The Python Podcast.init

By Tobias MaceyTechnology Education

The Python Podcast.init episodes

September 10, 2016Python at Zalando
Summary
Open source has proven its value in many ways over the years. In many companies that value is purely in terms of consuming available projects and platforms. In this episode Zalando describes their recent move to creating and releasing a number of their internal projects as open source and how that has benefited their business. We also discussed how they are leveraging Python and a couple of the libraries that they have published.
Brief Introduction
Hello and welcome to Podcast.__init__, the podcast about Python and the people who make it great.
I would like to thank everyone who has donated to the show. Your contributions help us make the show sustainable. For details on how to support the show you can visit our site at pythonpodcast.com
Linode is sponsoring us this week. Check them out at linode.com/podcastinit and get a $20 credit to try out their fast and reliable Linux virtual servers for your next project
Rollbar is also sponsoring us this week. Rollbar is a service for tracking and aggregating your application errors so that you can find and fix the bugs in your application before your users notice they exist. Use the link rollbar.com/podcastinit to get 90 days and 300,000 errors for free on their bootstrap plan.
Hired has also returned as a sponsor this week. If you’re looking for a job as a developer or designer then Hired will bring the opportunities to you. Sign up at hired.com/podcastinit to double your signing bonus.
Visit our site to subscribe to our show, sign up for our newsletter, read the show notes, and get in touch.
To help other people find the show you can leave a review on iTunes, or Google Play Music, and tell your friends and co-workers
Join our community! Visit discourse.pythonpodcast.com for your opportunity to find out about upcoming guests, suggest questions, and propose show ideas.
Your hosts as usual are Tobias Macey and Chris Patti
Today we’re interviewing Jie Bao and João Santos about their use of Python at Zalando
Interview with Zalando
Introductions
How did you get introduced to Python? – Tobias
Can you start by telling us a bit about what Zalando does and some of the technologies that you use? – Tobias
What role does Python play in your environment? – Tobias
Is the use of Python for a particular project governed by any particular operational guidelines or is it largely a matter of developer choice? – Tobias
Given that you have such a variety of platforms to support, how do you architect your systems to keep them easy to maintain and reason about? – Tobias
One of the projects that you have open sourced is Connexion. Can you explain a bit about what that is and what it is used for at Zalando? – Tobias
What made you choose to standardize on Swagger/OpenAPI vs RAML or some of the other API standards? – Tobias
Did Connexion start its life as open source or was it extracted from another project? – Tobias
ExpAn is another one of your projects that is written in Python. What do you use that for? – Tobias
Can you describe the internal implementation of ExpAn and what it takes to get it set up? – Tobias
Given the potential complexity of and the need for statistical significance in the data for proper A/B testing, how did you design ExpAn to satisfy those requirements? – Tobias
Given the laws in Germany around digital privacy, were there any special considerations that needed to be made in the collection strategy for the data that gets used in ExpAn? – Tobias
Keep In Touch
João
Twitter

Jie
Twitter

Laurie
Twitter

Picks
Tobias
Hacker’s Keyboard

Jie
Shah of Shahs by Ryszard Kapuściński

João
Serendipity

Laurie
Flow)

