#495 Banned

Topics covered in this episode:

• EuroPython 2026 videos are online
• The State of Django 2026: Boring is so back
• htmx 4.0.0 has been released
• 🐍 Functionally Zen
• Extras
• Joke

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Michael #1: EuroPython 2026 videos are online

The EuroPython Society has published all 117 recordings from EuroPython 2026 on the official EuroPython Conference YouTube channel. The conference ran July 13-19 in Krakow, Poland and celebrated the conference series' 25th anniversary. The playlist covers keynotes, panels, lightning talks, and full talk recordings across Python core, web, DevOps, data/ML, embedded, and other tracks.

• If you missed EuroPython 2026 in Krakow, this is the complete free on-demand archive of one of the year's biggest European Python events.
• 117 videos now live on the EuroPython Conference YouTube channel, last updated Aug 17, 2026.
• Michael’s personal watch list.

Calvin #2: The State of Django 2026: Boring is so back

• State of Django 2026 (JetBrains/DSF survey, ~3,500 devs, 40+ countries) - "boring is so back": Django's core stays reliable while everything around it moves fast
• Core is stable: Postgres 76–79% for 5 years running, templates ~80%, 43% already on Django 6.0
• AI is routine now (only 10% use none) but workflow's unsettled - Claude Code leads at 35%, and 56% still just use it for chat, not autonomous edits
• Tooling is consolidating: uv and Ruff both at 43% adoption, each replacing several older single-purpose tools
• Type hints are winning (57% use them) but the checker is up for grabs - IDE-built-in leads at 40%, Mypy 32%, with ty/Pyrefly emerging
• Two Django communities coexist happily: 72% server-rendered templates vs. 53% API-only - and htmx adoption jumped from 5% to 34% in five years

Michael #3: htmx 4.0.0 has been released

After 8 months of work, the htmx team shipped 4.0.0, a rewrite that moves internals from XMLHttpRequest to fetch() while keeping the API almost identical to htmx 2. Three changes may need action: attribute inheritance is now explicit via an :inherited suffix, event names follow a htmx:phase:action pattern, and history no longer caches pages in localStorage. Additions include built-in morph swaps, the new hx-partial tag, and many core extensions. htmx 2 stays supported and remains latest on npm until early 2027.

• htmx is the go-to frontend layer for Python server-rendered apps (Flask, Django, FastAPI), and 4.0 is deliberately low-drama: nearly behavior-compatible, so teams can upgrade on their own schedule and pick up morph swaps and streaming extensions.
• Explicit inheritance is the biggest migration item: hx-confirm, hx-headers, hx-target and friends no longer cascade to children unless you append :inherited; hx-disinherit and hx-inherit are gone
• A CLI upgrade checker (npx [email protected] upgrade-check) flags spots needing :inherited, renames like hx-disable to hx-ignore, removed attrs like hx-vars, and old event names in templates and JS
• Events follow htmx:phase:action (htmx:beforeRequest becomes htmx:before:request); most error events collapse into htmx:error and htmx:xhr:* events are removed with XMLHttpRequest
• History no longer snapshots pages in localStorage; back navigation re-fetches and swaps into the body, fixing a chronic support headache, with a new hx-history-cache extension for sessionStorage caching
• New features: out-of-the-box morphing swaps, the [HTML_REMOVED] tag for multi-element updates, streaming over SSE/WebSockets/multipart, and hx-live, their Alpine-inspired DOM scripting solution
• No forced upgrade: 2.x stays latest on npm until early 2027 (4.0 remains next) and is supported indefinitely; the team even ships official LLM skill files for guidance and upgrading

Calvin #4: 🐍 Functionally Zen

• Functionally Zen (Kyle Adams, Test Double) - riffs on "simple is better than complex" with 7 extra tenets for Python simplicity
• Core claims: idiomatic > non-idiomatic, data > functions, pure functions > impure functions > classes
• Favorite example: a medical-dosage calculator replaced with a plain lookup dict - no logic, no tests needed
• Big idea: keep a thin "impure shell" around a "pure core" (Gary Bernhardt's functional core / imperative shell) - push side effects (API calls, DB, files) to the edges
• Side note: constructors that do I/O are "poison pills" - the side effect infects every class that depends on them
• Payoff: pure functions and no-mock tests are just easier to read and reason about than the alternative

Extras

Calvin:

• uv ships trusted-publisher token revocation and Python 3.15 support
• Making a Python interpreter in 1024 bytes

Michael:

• Steering council voting is now open

Joke: Makes you look like this?