The Missing 66% Of Your Skillset - Pybites

"Bob and I have spent many years as Python devs, and 6 years coaching with Pybites and we can safely say that being a Senior Developer is only about 1/3 Python knowledge. The other 60% is the ecosystem. It's the tooling. It's all of the tech around Python that makes you stand out from the rest. This is the biggest blind spot keeping developers stuck in Tutorial Hell. You spend hours memorising obscure library features, but you crumble when asked to configure a CI/CD pipeline."

"Dependency Management: Stop using pip freeze. Look at uv. Git: Not just add/commit. Learn branching strategies and how to fix a merge conflict without panicking. Testing: print() is not a test. Learn pytest and how to write good tests. Quality Control: Set up Linters (Ruff) so you stop arguing about formatting, and ty for type checking. Automation: Learn GitHub Actions (CI/CD). Make the robots run your tests for you."

"It looks like a lot. It is a lot. But this is the difference between a hobbyist and a professional. Does this make you feel overwhelmed? Or does it give you a roadmap of what to do this year? I'm curious! Feel free to hit me up in the Community with your thoughts. And yes, these are all things we coach people on in PDM. Use the link below to have a chat."

Becoming a senior developer requires only about one-third pure Python knowledge; the remaining skills involve ecosystem tools and workflows. Memorising library features without practical tooling experience leads to 'Tutorial Hell' and incapacity to handle CI/CD, merge conflicts, or deployment. Essential areas to build experience in include modern dependency management, advanced Git usage and branching, testing with pytest, linters and type checking, CI/CD automation with GitHub Actions, deployment using Docker and cloud, and CLI fluency with Makefiles. Practical competence in these areas distinguishes a hobbyist from a professional engineer.

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