Python's packaging ecosystem is one of its biggest strengths, but Windows users are often frustrated by packages that do not install properly. One of the most common errors you'll see is this one: As far as errors go, "unable to find vcvarsall.bat" is not the most helpful. What is this mythical batch file? Why do I need it? Where can I get it? H...

Last week I attended the first ever PyCaribbean conference, organised by the local community and held in Santo Domingo, the capital city of the Dominican Republic. Conferences like PyCaribbean are an opportunity for Python developers and enthusiasts to come together and meet, network, discuss, and generally enjoy being part of a global community...

Today, we're going to start the next multi-million-dollar pizza chain. You might think that the first thing we need to make pizza is a pizza oven and the ability to make toast without burning it, but who ever became a millionaire by following the "conventional" approach? Instead, we're going to start with the ordering system. The days when you c...

Welcome! We here on the Python team at Microsoft are starting a blog. And since this is the first post, we wanted to give a bit of an introduction of who we are, what we do, and what this blog is for. Microsoft has a Python team? Yes, we do! We are part of the Data Group in Azure, the same group that brings you SQL Server, Azure ML Studio and Cor...