Introduction to PyWatch

Every day I work with file systems — saving files, creating folders, moving projects. But honestly, I still don’t really know how they work under the hood. For me, this has become a real challenge: to understand the fundamentals that lie beneath any software project. This knowledge is a foundation that can be applied in countless areas, from simple scripts to large-scale services. That’s how my new project — PyWatch — was born. It’s not just code in Python. It’s my learning journey, which I will document in this blog in the format of a developer’s diary. Each article here is not dry theory, but a step forward. If a new post appears, it means I’ve made progress — and you can walk this path with me.

What I Plan to Learn

Watchdog — a library that allows tracking changes in the file system: adding, deleting, or editing files. This will be my first entry point.
Event Coalescing — how to merge a flood of OS signals into more useful and meaningful data.
Multithreading and Asynchrony — reactions to events must be fast and independent.
Project Structure — from the very beginning I want to build the code so that it can be extended: database, logging, notifications, integration with other systems.
Interaction with the OS — my goal is not only to write code, but also to understand what exactly the operating system does when we create or delete files.
Cross-platform Support — I will be working on macOS, but the project is designed to work equally well on Linux and Windows. If necessary, I will dive into low-level APIs: inotify (Linux), FSEvents (macOS), ReadDirectoryChangesW (Windows).

Possible Applications

Backup System — a simple but useful foundation. Track changes — get automatic backups.
CI/CD Pipelines — run tests or builds when files change.
System Monitoring — collect activity statistics in directories.
Security — control over directories: if a new file appears, get a notification.
Collaboration Service — store information about who made changes to the project and when.
GUI Interface — a convenient visual shell for working with events.
Telegram Integration — notifications about suspicious changes. For example: “Changes have occurred in the project. Would you like to stop the server?”

Why I Am Writing About This

For me, PyWatch is not a single project, but a whole series of steps. I want to study everything step by step. Blog posts will serve as my notes and reminders. In the future, I will be able to return to them and quickly refresh my memory. At the end of the journey, after accumulating knowledge, I will create a full-fledged portfolio project — a tool that brings together all PyWatch functionality and becomes part of my public work.