This week we welcome Miro Hrončok (@hroncok) as our PyDev of the Week! Miro teaches at Czech Technical University and helps out with the local PyLadies chapter. He is also involved with the Special Interest Group for Python in Fedora as he works for Red Hat in addition to his teaching position. You can check out some of the projects he is involved in over on Github or check out his website. Let’s take a few moments to get to know Miro better!

Can you tell us a little about yourself (hobbies, education, etc):

I’m a guy from Prague, Czech Republic, in my late twenties, yet both of my parents are from Košice, Slovakia, so I’m kinda both Czech and Slovak. I’ve studied Pascal at a gymnasium and later did my bachelors and masters in Computer Science/Software Engineering at the Faculty of Information Technology, Czech Tecnical University in Prague. Most of my hobbies are related to computers and technology but apart from that I have two Irish Wolfhounds and I love to ski.

My technological interest has always been connected to Free and Open Source Software (and Hardware), starting with the Czech Linux community when I was a teenager, co-founding the RepRap 3D Printing Lab during my early years at the university and joining Fedora and later Red Hat, now working in the Python Maintenance team, also pro-active in the Czech Python community. Continue reading PyDev of the Week: Miro Hrončok →

This week we welcome Bruno Rocha (@rochacbruno) as our PyDev of the Week! Bruno works for Red Hat and participates in the Python, Flask and Rust communities. You can see some of his projects over on Github or check out some of his writings on Medium. Let’s take a few moments to get to know Bruno better!

Can you tell us a little about yourself (hobbies, education, etc):

I’m Bruno Rocha, Software Engineer from São Paulo, Brazil.

I started playing with computers at a very young age when I was 12 when my mother gave me an old IBM XT 5160. After a few days playing DOOM and studying LOTUS 123 worksheets, I naturally became the computer boy in the family. I did a course of MS.DOS 6.22 (the novelty of that time) and learned to program some things with BASIC and dBase, a few years later the web appeared in Brazil and I started to make HTML sites with CGI in Perl and also to create programs with macros in MS Access 95.

I worked for some years as an instructor in basic computer courses, some jobs as a web designer, I also worked with network installation, PC building, and in 1998 I met Linux through Conectiva (A Brazilian Red Hat based distro). I got involved with Open Source and Linux and then I became sysadmin in hybrid networks with Linux and Windows NT.

Years later I joined the University of Information Systems and I graduated, during graduation I fell in love with programming and since then I have been working with software development, started some small business (in the days when we did not call it “startup”), I worked for Palm Inc. developed drivers and sales force systems for Palm OS with C, developed portals and CMS for several large companies in Brazil, taught online Python courses, worked in the Data Science team of the largest Job board in Brazil and since 2016 I have been dedicated to Quality Engineering and Test Automation at Red Hat.

Besides software and computers, I am vegetarian since I was born, and vegan for more than 15 years. I have been very active in animal rights activism movements and also in the rescue of abandoned animals (currently taking care of 32 rescued animals).

In my free time I love cooking vegan food but my favorite hobby is road cycling, I have participated in some vintage bike races with my Bianchi 1973 and my Caloi-10 1980, recently I became father of a boy, Erik is 3 months old and life has changed a little and since then my favorite hobby has been to sleep when I can. Continue reading PyDev of the Week: Bruno Rocha →

This week we welcome Maria Khalusova ( @mariakhalusova) as our PyDev of the Week! Maria works for JetBrains and will be speaking at AnacondaCON this April. If you’d like to catch up with her, you can check out Maria’s blog. Let’s take a few moments to get to know Maria better!

Can you tell us a little about yourself (hobbies, education, etc):

Growing up I loved two things – math and books. I kid you not, I solved math problems for fun. Not surprisingly, I went on to study Applied Informatics at the Dept. of Mathematics and Mechanics of Saint Petersburg State University which I graduated from in 2007. This field is actually really close to modern Data Science, all the math parts of it were there, plus a good chunk of computer science program. I only wish I got to learn Python at my University and not Java 😀 Sadly, back then such fundamental packages like pandas and scikit-learn didn’t even exist yet.

Even before I graduated, I started working at JetBrains, first as a technical writer for IntelliJ IDEA. Fun fact: this June will be 13 years since I joined the company. I’ve changed projects, job roles, countries even, but not the company.

In recent years I’ve re-discovered my passion for math, data science, machine learning, and deep learning. I’ve brushed up on my rusty math knowledge and have been self-educating ever since. This is a never-ending process which I think is great. Continue reading PyDev of the Week: Maria Khalusova →

This week we welcome Mariusz Felisiak (@MariuszFelisiak) as our PyDev of the Week! Mariusz is a core developer of the Django web framework and a maintainer of the django-request package. You can follow Mariusz over on Github to see what he’s been up to. Let’s spend some time getting to know Mariusz!

Can you tell us a little about yourself (hobbies, education, etc):

Few facts from my life. I’m a software developer with over 11 years of experience in designing and implementing web applications. I graduated in Computer Science in 2010. I defended my PhD thesis related with numerical algorithms in 2018. I’ve done this after few years of coping in the same time with open source activities, daily job and PhD studies. It was a really intense time.

I’m always eager to contribute to open source projects which takes a large part of my free time, or at least it took before my daughter was born 🙂 I have been in love with Python and Django for 10 years. From 2017 I’m a member of the Django Core Team and the Django Software Foundations. In the middle of March I’m starting as a Django Fellow so Django will become my daily work! The funniest thing is that I should have more “free-time” 🙂 I’m a huge fan of open source and communities that stand behind them, that’s why I’m trying to be as involved as possible.

Outside of the tech world I’m a speedway fan who spends free-time on traveling and winter mountaineering. Continue reading PyDev of the Week: Mariusz Felisiak →

This week we welcome Lilly Ryan (@attacus_au) as our PyDev of the Week! Lilly is a pen-tester. She is an organizer of PyCon AU 2018 and 2019 and an experienced speaker. In fact, Lilly will be giving a keynote at DjangoCon Europe later this year. You can learn more about Lilly by visiting her website. Let’s take a few moments to get to know Lilly better!

Can you tell us a little about yourself (hobbies, education, etc):

I’m a pen tester from Australia. When I’m not hacking, I spend my time researching for talks, cooking, knitting a variety of strange things, and looking after two very cuddly greyhounds.

I was previously a software developer, a QA, an English tutor, and a medieval historian. My formal education has all been in medieval history, where I specialised in fourteenth century inquisitorial manuals. I started to pick up more detailed tech knowledge after learning that Linux existed, becoming super curious, and spending a lot of my free time diving into learning how to install it on a laptop and debugging desktop installation quirks. Continue reading PyDev of the Week: Lilly Ryan →