Hiring a Python developer can be a game-changer for your app development project, but finding the right fit is essential. With Python’s versatility powering everything from web development to Artificial Intelligence, and Data Science, the demand for skilled Python developers is through the roof.
In most of the situations, search feels like a maze, especially with all those ads for ‘Top talents at affordable rates’. Choosing poorly, though, can lead to costly reworks, missed deadlines, and plenty of complications. In this blog, I’ll walk you through some common hiring mistakes to avoid, so you can find a Python developer who’s truly right for your project.
Resumes don’t always reflect the full story. A developer might list down multiple tools and frameworks, but do they actually use those tools in real world projects? Many businesses end up hiring Python developers based on flashy resumes only to discover later that the developer doesn’t have the skills needed for the project.
The Fix – Don’t just consider the CVs at face value. Put candidates through a pre-defined coding assessment or ask them to solve real world assignments relevant to your project. It’s easy to say you can code, but difficult to prove it.
Tip – Running short of resources and time to test every profile and give them assignments, prefer partnering with a software development company. They’ll have already done the rigorous vetting process to select valid profiles fit for your project.
Even when you source the best Python developer, if they won’t blend well with your team, it might lead to unnecessary delays, frustration, and miscommunication. Soft skills like team collaboration and communication are just as critical as technical expertise.
The Fix – Take time to understand how a developer behaves in a team setting. Let them meet the team, question the way they handle the feedback, and check their adaptability to your company’s workflow.
Tip – The best thing to sidestep this challenge is to hire from the in-house team of a software development company that prioritizes cultural fit profiles for your project.
Hiring dedicated Python developers who don’t consider testing or quality assurance is a disaster waiting to happen. An experienced talent will not only write clean code but also ensure that it’s thoroughly optimized and tested. Missing out this step leads to unstable applications that eventually cost more time and money to fix.
The Fix- Hire Python developers who prioritize and implement quality assurance at every phase of app development.
Tip – The Python developer you hire should have a good grasp of code reviews, testing methodologies, and agile development practices.
Being a versatile language, Python is used for everything from web development to AI. However, the expertise required to build a Django-based app or a Flask-based app is different from what’s needed for data analysis and machine learning.
The Fix – Be aware of your project needs upfront. If you need a Python developer with specific experience – like using Flask for application development or Pandas for data science, ensure you are targeting developers with that expertise.
Tip – Many mobile app development companies specialize in matching the perfect Python developer with your specific project needs. They have in-house Python experts who have also worked in ML and AI projects, data scraping projects, RAG app development, LangChain projects, and beyond.
In a remote-first trend, why limit the profile sourcing process to local candidates? Chances are that the right Python developers might not be in your city or country. But hiring remote talents comes with its own set of problems like language barriers, time zones, and different work styles.
The Fix – Hire remote Python developers but ensure you have the right process and tools in place. Set clear communication protocols, be flexible with time zones, and use project management tools.
Tip – Working with a web app development company can be the best solution here. They know the complexities of remote work and have a team of vetted talent to select from, saving you a lot of stress.
It’s easy to get attracted to the concept of hiring a Python developer at a lower price, but more affordable doesn’t always mean great. A less experienced Python developer might take twice as long to finish the same task, costing you more in the long run.
The Fix – Emphasize the value a Python developer brings and not just the price. It’s worth paying slightly more for developers who can deliver high-quality code efficiently.
Tip – Partnering with a trusted app development company can help you find a sweet spot between cost and quality. They provide a flexible pricing model to give you access to top Python developers without majorly affecting your budget.
Many businesses make the mistake of hiring a developer who is apt to meet their instant project requirements but does not anticipate future challenges. It’s vital to hire experts who can not only build for current project needs but also ensure the code is scalable and future-proof.
The Fix – During the interview, question about how to tackle long-term scalability and maintenance. Their goal is just to complete the tasks allocated or do they think ahead?
Tip – Software development service providers often hire Python developers who are professionals in taking a long-term view of projects assigned, ensuring your code evolves as your project scales.
Several factors influence the cost of hiring Python developers.
Our team understands the problem businesses face while hiring Python developers. With our rigorous vetting process and exhaustive experience, we ensure that only the right experts make it to your project. Here’s how we differentiate from the rest-
To set yourself up for a winning hire, recognize the mistakes we have outlined and use the tips to avoid them. Be it testing real-world skills, thinking long-term, or emphasizing communication, these strategies can make an impact on your overall project success.
And if you are still confused about hiring the right Python developer for your project? You don’t have to do it alone. Hiring the project-fit developers from the in-house team of a reputable Python development company can make the entire hiring process quicker and far less stressful.
Which one proves best- the homegrown tech capabilities or the software development outsourcing services? Scroll on to the most curious data solving your project puzzles on what creates value from the often overlooked business opportunities.
For many companies, outsourcing IT services is a source of untapped value and savings. Some companies consider it as a ‘noncore’ spend. The case is reversed for companies with the technology innovation capacities and skill sets to address potential opportunities and leverage full value from their in-house development team.
Most importantly, global companies in the dominant industries acquire a great portion of software services from external digital transformation service providers. Annually, the global spending on IT outsourcing services is about $900 billion.
The IT outsourcing market has spiked from $122.9 billion in 2023 to $129.13 billion by the end of 2024 states The Business Research Company.
To scale your software development with the right decision and grit, let’s analyze the win-win mechanisms offered by in-house v/s outsourcing Python development services.
We have jotted down all possible advantages and drawbacks of opting for in-house Python development capacity v/s Python development outsourcing services to make a wise business decision on what value it brings to your project.
Gauge with an in-depth analysis of which option matches your Python app development project needs- a managed IT services provider or a housed staff. Let’s explore which type of app development sourcing positives outweigh the negatives.
Parameters | In-House Python Development | Outsourcing Python Development |
---|---|---|
What Does It Serve? | Hire web developers as per your business demands, adding them to your payroll and considering them as your team responsibility keeping in mind upskilling, retentions, and employee promotion process for each in-house developer. | Join forces with a software development outsourcing partner that takes care of all the technology management of your project, from experts needed, timelines, budget, IT infrastructure, use of the latest tech stack, and faster development lifecycle. |
Skillset Struggle v/s Access to Global Talent | Every different platform needs specific skill sets. For instance, iOS and Android development demands intricate expertise in coding languages like Objective C or Java. The process of searching for and sourcing the right skill sets proves a challenging task in today’s market where a shortage of skill sets has been a great concern. | You get access to specialized and latest skill sets with all the domain expertise needed for your Python development project like Django development, data analytics, AI experts, or cloud computing experts. With the global talent pool, it’s easy to evolve your project scope and keep up with the latest techniques. |
Expensive v/s Cost-effective | The cost of hiring in-house Python developers is more than just their salaries. From setting up the development infrastructure and training expenses, to even employee engagement activities, it takes a high financial investment for your Python development solution. | You pay a fixed fee for IT outsourcing services ensuring updated and secure software development by the certified Python developers, project progressing as per the focused timelines and budgets. |
Cultural Fit v/s Unfamiliar | During the hiring process, recruiters can gauge a candidate’s suitability to fit in the company culture. This makes the candidate easily collaborate with the company’s vision and mission when hired internally. | App development outsourcing partners will need an initial brief about your company vision, processes, and system you use, along with the project blueprint. Initial ideation will help them shortlist the best developers culture-fit for your project. |
Time Commitment | You require a significant commitment to timelines for your Python web development project. | Python development outsourcing companies have to serve project deadlines as per planned stages of app development lifecycle. |
Limitations v/s Flexibility | Serves businesses with limited scalability of skill sets as per project needs. When your project scope demands more skill sets at any of the development stages, it proves tricky to hire mobile app developers instantaneously when trying to scale your development team effectively. | erves you the competitive edge with complete scalability of the software development team. If your project needs varied expertise at any development stage, it becomes easier than ever to leverage just-in-time project-ready skill sets from mobile app development outsourcing services providers. |
Focus on Business Operations | It becomes more stressful when tech issues arise and if you aren’t experienced in technology and have to parallelly handle business operations effectively. For complicated mobile app development projects, in-house sourcing can prove challenging even if you have technical know-how. | Focus on the core of your business operations whilst a dedicated full-stack developer handles all your technology management, be it a simple or complicated web app development project. It ensures your IT infrastructure is updated with productive project progress. |
Faster Development Lifecycle | Limited skill sets and limited use of the latest development tools lack a faster app development lifecycle. | Use of advanced tech expertise and the latest development tools proves best for a faster and more productive app development lifecycle. |
Security Concerns | If your project scope expands, it’s not as easy as plugging an additional programmer into your in-house team. Challenges pile up from accountability, lack of specific expertise, and struggle to track the root cause of development issues that leave your project stalled out. | To onboard dedicated Python developers from a trusted app development agency makes the app solutioning immediate, from adding more experts to the team, accountability, use of AI tools for development, and instant tracking of development issues, it helps build your app with high-quality and security across all development phases. |
The cost of Python app development by the in-house team includes multiple parameters to come up with an accurate cost figure. It involves budget calculations for developer’s salaries, HR costs, cost of the development tools, hardware cost for developing a workstation for each developer, and testing devices. Managing an internal software developer and supervising the team takes time and resources.
The cost of Python development services outsourcing depends on the app complexities, unique features, and the location of your mobile app development company. The right formula to calculate the outsourcing cost involves external teams cost and time taken on the development phases.
The benefits of both are substantial. However for most software development projects, the perks of IT outsourcing are far-reaching. From cost saving, time commitment, and access to global expertise to gain a competitive edge, it helps SMEs, established businesses, to even large-scale setups thrive with optimized digital transformation.
Explore the checklist to select the right IT outsourcing services provider and discover how TOPS can be your project-ready outsourcing partner.
Access experienced python developers from the comfort of your office. Python development outsourcing service offered by TOPS itself is an essential checklist to select the right outsourcing partner for your app development project.
Want to harness data from multiple external platforms to gain accuracy in decisions and operations across your business ecosystems?
Data Scraping involves employing a critical algorithm or a program to retrieve, structure, and process huge amounts of data from the web. On the flip side, at the heart of data scraping app development is Python, a programming language popular for its ease of use, extensive libraries, and faster development tools.
Whether you want to build eCommerce intelligence, generate leads, conduct market research, enhance social media strategies, or monitor brand presence, Python for data scraping solutions makes the app development journey more agile, faster, and above all easier to integrate trending technologies.
This blog is a quick ride through the ‘how’, ‘what’, and ‘why’ to use Python for developing data scraping apps. Let’s get started!
How Does Web Scraping Work?
A single Python script sends an HTTP request to a website. Which then receives a raw HTTP response that needs to be parsed using the Beautiful Soup- one of the Python libraries for data scraping. It helps turn the raw response into structured data. This structured data is then processed to use it in the script to identify the text content in the data.
Here, a combination of scrapers and crawlers is used to fetch data from websites. By browsing a website, the web crawler indexes the content. Parallely, the web scraper extracts the data you have requested. You can mention the file format in which you want the data results to be visualized along with the storage option that you want a web scraper to save the data.
To develop a scalable Python web scraping app, explore the chief essentials, making it seamless to retrieve data from the web efficiently.
It is one of the most popular open-source web development tools for automating the web browsing functions allowing users to extract data and interact with the website seamlessly.
It is the latest cross-language and cross-platform web browser automation tool used to scrape web apps and dynamic web content. Using Playwright, it’s easy for web headless browsers like Chrome, Safari, and Microsoft Edge to navigate the web just like humans do.
Developers use varied web scraping techniques like HTTP programming, HTML parsing, Human copy-and-paste, DOM parsing, text pattern matching, computer vision web page analysis, or vertical aggregation based on the type and purpose to harness data from the web. Data scraping approaches vary based on the data sources and task complexities. Explore different types of data scraping that are high-in-demand among the innovators.
It encompasses text, prices, images, or any other data on the web pages which are used to gather market intelligence, monitor competitors, or track product prices.
It includes data extraction from the display output of other programs when the data is not accessible directly through databases or APIs.
Data extraction from social media platforms to leverage data related to user profiles, comments, posts, or other relevant data. It is used in market research, sentiment analysis, and understanding customer preferences.
Extract email addresses from the websites to build mailing lists along with implementing legal and ethical implications.
Understanding the website structure will help determine the exact location of the data you want to extract. Based on the type of website, it has a variety of categories, listings, pricing, ratings, or other data.
Firstly, open the developer’s tools and try selecting the content element on the webpage, you will discover the tags and classes of the selected content elements. This data is critical as it helps compile all other elements with such types of details.
Now you know which class to target, you need to get the HTML from the website.
After understanding the website structure, to get the HTML from the website, ‘Requests’- a Python library is used to send a GET request to the targeted website URL.
import requests # Base URL base_url = 'https://watch.toscrape.com/' # Send GET request to the base URL response = requests.get(base_url) # Get the HTML content html_content = response.text # Print the HTML content print(html_content)
This script will give a status code but you need to focus on the actual HTML content. Through response.text, you will get the HTML content of the website homepage that will serve as your initiation point to extract the data. This process varies based on the type of website you want to scrape data from.
