2025-09-19 –, Main stage
Did you know you can run Python code within Python itself? In this talk, we explore how you can dynamically generate, and run, Python code using exec and why you might want to do it in the first place.
An often overlooked feature of programming languages like Python is the ability to dynamically generate and run code within an application. How can you do this? Why would you do this? We'll explore some use cases and some of the methods for doing this with built-in functions like exec. It's a useful feature to know and sometimes the right solution to a problem! We'll also discuss some best practices to avoid problems with running arbitrary code.
Intermediate
David is a "data generalist"; currently a freelance data consultant and educator with a background in software and web development. He co-hosts the Half Stack Data Science podcast about data science in the real world and is the author of The Well-Grounded Data Analyst (Manning, 2025); a book about the data skills that aspiring analysts actually need in their jobs.