Category Archives: Advocacy

PyDev of the Week: Mariatta Wijaya

Advocacy, PyDevOfTheWeek, Python

This week we welcome Mariatta Wijaya (@mariatta) as our PyDev of the Week! Mariatta is the co-chair of the PyCascades conference, a regional Python conference taking place in Vancouver, BC. She is also a core developer of the Python programming language. She does automation and web development for a movie company, so she also shows up in the Internet Movie Database (IMDB). You can check out what open source projects she is active in over on Github. Let’s take a few moments to get to know her better!

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

I moved to Canada almost two decades ago. I’ve lived in three different Canadian provinces, and now I live in Vancouver with my husband and two young children. I work as a Software Engineer at Sony Pictures Imageworks.

I’m a foodie. I have a strange hobby of taking pictures of food. I enjoy traveling, going on road trips, camping with my family, and playing Mahjong.

I co-organize Vancouver PyLadies, we meet once a month, the format alternates between a code jam and talk night.

I’m also on the organizing team of a brand new Python conference in the Pacific Northwest: PyCascades, happening in Vancouver in January. Continue reading PyDev of the Week: Mariatta Wijaya →

StackOverflow: Python Fastest Growing Language

Advocacy, Python

StackOverflow published a report last week in which they stated that Python has a solid claim to being the fastest-growing major programming language. Python was also called out as one of the top programming languages of 2017 over on the IEEE Spectrum website, which I covered in an earlier article.

Python just keeps growing more and more popular, which is quite exciting to me. I have always enjoyed it since I first began using the language. Its power combined with its simplicity just “fits” my brain so well. I am excited to see Python continue to grow in data science, education and embedded applications (via MicroPython).

You can read about other people’s thoughts on StackOverflow’s claims at the following:

Python is #1 in 2017 According to IEEE Spectrum

Advocacy, Python

It’s always fun to see what languages are considered to be in the top ten. This year, IEEE Spectrum named Python as the #1 language in the Web and Enterprise categories. Some of the Python community over at Reddit think that the scoring of the languages are flawed because Javascript is below R in web programming. That gives me pause as well. Frankly I don’t really see how anything is above Javascript when it comes to web programming.

Regardless, it’s still interesting to read through the article.

Related Articles

PyDev of the Week on Hiatus

Advocacy, PyDevOfTheWeek, Python

I don’t know if anyone noticed something amiss this week, but the PyDev of the Week series is currently on hiatus. I have been having trouble getting interviewees to get the interviews done in a timely manner the last month or so and actually ended up running out.

While I have a bunch of new interviewees lined up, none of them have actually finished the interview. So I am suspending the series for the month of July 2017. Hopefully I can get several lined up for August and get the series kicked back into gear. If not, then it will be suspended until I have a decent number of interviews done.

If you happen to have any suggestions for Pythonistas that you would like to see featured here in the PyDev of the Week series, feel free to leave a comment or contact me.

PyDev of the Week: Andrew Godwin

Advocacy, PyDevOfTheWeek, Python

This week we welcome Andrew Godwin (@andrewgodwin) as our PyDev of the Week! Andrew is a core developer of the popular Python web framework, Django. Andrew maintains a blog of his adventures but if you’re more interested in his code, then you’ll want to check out his Github profile. You can also check out some of his projects here. Let’s take a few moments to get to know Andrew better!

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

Well, I grew up in suburban South London, and initially started programming on my mum’s Palm IIIx in BASIC when I was bored during holidays and longer trips, along with trying out my hand at HTML at the local library. Eventually this turned into me doing Computer Science at Oxford (I almost went for physics, but changed my mind as I wanted an easier life), where I learnt a decent amount of theory that I almost never use in practice, and instead draw on my time writing open source software since I was about 15 and what it’s taught me about maintainability, software architecture and the importance of helping other people.

Hobby-wise, I probably have too many; the one I spend most time on apart from programming (both open-source and noodling away on the occasional game) is probably flying (as in, piloting light aircraft) and then traveling (as in, flying on other people’s aircraft). On the side, I also do electronics, 3D printing/making things, riding my motorbike, archery, photography, cinematography, baking, and when the season is right, snowsports. I’m also on a rough quest to visit every state and territory of the US as well as all 59 of the National Parks, so I have my work cut out.

Continue reading PyDev of the Week: Andrew Godwin →

New in Python: Syntax for variable annotations

Advocacy, Python, Python 3

Python 3.6 added another interesting new feature that is known as Syntax for variable annotations. This new feature is outlined in PEP 526. The basic premise of this PEP is take the idea of Type Hinting (PEP 484) to its next logical step, which is basically adding option type definitions to Python variables, including class variables and instance variables. Please note that adding these annotations or definitions does not suddenly make Python a statically typed language. The interpreter still doesn’t care what type the variable is. However, a Python IDE or other utility like pylint could have an annotation checker added to them that could highlight when you use a variable that you have annotated as one type and then used incorrectly by changing its type mid-function.

Let’s look at a simple example so we can see how this works:

# annotate.py
name: str = 'Mike'

Continue reading New in Python: Syntax for variable annotations →

New in Python: Underscores in Numeric Literals

Advocacy, Python, Python 3

Python 3.6 added some interesting new features. The one that we will be looking at in this article comes from PEP 515: Underscores in Numeric Literals. As the name of the PEP implies, this basically gives you the ability to write long numbers with underscores where the comma normally would be. In other words, 1000000 can now be written as 1_000_000. Let’s take a look at some simple examples:

>>> 1_234_567
1234567
>>>'{:_}'.format(123456789)
'123_456_789'
>>> '{:_}'.format(1234567)
'1_234_567'

The first example just shows how Python interprets a large number with underscores in it. The second example demonstrates that we can now give Python a string formatter, the “_” (underscore), in place of a comma. The results speak for themselves.

The numeric literals that include underscores behave the same way as normal numeric literals when doing calculations:

>>> 120_000 + 30_000
150000
>>> 120_000 - 30_000
90000

The Python documentation and the PEP also mention that you can use the underscores after any base specifier. Here are a couple of examples taken from the PEP and the documentation:

>>> flags = 0b_0011_1111_0100_1110
>>> flags
16206
>>> 0x_FF_FF_FF_FF
4294967295
>>> flags = int('0b_1111_0000', 2)
>>> flags
240

There are some notes about the underscore that need to be mentioned:

  • You can only use one consecutive underscore and it has to be between digits and after any base specifier
  • Leading and trailing underscores are not allowed

This is kind of a fun new feature in Python. While I personally don’t have any use cases for this in my current job, hopefully you will have one at yours.

PyDev of the Week: Glyph Lefkowitz

Advocacy, PyDevOfTheWeek, Python

This week we welcome Glyph Lefkowitz (@glyph) as our PyDev of the Week! Glyph is the creator / maintainer of Twisted, an asynchronous event-driven networking engine. Glyph finds the time to write a blog that you might find quite interesting. You can also check out Github to see what projects he’s involved with. Let’s spend a few minutes getting to know Glyph better!

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

I’m just this guy, you know?

I work on a lot of open source software, both for work – I maintain Twisted, and a ton of associated ecosystem projects, for Rackspace – and personally.

My hobbies mainly revolve around computers. For example, I’m an avid video game fan. I’ve also dabbled in graphic design, 3D rendering, and computer-generated music; although nothing really good enough to share. As time allows, I’m also a really big reader, particularly of science fiction and fantasy.

In summary, I’m a nerd in the classic sense. To complete the caricature, my wife is also a programmer and so my personal life revolves around computer technology as well. We both also have a strong interest in information security, so I spend a fair amount of time ensuring that our systems are up to date, our passwords are rotated, and so on.

Continue reading PyDev of the Week: Glyph Lefkowitz →

PyDev of the Week: Katie McLaughlin

Advocacy, PyDevOfTheWeek, Python

This week we welcome Katie McLaughlin (@glasnt) as our PyDev of the Week! She is a core developer of the BeeWare project. You should take a moment and check out her Github profile to see what fun projects she’s a part of. Katie also has a fun little website and was a speaker at PyCon 2016. Let’s take a few moments to get to know her better!

katie

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

G’day! I’m Australian, originally from Brisbane, but now living in Sydney. I’ve got a Bachelor of Information Technology, and I’ve been in the tech industry for going on ten years now. I’ve been in a bunch of different roles and technologies, but mostly in web hosting and cloud stuff. When I’m not on a computer or attending conferences, I enjoy cooking and making tapestries.

Why did you start using Python?

To fix a bug in a bit of in-house code! There was a bug in an old script, and I saw the “#!/usr/bin/env python” and learnt from there. I didn’t go back to Python for a few years, but just after I was accepted to PyCon Australia 2015, I thought I should brush up on what little I knew. That’s about a year ago now, and it’s now my go-to language for scripting. I was had previously used Ruby for years, and I only occasionally still automatically type “puts” instead of “print”.

Continue reading PyDev of the Week: Katie McLaughlin →

PyDev of the Week: Damien George

Advocacy, PyDevOfTheWeek, Python

This week we welcome Damien George as our PyDev of the Week! Damien is the man behind the MicroPython project which allows you to run a version of Python on microcontrollers. You can learn more about Damien on his website or by visiting his Github page. Let’s spend some time getting to know our fellow Pythonista better!

damien

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

I grew up in Melbourne, Australia and started playing with computers and electronics pretty early on. I had a Commodore 64 when I was young and remember borrowing books from the local library on how to program it in assembler. Really it just gave you a bunch of “data” statements to type in, but in the end you could make some pretty cool stuff. In high school I liked physics and maths and then I went to university and did degrees in both science and engineering. I majored in physics and computer engineering and then did a PhD in physics, after which I moved to the Netherlands, and eventually the UK, to do research in theoretical high-energy physics (extra dimensions, supersymmetry, cosmology, things like that). During my career as a physicist I kept an active interest in programming and robotics, with lots of side projects including a self-made CNC machine (see http://dpgeorge.net/cnc/).

Continue reading PyDev of the Week: Damien George →