Static websites don’t need any login credentials but dynamic websites do. Headless browsers like Selenium, Playwright, or Puppeteer are used in case of data extraction from dynamic websites.
For instance, to scrape data from a dynamic platform that majorly relies on JavaScript for content rendering.
First, install Playwright using pip, the Python package manager. It’s simple; just type pip install playwright in the command prompt and press ‘Enter’. Then, you need to install the necessary browser binaries by running playwright install.
Use Playwright in your script after importing it.
# Import Playwright from playwright.sync_api import sync_playwright # Use Playwright to open a browser, navigate to the website, and get the HTML source with sync_playwright() as p: # Set up the browser. In this example, we're using Chromium. browser = p.chromium.launch() page = browser.new_page() # Navigate to the website page.goto("https://quotes.toscrape.com/js/") # Get the HTML source html_source = page.content() print("HTML source of the website:", html_source) # Close the browser to free up resources browser.close()
You have your HTML ready to process it using the Python library – playwright.
Website structure may change due to the dynamic elements that alter the CSS or HTML of the webpages, or if the website is redesigned, or updated. To ensure that the data scraping code doesn’t miss essential information-
Even the best laid plans go amiss which is also true with the web scraping process. Sometimes you might fetch incomplete data from the website. When the web scraping script encounters these loopholes, it throws errors that can be fixed through Python’s ‘try-except blocks’. It lets us dictate how the program must react to the errors, ensuring it doesn’t burn or crash.
Another way to handle the exceptions is to check the HTTP status codes or implement the retry mechanism to handle exceptions. Using timeouts in your network requests, log errors, and robots.text help handle the web scraping exceptions gracefully.
A proxy server acts as an intermediary for requests received from clients needing resources from the servers that offer those resources. As web scraping involves multiple requests sent to the server from an IP address, the server might detect multiple requests and block the IP address to avoid further scraping of data. This is where proxies are used to continue the scraping as IP addresses change and create anonymity by hiding the IP address.
Some websites have highly complicated authentication methods such as Captcha, CSRF tokens, or even two-factor authentication (2FA). It’s important to adopt the web scraping script to handle these complexities.
You can parse the login page firsthand to extract the CSRF token and add it to the login request. Headless browsers like Selenium, Playwright, or Puppeteer are used in case of data extraction from websites with Captcha or 2FA authentication methods.
After fetching the HTML content, it’s time to structure this data how you need using ‘BeautifulSoup’, one of the best Python libraries for data scraping apps. This Python library is mainly used for pulling data out of XML and HTML files.
Firstly, convert the HTML into a BeautifulSoup object.
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup # Parse the HTML content using BeautifulSoup soup = BeautifulSoup(html_content, 'html.parser')
After converting the HTML, use find_all() method that helps return the list of all the data examples of the specific tag and its related attributes. To know which tags to consider, ID, Xpath, or Class are the few ways to locate the elements.
Now it’s time to fetch specific details out of the raw data sets, using find() to search within the elements. For example, to get the price, you need to look for the ‘p’ tag with class.
Next, to start filtering the data, you need to add an if statement informing Python to check for the exact data you are looking for.
# Extract watch information from the parsed HTML for watch in soup.find_all('article', {'class': 'product_pod'}): if watch.find('p', {'class': 'star-rating Five'}): title = watch.find('h3').find('a')['title'] price = watch.find('p', {'class': 'price_color'}).text[1:] watch_url = base_url + watch.find('h3').find('a')['href'] image_url = base_url + watch.find('img')['src'][3:]
Review the whole script that navigates webpage data and filters it with the exact details you want.
Previous steps showed extracting data from the first page of the website. What if you want to scrape data from the whole website?
Here, the website URL structure gives us hints on how to initiate pagination in data scraping. By using Python’s ‘for-loop’, it reads through each page, and removes the page number from the URL along with the iteration index.
Now, merge that script into the existing script to scrape all the pages on the website.
If you want to save this structured data for future use, you can store the data in CSV or other file formats.
Note, Python will save this data file in the existing working directory if you don’t specify another location to store the CSV file.
Firstly, import the CSV library and create a file. You are ready to start data scraping by looping all the webpages. After running the script, you will get a nice CSV of the structured data you want to fetch from the website.
