How can you easily reduce the size of a Python Docker container? What are the exceptions you should catch in your code? Christopher Trudeau is back on the show this week with another batch of PyCoder’s Weekly articles and projects. We cover a tutorial by Khuyen Tran at CodeCut about shrinking the size of a Python Docker container. The piece explores SlimToolKit, which analyzes a container at runtime, identifies what files are used, and then builds a minimal image with only those dependencies. We dig into a recent piece by Trey Hunner about Python exceptions. When trying to determine a strategy to handle potential errors, which exceptions should you catch and which should you leave unhandled? We also share other articles and projects from the Python community, including recent releases, two PEPs that have been deferred to 3.16, a critical vulnerability in an open-source ASGI framework, resolving a lazy import manually, a project to anonymize sensitive PII data, and a tool for loading Django settings from a TOML file. This episode is sponsored by AURI by Endor Labs. Course Spotlight: Raising and Handling Python Exceptions In this course, you’ll learn what an exception is and how it differs from a syntax error. You’ll learn about raising exceptions, making assertions, and catching exceptions to change the control flow of your program using the try, except, else, and finally keywords. Topics: 00:00:00 – Introduction 00:02:32 – Django 6.1 Alpha 1 Released 00:03:07 – Nuitka Python Compiler Release 4.1 00:04:00 – PEP 813: The Pretty Print Protocol (Deferred to 3.16) 00:04:28 – PEP 830: Add Timestamps to Exceptions and Tracebacks 00:04:50 – Millions of AI agents imperiled by critical vulnerability in open source package 00:07:27 – What Types of Exceptions Should You Catch? 00:13:28 – Sponsor: AURI from Endor Labs 00:14:18 – PyCon US 2026 Packaging Summit Recap 00:18:39 – Slim Down Python Docker Containers 00:24:17 – Video Course Spotlight 00:25:45 – Resolve a Lazy Import Manually 00:28:04 – presidio: Detect, Redact, & Anonymize Sensitive Data (PII) 00:32:37 – dj-toml-settings: Load Django settings from a TOML file 00:37:14 – Thanks and goodbye News: Django 6.1 Alpha 1 Released Nuitka Python Compiler Release 4.1 PEP 813: The Pretty Print Protocol (Deferred to 3.16) PEP 830: Add Timestamps to Exceptions and Tracebacks (Deferred to 3.16) Millions of AI agents imperiled by critical vulnerability in open source package - Ars Technica Missing Host header validation poisons request.url.path, bypassing path-based security checks · Advisory · Kludex/starlette Show Links: