Table Of ContentTable of Contents
Python Interviews
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Foreword
Contributor
About the Author
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Preface
1. Brett Cannon
2. Steve Holden
3. Carol Willing
4. Glyph Lefkowitz
5. Doug Hellmann
6. Massimo Di Pierro
7. Alex Martelli
8. Marc-André Lemburg
9. Barry Warsaw
10. Jessica McKellar
11. Tarek Ziadé
12. Sebastian Raschka
13. Wesley Chun
14. Steven Lott
15. Oliver Schoenborn
16. Al Sweigart
17. Luciano Ramalho
18. Nick Coghlan
19. Mike Bayer
20. Jake Vanderplas
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Python Interviews
Python Interviews
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Foreword
Welcome, all, to Python Interviews!
People often get confused about open source programming languages,
focusing merely on the technology behind the language — be it the
language itself, the libraries available for it, or the impressive products
that are built with it — and not on the ecosystem of individuals that are
responsible for the language existing in the first place.
Python is an open source language, driven mostly by volunteer efforts
from all around the globe. It's important to focus not only on the
technology behind what makes Python great, but also the individuals that
make it great as well.
The world of Python is not one comprised merely of code, but of a
community of like-minded individuals coming together to make the world
a better place through the open source ethos. Thousands of individuals
have contributed towards the success of Python.
This book contains interviews with an excellent selection of the
individuals that power Python and its wonderful open source community.
It dives into the personal backgrounds of these individuals and the
opinions they have about the community, the technology, and the
direction we're headed in, together.
But, must importantly — it exposes that Python, the programing
language, is indeed comprised of persons, just like you, trying to make a
difference in the world, one step at a time.
Kenneth Reitz
Director at Large for the Python Software Foundation
Contributor
About the Author
Mike Driscoll has been using Python since April 2006. He blogs for the
Python Software Foundation. Other than blogging, he enjoys reading
novels, listening to a wide variety of music, and learning photography. He
writes documentation for the wxPython project's wiki page and helps
wxPython users on their mailing list. He also helps Python users on the
PyWin32 list and occasionally the comp.lang.py list too.
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Preface
Near the end of 2016, I was brainstorming with my editor about the kinds
of books might be of interest. I had been doing a series of articles on my
blog called PyDev of the Week that inspired us into crafting a book based
on interviewing core members of the Python community. I spent some
time hashing out 20 names of people that I thought would be good for the
book and then I started contacting them in 2017.
Over the course of about 8-12 months, I ended up interviewing 20 pillars
of the Python community, although my list changed several times over
that period. Some people weren't available or couldn't be reached. But I
persevered and managed to pull together a well-rounded set of
representatives of the Python programming community.
In this book, you will get interesting anecdotes about the history of
Python and its creators, such as Brett Cannon and Nick Coghlan. You will
discover why Python didn't have Unicode support in its first release, and
you'll hear from core developers about where they think Python is going
in the future. You will also hear from some well-known Python authors,
like Al Sweigart, Luciano Ramalho, and Doug Hellman.
I also spoke with some of the creators or core developers of popular
third-party packages in Python, such as web2py (Massimo Di Pierro),
SQLAlchemy (Mike Bayer), and the Twisted Framework (Glyph
Lefkowitz), among others.
My interview with Carol Willing was a lot of fun. She is also a core
developer of the Python language itself, so learning her views on women
in technology and Python was quite enlightening. She is also a
contributor to Project Jupyter, so learning more about that project was
exciting.
I think you will find Alex Martelli and Steve Holden's interviews to be
especially compelling as they have been working with Python for a very
long time and have many interesting insights.
There is a lot to learn from all the individuals that I spoke with. If you
