What was Pixels? Python Discord Pixels was our collaborative canvas event that we held between 25th May to the 14th June 2021 providing a beginner-friendly API to paint pixels on a virtual canvas. We built an API with FastAPI, Redis and PostgreSQL that would allow users to paint a single pixel on a virtual canvas, with rate limits so they could only do so a few times a minute. Painted pixels would then be returned to the API as well as posted every minute into a channel in our Discord server so folks could keep up with the current state of the canvas.

We have several tools setup to assist with the collection of statistics within Python Discord. We use these statistics to audit several things within the guild, such as help channel capacity, errors within our services and redundant channels. This article talks about several of the tools we use and problems we overcame while building this system. Grafana Grafana is the main visualisation tool we use, it queries several data stores including PostgreSQL, Prometheus and Graphite to render sweet looking graphs to our team.

What is Advent of Code? Advent of Code is one of Python Discord’s favorite events that happens each year. An Advent Calendar of small programming puzzles that are released each day from December 1st to December 25th. The puzzles can be solved in any language, although we’re obviously partial to the python solutions. The problems are designed for a variety of skill sets and skill levels, but it overall it gets harder as it goes on.