What’s a good way to enable or disable code paths without redeploying the software? How can you use feature flags to toggle functionality for specific users of your application? Christopher Trudeau is back on the show this week, bringing another batch of PyCoder’s Weekly articles and projects. Christopher shares an article exploring the use of feature flags. The piece advises targeting specific users, storing schemas, and relying on well-worn code paths. He also discusses the danger of the exponential growth of functionality tests as feature flags are added. We dig into a comparison of six popular Python visualization libraries. The article provides code examples along with their respective visual output to highlight features and make selecting the optimal library for your work easier. We also share several other articles and projects from the Python community, including a news roundup, benchmarking MicroPython, simplifying IPs and networks in Python, a “scream” cipher, and a browser-based graphical viewer for the output of Python’s cProfile module. This episode is sponsored by InfluxData. Course Spotlight: Exploring Astrophysics in Python With pandas and Matplotlib This course uses three problems often covered in introductory astrophysics courses to explore in Python. Along the way, you’ll learn some astronomy and how to use a variety of data science libraries like NumPy, Matplotlib, pandas, and pint. Topics: 00:00:00 – Introduction 00:03:04 – Python 3.14.0rc3 is go! 00:03:14 – Django 6.0 alpha 1 released 00:04:27 – PEP 782: Add PyBytesWriter C API 00:05:06 – PEP 794: Import Name Metadata 00:05:30 – PEP 803: Stable ABI for Free-Threaded Builds 00:05:55 – Announcing the 2025 PSF Board Election Results! 00:06:18 – Top 6 Python Libraries for Visualization: Which One to Use? 00:18:34 – Sponsor: InfluxData 00:19:24 – Feature Flags in Depth 00:22:55 – Benchmarking MicroPython 00:30:02 – Video Course Spotlight 00:31:16 – Simplify IPs, Networks, and Subnets With the ipaddress 00:34:52 – SCREAM CIPHER (“ǠĂȦẶAẦ ĂǍÄẴẶȦ” 00:36:20 – SnakeViz: browser based graphical viewer for the output of Python’s cProfile module 00:40:58 – Thanks and goodbye News: Python Insider: Python 3.14.0rc3 is go! Django 6.0 alpha 1 released - Django PEP 782: Add PyBytesWriter C API (Final) PEP 794: Import Name Metadata (Accepted) PEP 803: Stable ABI for Free-Threaded Builds (Added) Python Software Foundation News: Announcing the 2025 PSF Board Election Results! Show Links: Top 6 Python Libraries for Visualization: Which One to Use? – The vast number of Python visualization libraries can be overwhelming. This article shows you the pros and cons of some popular libraries, including Matplotlib, seaborn, Plotly, Bokeh, Altair, and Pygal. Feature Flags in Depth – Feature flags are a way to enab