Google is giving the open-source community an easier way to generate command-line interfaces from Python code. The company announced the open-sourcing of Python Fire, a library for automatically generating CLIs.

Python Fire does not require developers to do any additional work, define arguments, set up information, or write a main function to define how the code is run. “It uses inspection to turn whatever Python object you give it—whether it’s a class, an object, a dictionary, a function, or even a whole module—into a command-line interface, complete with tab completion and documentation, and the CLI will stay up-to-date even as the code changes,” wrote David Bieber, software engineer for Google Brain, in a blog post.

Rust focuses of productivity
The Rust programming language team is laying out a major initiative it has for this year: To improve the ergonomics of the core language. According to the team, this will help improve productivity and reduce the learning curve.

“Ergonomics is a measure of the friction you experience when trying to get things done with a too,” wrote Rust developer Aaron Turon in a blog post. “You want to achieve a state of ‘flow,’ in which ideas and intuitions are steadily transformed into working code with a minimum of fuss. (And, with Rust, we want that code to be reliable and fast as well.)”

The team will be using the road map tracker to organize ergonomic improvement ideas, and will try to reimagine and evaluate how newcomers approach Rust.

Progress adds connectors to DataDirect Hybrid Data Pipeline
Progress has announced a suite of prebuilt data connectors as part of the DataDirect Hybrid Data Pipeline. The connectors are designed to provide open data connectivity to SaaS CRM solutions such as Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle Sales Cloud, Salesforce, SugarCRM and Veeva CRM.

“ISVs in the analytics and data-management space need a way to easily integrate with and pull data from a wide range of CRM solutions,” said Dion Picco, General Manager, data connectivity and integration at Progress. “Our support for SaaS CRM with open SQL and REST connectors provides ISVs with a great option to instantly connect standalone tools to CRM data for advanced analytics capabilities.”

Talend releases Apache Beam powered Big Data solution
Talend has announced it is using Apache Beam for self-service and Big Data preparation. Apache Beam is a unified programming model for batch and streaming data-processing pipelines. The new Data Preparation solution is designed to provide users the ability to access, cleanse and analyze large datasets.

The solution’s capabilities allow customers to access any data source and share it across users and groups; utilize a pre-configured data dictionary; and crowdsource new data definitions.