The intro and outro music is from Requiem for a Fish The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA
41 min
September 03, 2016 Alex Martelli
Episode 73 - Alex Martelli
0 min
September 03, 2016Alex Martelli
Summary
Alex Martelli has dedicated a large part of his career to teaching others how to work with software. He has the highest number of Python questions answered on Stack Overflow, he has written and co-written a number of books on Python, and presented innumerable times at conferences in multiple countries. We spoke to him about how he got started in software, his work with Google, and the trends in development and design patterns that are shaping modern software engineering.
Brief Introduction
Hello and welcome to Podcast.__init__, the podcast about Python and the people who make it great.
I would like to thank everyone who has donated to the show. Your contributions help us make the show sustainable. For details on how to support the show you can visit our site at pythonpodcast.com
Linode is sponsoring us this week. Check them out at linode.com/podcastinit and get a $20 credit to try out their fast and reliable Linux virtual servers for your next project
We also have a returning sponsor this week. Rollbar is a service for tracking and aggregating your application errors so that you can find and fix the bugs in your application before your users notice they exist. Use the link rollbar.com/podcastinit to get 90 days and 300,000 errors for free on their bootstrap plan.
Hired is sponsoring us this week. If you’re looking for a job as a developer or designer then Hired will bring the opportunities to you. Sign up at hired.com/podcastinit to double your signing bonus.
Visit our site to subscribe to our show, sign up for our newsletter, read the show notes, and get in touch.
To help other people find the show you can leave a review on iTunes, or Google Play Music, and tell your friends and co-workers.
Join our community! Visit discourse.pythonpodcast.com for your opportunity to find out about upcoming guests, suggest questions, and propose show ideas.
Your hosts as usual are Tobias Macey and Chris Patti
Today we’re interviewing Alex Martelli
Interview with Alex Martelli
Introductions
How did you get introduced to Python? – Chris
You have achieved a number of honors and recognitions throughout your career for significant technical achievements. What kind of learning strategies do you use to enable you to achieve mastery of technical topics? – Tobias
How do you keep the Python In A Nutshell book current as aspects of the core language and its libraries change? – Chris
You are known for your prolific contributions to Stack Overflow, particularly on topics pertaining to Python. Was that a specific goal that you had set for yourself or did it happen organically? – Tobias
When answering Stack Overflow questions, do you usually already know the answers or do you treat it as a learning opportunity? – Tobias
What are some of the most difficult Python questions that you have been faced with? – Tobias
You have presented quite a number of times at various Python conferences. What are some of your favorite talks? – Tobias
Design patterns and idiomatic code are common themes in a number of your presentations. Why is it important for developers to understand these concepts and what are some of your favorite resources on the topic? – Tobias
What do you see as the most influential trends in software development and design, both currently and heading into the future? – Tobias
As a long-time computer engineer, are there any features or ideas from other languages that you would like to see incorporated into Python?
Picks
Tobias
The Great Gatsby Movie

Chris
Stone Ruination Double IPA
Ghost Soldiers

Alex
Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow
Hamilton Musical

Links
Permission or Forgiveness
Good enough is good enough
Modern Python Patterns and Idioms
Handling Errors and Exceptions in Modern Python
Microservices
Google SRE Book
Python In A Nutshell use code AUTHD for a discount
The intro and outro music is from Requiem for a Fish The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA
1 hr 5 min
August 27, 2016 Dave Beazley
Episode 72 - Dave Beazley
0 min
August 27, 2016Dave Beazley
Summary
Dave Beazley has been using and teaching Python since the early days of the language. He has also been instrumental in spreading the gospel of asynchronous programming and the many ways that it can improve the performance of your programs. This week I had the pleasure of speaking with him about his history with the language and some of his favorite presentations and projects.
Brief Introduction
Hello and welcome to Podcast.__init__, the podcast about Python and the people who make it great.
I would like to thank everyone who has donated to the show. Your contributions help us make the show sustainable. For details on how to support the show you can visit our site at pythonpodcast.com
Linode is sponsoring us this week. Check them out at linode.com/podcastinit and get a $20 credit to try out their fast and reliable Linux virtual servers for your next project
We are also sponsored by Sentry this week. Stop hoping your users will report bugs. Sentry’s real-time tracking gives you insight into production deployments and information to reproduce and fix crashes. Check them out at getsentry.com and use the code podcastinit at signup to get a $50 credit!
Hired has also returned as a sponsor this week. If you’re looking for a job as a developer or designer then Hired will bring the opportunities to you. Sign up at hired.com/podcastinit to double your signing bonus.
Visit our site to subscribe to our show, sign up for our newsletter, read the show notes, and get in touch.
To help other people find the show you can leave a review on iTunes, or Google Play Music, and tell your friends and co-workers
Join our community! Visit discourse.pythonpodcast.com for your opportunity to find out about upcoming guests, suggest questions, and propose show ideas.
Your hosts as usual are Tobias Macey and Chris Patti
Today we’re interviewing Dave Beazley about his career with Python
Interview with Dave Beazley
Introductions
How did you get introduced to Python? – Tobias
How has Python and its community helped to shape your career? – Tobias
What are some of the major themes that you have focused on in your work? – Tobias
One of the things that you are known for is doing live-coding presentations, many of which are fairly advanced. What is it about that format that appeals to you? – Tobias
What are some of your favorite stories about a presentation that didn’t quite go as planned? – Tobias

You have given a large number of talks at various conferences. What are some of your favorites? – Tobias

What impact do you think that asynchronous programming will have on the future of the Python language and ecosystem? – Tobias

Are there any features that you see in other languages that you would like to have incorporated in Python? – Tobias

On the about page for your website you talk about some of the low-level code and hardware knowledge that you picked up by working with computers as a kid. Do you think that people who are getting started with programming now are missing out by not getting exposed to the kinds of hardware and software that was present before computing became mainstream?

