific package registry. For example, npm for Node.js, PyPI for Python, and CocoaPods for Swift.
Poetry is my guiding star. Just run poetry publish to publish the package to PyPI. It's that simple.
It was an engaging journey. Without the help of the open-source community, it would be much harder. Applaud to all the contributors!
Here are some general takeaways:
You can find the ultimate outcome in this repository. With the same strategy, I also quickly built the Logto PHP SDK. Don't hesitate to let us know if you have any suggestions.
Hope this article is helpful for learning a new programming language. Happy hacking!