This week we welcome Kenneth Love as our PyDev of the Week. He is active in the Python community via the Portland chapter of Django Ladies. He works for Team Treehouse creating Python courses. Let’s spend some time getting to know him better.
Can you tell us a little about yourself (hobbies, education, etc):
Sure. I live near Portland, OR with my family. I work for Treehouse, which is an online school aimed at getting people ready for jobs in the tech world through videos and code challenges. I teach all things Python.
I have a multimedia design degree but I’ve never used it professionally. I’m self-taught when it comes to programming if you don’t count all of the people that wrote the documentation and blogs I used to learn things (thanks tech writers!).
I like to collect, and sometimes play, tabletop games. I currently have about 90-100 games in my collection.
Why did you start using Python?
It was actually kind of an accident. I was really interested in Ruby and really tired of writing PHP. But Ruby wasn’t proving easy to learn and a friend and I both thought Python looked neat. He got me to do the Django tutorial and I fell in love. I’ve pushed to use Python at every job I’ve had since then and, luckily, usually gotten my way if the place wasn’t already using it.
As for why, well, I came from PHP 🙂 The fact that Python had PEP 8 just tweaked that little OCD part of my brain that wanted code to be uniform. I also really loved the terseness of Python so I could get my thoughts into the computer faster.
What other programming languages do you know and which is your favorite?
Having spent most of my career as a full-stack freelancer, I’m familiar with PHP and JavaScript. I’m also fairly proficient at CSS and HTML since I’ve had to bring them out from time-to-time, too. Like most programmers that have learned more than one language, I can usually read another language, even if I don’t get the entire thing.
Honestly, Python is still my favorite. But, with my love for functional programming, I keep trying to pick up Haskell or Lisp, so that might change if I ever actually sit down to learn one of these.
What projects are you working on now?
Coming from a background of freelancing, now that I have a full-time job, I try to keep my downtime, well, down. I don’t work on a lot of side projects. My friend Chris Jones and I still maintain django-braces, our package of mixins for Django’s class-based generic views but that’s about it.
I actually just wrapped up co-organizing the first Django Girls Portland with my good friend Lacey Williams Henscel, and we’re planning on doing another one of those soon (February?)
And, at work, I’m currently working on 2 or 3 new courses and workshops.
Which Python libraries are your favorite (core or 3rd party)?
3rd party: Flask and Django are huge for me. Requests is just beautiful.
Core: As weird as it might be, I actually really like the re library. Regular Expressions are horrible at first but they are such a powerful tool. I’m also a big fan of the turtle library for teaching Python to kids.
What is your take on the current market for Python programmers?
I think the current market is really solid. I haven’t heard of any Python programmers looking for work for long, so we seem to be in high demand. That said, the world is changing, especially for web-related jobs, so start learning asyncio!
Is there anything else you’d like to say?
Thanks so much for having me on here! Also, we need more teachers in the Python world! Write blog posts, write documentation, teach classes, help Django Girls and PyLadies, etc.
Thank you!
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