profile

The Friday Loop

10 Git Features You Probably Didn’t Know About (But Should!) | Issue #21

Published about 1 year ago • 3 min read

Hi there,
​

Did you know Git has a ton of hidden features that can seriously level up your coding game?
​

In this week’s video, I explore 10 Git features most developers don't even know about! 😲 From the clever use of Git Notes to the lifesaver that is Git Worktree (ever wish you could work on two branches at once?), I’ve got some cool tips to share.

​

If you're looking for ways to make your Git workflow smoother and more efficient, you don't want to miss this one. Let’s "git" going! 💻💪
​
Enjoy the video and happy coding!

​

Cheers,

Arjan

Learn a Little Every Day With Brilliant

As a former university teacher, continuous learning and growth are in my DNA. That’s why I’m excited to introduce you to Brilliant, an interactive learning platform and today’s sponsor. ✨

Brilliant helps people learn quantitative and technical skills, especially in math, data, and computer science / AI. On Brilliant, you’re learning by doing and everything is interactive. Their courses are a delightful experience of guided discovery, designed to improve your ability to think and reason from first principles. 🤖

Learning a little every day is one of the most important things you can do—both for personal and professional development. Brilliant is designed to help you build a daily learning habit you’ll keep. Each lesson is bite-sized, so you can build real skills in minutes a day.

Join 10 million people around the world and start your 30-day free trial today. Plus, The Friday Loop readers get a special 20% off a premium annual subscription. 🙌

# News

The First PyCon NL Conference!

I’m super excited to be speaking at PyCon NL on October 10th at the Jaarbeurs in Utrecht!

If you’re attending, be sure to stop by and say hi! 👋 I’ll be diving deep into functional programming and how it can transform your Python code. 🐍✨

Let’s make it an awesome event—see you there! 😉

Why I’m Switching to Polars

In his latest post, Ari Lamstein shares why he’s making the leap from Pandas to Polars for data manipulation.

He highlights Polars’ intuitive syntax and how it simplifies working with dataframes, much like the Tidyverse did for R users. While performance gains are a bonus, it’s the ease of use that sealed the deal.

If you’re looking to level up your data game with something both faster and simpler, this is a must-read. Check out the full blog here.

# Community

Plant_Boy, one of our community members, recently kicked off a great discussion on Discord about what really defines a Senior Engineer/Developer. Is it just a title, or are there concrete differences in responsibilities and expectations?

I’ve covered similar topics in my videos, like “8 Tips for Becoming a Senior Developer” and “How to Prepare for a Python Senior Developer Interview,” but this thread has sparked some insightful conversations, touching on:

  • The different ways companies define senior roles.
  • The key traits of leadership, mentorship, and handling complex challenges.
  • Whether or not budgeting is part of a senior engineer’s role.

Want to dive deeper or share your thoughts? Join the conversation on Discord and be part of the discussion!

Do you enjoy my content on YouTube and would you like to dive in deeper? Check out my online courses below. They've helped thousands of developers take the next step in their careers.

🚀 The Mindset Online Course Series

The goal of this series is to help junior developers grow their skills to become senior developers faster.

💥 Other Courses

💡 If you’re part of a development team at a company, I offer special packages for companies that give your team the tools to consistently write high-quality code and dramatically increase your team's productivity.

🪄 Learntail

My team and I created an AI quiz generator designed to accelerate your learning, called Learntail. You can try it for free or unlock even more capabilities and features with the monthly subscription. Take a look here.

​Unsubscribe | Send by ArjanCodes

Wolvenplein 25, Utrecht, UT 3512 CK

The Friday Loop

by ArjanCodes

Every Friday, you'll get a recap of the most important and exciting Python and coding news. The Friday Loop also keeps everyone posted on new ArjanCodes courses and any limited offers coming up.

Read more from The Friday Loop

Hi there, Have you ever found yourself writing functions like this? def render_article(article_id, db, logger, user, config, feature_flags, etc): …and then passing the same parameters through five different layers of your app? In my latest video, I walk through a realistic Python example and show how to fix this mess using the Context Object Pattern. I’ll start with the "before" version, refactor step by step, and explore: How to group related dependencies using a context object When this...

5 days ago • 1 min read

Hi there, This week’s video is all about uv workspaces, and why they’ve completely changed the way I manage Python projects. In the video, I walk you through a real-world example: I build a CLI tool and a FastAPI API that both fetch and summarize news headlines using OpenAI. But the real lesson is in how the project is structured. I show you how to share a local package between apps, define common dependencies like openai or httpx only once. And you can manage everything using uv’s workspace...

12 days ago • 1 min read

Hi there, When I see an if-statement with multiple elifs in my code, it almost always triggers an investigation. Is there some way to rewrite this to make the logic simpler? Is there a chance that in the future I'll need to add even more complexity? If so, I'll try to redesign the code so that I don't need that chain of if-elif statements. In this week’s video, I cover a design pattern that helped me eliminate many of those chains from a project + at the same time made the code easier to...

19 days ago • 1 min read