You have had the opportunity to work on a large variety of projects, both on a hobby and professional level. What are some of your favorites? – Tobias

What is it about Python that has managed to hold your interest for so many years? – Tobias

Keep In Touch
Twitter
Picks
Tobias
Criminal

Dave
Samuel Beckett Plays

Links
Python Concurrency From The Ground Up
XKCD compiling
Clifford Stoll
Superboard talk
Curio
PyOhio async talk
The intro and outro music is from Requiem for a Fish The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA
46 min
August 20, 2016 GenSim with Radim Řehůřek
Being able to understand the context of a piece of text is generally thought to be the domain of human intelligence. However, topic modeling and semantic analysis can be used to allow a computer to determine whether different messages and articles are about the same thing. This week we spoke with Radim Řehůřek about his work on GenSim, which is a Python library for performing unsupervised analysis of unstructured text and applying machine learning models to the problem of natural language understanding.
54 min
August 20, 2016GenSim with Radim Řehůřek
Summary
Being able to understand the context of a piece of text is generally thought to be the domain of human intelligence. However, topic modeling and semantic analysis can be used to allow a computer to determine whether different messages and articles are about the same thing. This week we spoke with Radim Řehůřek about his work on GenSim, which is a Python library for performing unsupervised analysis of unstructured text and applying machine learning models to the problem of natural language understanding.
Brief Introduction
Hello and welcome to Podcast.__init__, the podcast about Python and the people who make it great.
I would like to thank everyone who has donated to the show. Your contributions help us make the show sustainable. For details on how to support the show you can visit our site at pythonpodcast.com
Linode is sponsoring us this week. Check them out at linode.com/podcastinit and get a $20 credit to try out their fast and reliable Linux virtual servers for your next project
We are also sponsored by Sentry this week. Stop hoping your users will report bugs. Sentry’s real-time tracking gives you insight into production deployments and information to reproduce and fix crashes. Check them out at getsentry.com and use the code podcastinit at signup to get a $50 credit on your account.
Visit our site to subscribe to our show, sign up for our newsletter, read the show notes, and get in touch.
To help other people find the show you can leave a review on iTunes, or Google Play Music, and tell your friends and co-workers
Join our community! Visit discourse.pythonpodcast.com for your opportunity to find out about upcoming guests, suggest questions, and propose show ideas.
Your hosts as usual are Tobias Macey and Chris Patti
Today we’re interviewing Radim Řehůřek about Gensim, a library for topic modeling and semantic analysis of natural language.
Interview with Radim Řehůřek
Introductions
How did you get introduced to Python? – Chris
Can you start by giving us an explanation of topic modeling and semantic analysis? – Tobias
What is Gensim and what inspired you to create it? – Tobias
What facilities does Gensim provide to simplify the work of this kind of language analysis? – Tobias
Can you describe the features that set it apart from other projects such as the NLTK or Spacy? – Tobias
What are some of the practical applications that Gensim can be used for? – Tobias
One of the features that stuck out to me is the fact that Gensim can process corpora on disk that would be too large to fit into memory. Can you explain some of the algorithmic work that was necessary to allow for this streaming process to be possible? – Tobias
Given that it can handle streams of data, could it also be used in the context of something like Spark? – Tobias

Gensim also supports unsupervised model building. What kinds of limitations does this have and when would you need a human in the loop? – Tobias
Once a model has been trained, how does it get saved and reloaded for subsequent use? – Tobias

What are some of the more unorthodox or interesting uses people have put Gensim to that you’ve heard about? – Chris

In addition to your work on Gensim, and partly due to its popularity, you have started a consultancy for customers who are interested in improving their data analysis capabilities. How does that feed back into Gensim? – Tobias

