If you're like me, or like many other Python developers, you've probably lived (and maybe migrated) through a few version releases. Python 3.7(.3), one of the latest releases, includes some impressive new language features that help to keep Python one of the easiest, and most powerful languages out there. If you're already using a Python 3.x version, you should consider upgrading to Python 3.7. Read on to learn more about some of the exciting features and improvements.

Data Classes

One of the most tedious parts about working with Python prior to 3.7 in an object-oriented way was creating classes to represent data in your application.

Prior to Python 3.7, you would have to...

Earth Day inspires millions of people around the world to take action on behalf of our beautiful planet. For some, this means getting out and volunteering for a day with an environmental group. For others, it’s about changing our daily habits to be more mindful about things like recycling, driving, or water usage. But a growing sector is taking earth-friendly action at scale. From nonprofits to NGOs to green businesses, visionary entrepreneurs are using modern technology to address Planet Earth’s very modern problems.

I often work with Heroku customers to help them share their story with the world. Along the way, I find myself constantly inspired by so many innovative apps that change...

The data we store holds value, but refining data into meaning remains a difficult task. Over the last few months, we've taken a step back to figure out what we can do to help our users cross that divide, and rebuilt Heroku Dataclips from scratch with that goal in mind. The result is an experience that makes accessing and working with your data easier than ever, enabling anyone on your team familiar with SQL to take advantage of your most valuable asset without the need for specialized tools or knowledge of the database.

Dataclips is a flexible, lightweight way to query your data in Heroku Postgres and share the results. At Heroku, we use them regularly across all of our departments....

Setting up a database is a relatively straightforward process (Heroku has an add-on for that), but getting it to run well in production is sometimes another matter. As your application grows and your data grows along with it, you will likely find a number of performance bottlenecks specifically related to your database, and this post aims to help you diagnose and address those issues when they arise.

As with all components of your infrastructure it’s important to have early visibility into the performance characteristics of your database. Watching this data as your application grows will give you a much better chance of spotting performance issues and regressions as they’re introduced.

I...

Heroku has many public API endpoints. Each of these endpoints needs to be tested so that we know how they work, and documented so that our customers (and other API consumers) know how they work. Follow along, and we’ll learn how Heroku uses JSON Schema to test and document our Platform API – and how it helped us uncover an unexpected bug, rooted in the way the Oj gem parses Big Decimals.

JSON Schema files are like blueprints that define the structure and semantics of other JSON documents. When a JSON Schema file is applied to a JSON document, you can determine whether the document is valid (conforms to the schema) or is invalid (does not conform to the schema).

So how do we at Heroku use...