If you need a JSON file, the process is similar to that of writing it to a CSV file. The only difference is that you need to add the details to a list and write that list to a JSON file.
Python makes it super easy to organize and save data scraped from the web.
It is recommended to partner with a trusted software development company critical to ensure the design and development choices are made in line with the best data scraping practices. This also involves leveraging sufficient skillsets and capabilities to develop essential data models for your unique software project.
Python development team at TOPS makes sure of the data quality, accurately articulates business needs, uses legit methods to scrape data without annoying the external platforms, and helps embed the core use of data scraping apps in your business processes and across the team.
Focusing on the larger to even smaller level of ‘high-value’ use cases for our client to leverage the scraped data has been our USP. Being the top Python development company for 9 years, we have exhaustively worked on the web scraping development environments and made it a forte.
The reason why Python is extensively used and considered one of the top-used programming languages in 2024 is its ease of use, clean and readable syntax, extensive 3rd party integration capabilities, and wide range of free libraries.
In fact, the design philosophy of the Python programming language focuses on code readability through exclusive use of whitespace. On the flip side, its object-oriented approach helps developers write clean and logical codes for small, medium, and large projects.
This has made the Python programming language a staple in data science and machine learning allowing developers to use the language to create data visualization, statistical calculations, manipulate and analyze data, build foundational models, and more.
Additionally, Gen AI led the rise in its adoption and scaling, which highly earned the business value for the takes, shapers, and makers who used the AI and Machine Learning models customized with proprietary data or built from scratch.
Even if you haven’t worked closely with ML models, this blog is a detailed guide that will save your time in exploring and selecting the best Python libraries for Machine Learning projects. It also covers answers to why decision makers like you choose Python as backend technology over others.
Being one of the trusted Python development companies, TOPS has explicitly researched and has come up with the list of best Python libraries for Machine Learning after considering its usage, use cases, and popularity. Scroll down to explore the capabilities and implementation of these Python libraries for ML models.
Python’s Machine Learning Library built by Google, TensorFlow Python is popular for what’s called ‘differentiable programming’. It automatically computes a specific function’s derivatives with the programming language. With TensorFlow, users can easily evaluate and develop Machine Learning and Deep Learning models through its flexible framework and architecture. It’s easy to leverage TensorFlow Python to visualize ML models on both mobile and desktop.
import tensorflow as tf # Initializing constants x = tf.constant([2, 4, 6]) y = tf.constant([1, 3, 5]) # Addition res = tf.add(x, y) # Initializing Session sess = tf.Session() # Result print(sess.run(res)) # Closing Session sess.close()
PyTorch is highly popular for its use in large and dense data sets or graphs. It is an open-source ML Python library that is based on Torch, a C programming language framework. This Python library is used in Machine Learning applications, especially for natural language processing and Computer Vision. PyTorch is a deep-learning Python library built by the Facebook AI research team.
Designed specifically for building neural networks for Machine Learning models, Keras becomes fully functional to train neural networks with minimal coding. It builds and evaluates neural networks with ML and Deep Learning models.
Scikit-Learn’s simplified design makes it a user-friendly library for those new to ML models. It ensures engaging UI Machine Learning tasks. It is unique among the popular Machine Learning libraries of Python. It makes it easy for classification, clustering, dimensionality reduction, regression, and model selection.
It is a Python library specifically developed to visualize data through tools that build static, interactive, and animated visualizations. This involves creating beautiful graphs, bar charts, plots, histograms, and more. This is popularly known for data visualization patterns. It has modules that make plotting easier through tools for controlling font properties, line styles, and more.
# Program to form a linear plot # Import packages & modules import matplotlib.pyplot as plt import numpy as np # Initializing data x = np.linspace(0, 4, 10) # Plotting data plt.plot(x, x, label='linear') # Adding legend plt.legend() # Showing plot plt.show()
In order to select the right Python libraries for your Machine Learning project, you need an expert consultation that helps drive your software development project in the right direction using the latest tools and agile methodologies. And TOPS has rich experience working on complex Python projects, offering new-age Python development services.
Explore how TOPS Infosolutions can be your extended tech team to handle any technology complexities for your software development needs.
We have a rock solid project management process in place to meet our client’s needs, minimize project risks, and avoid budget overruns. What’s most significant is our consistency in staying abreast with the latest technologies and trends. Hire Python developers who have gained tech excellence and worked on time-tested development processes for optimum outputs.