Are there any improvements in Gensim or other libraries that you have made available as a result of issues that have come up during client engagements? – Tobias

Is it difficult to find contributors to Gensim because of its advanced nature? – Tobias

Are there any resources you’d like to recommend our listeners explore to get a more in depth understanding of topic modeling and related techniques? – Chris

Keep In Touch
RaRe Technologies
Twitter
Email
Github
Mailing List
Picks
Tobias
Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs by Lisa Randall

Chris
m-cli

Radim
1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed

Links
Nadia Eghbal
Gensim
SQL Addict
NLTK
Spacy
Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA)
LSI
Keynote in Italy on distributed processing
Google Scholar references for Gensim
Stylometric analysis
On Writing Well
Student Incubator
Wikipedia on topic modeling
The intro and outro music is from Requiem for a Fish The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA
54 min
August 13, 2016 Python on Windows with Steve Dower
Episode 70 - Python on Windows with Steve Dower
0 min
August 13, 2016Python on Windows with Steve Dower
Summary
In order for Python to continue to attract new users, we need to have an easy way for people to get started with it, and Windows is still the most widely used operating system among computers. Steve Dower is the build maintainer for the Windows installers of Python and this week we spoke with him about his work in that role. He told us about the changes that he has made to the installer to make it easier for new users to get started and how modern updates to the packaging ecosystem for libraries has simplified dependency management. He also told us about how the Visual Studio team is building a set of tools to make development of Python code more enjoyable and how Microsoft’s adoption of open source is making Windows a more attractive platform for developers.
Brief Introduction
Hello and welcome to Podcast.__init__, the podcast about Python and the people who make it great.
I would like to thank everyone who has donated to the show. Your contributions help us make the show sustainable.
Linode is sponsoring us this week. Check them out at linode.com/podcastinit and get a $20 credit to try out their fast and reliable Linux virtual servers for your next project
We are also sponsored by Sentry this week. Stop hoping your users will report bugs. Sentry’s real-time tracking gives you insight into production deployments and information to reproduce and fix crashes. Check them out at getsentry.com and use the code podcastinit at signup to get a $50 credit on your account!
Visit our site to subscribe to our show, sign up for our newsletter, read the show notes, and get in touch.
To help other people find the show you can leave a review on iTunes, or Google Play Music, and tell your friends and co-workers
Join our community! Visit discourse.pythonpodcast.com for your opportunity to find out about upcoming guests, suggest questions, and propose show ideas.
Your hosts as usual are Tobias Macey and Chris Patti
Today we’re interviewing Steve Dower about Python on Windows
Interview with Steve Dower
Introductions
How did you get introduced to Python? – Chris
You are currently the release manager for Python on Windows. How did you end up with that responsibility? – Tobias
While Python has supported Windows for a long time, the overall experience has historically been rather poor. Can you give a bit of the background of why that was and tell us about some of the work that you and others have been doing to make it better? – Tobias
Given that a large percentage of users are still on Windows, having a good story for getting started with Python on that platform is important for adoption of the language. What are some of the areas where the current situation needs to be improved? – Tobias
What is the most difficult part of building a distribution of Python for a Windows environment? Has it gotten easier in recent years? – Tobias
When we were speaking at PyCon you mentioned that the most frequently downloaded version of Python from the python.org site is the 32 bit version for Windows. Do you think that is an accurate and useful metric? What other statistics do you wish you could capture or improve? – Tobias
How does Python Tools for Visual Studio compare with other Python IDEs like Pycharm? – Chris
What are some unique features that Python Tools for Visual Studio offers that other tools don’t? – Chris
Are there any compelling aspects of developing Python on Windows that could convince users on other platforms to make the switch? – Tobias
Could you give our listeners a whirlwind tour of the underlying implementation of PTVS? How does Visual Studio provide such in depth introspection for your Python code? – Chris
Keep In Touch
Twitter
Github
Microsoft
Azure

steve.dower

Picks
Tobias
Kdiff3
SpyderCo Triangle Sharpmaker

Chris
Audible

Steve
Sandisk Extreme Portable SSD
SMBC
Random Encounters

Links
Windows compilers
Visual C++ Build Tools (for Python 3.5 and later)
Visual C++ Compiler for Python 2.7

PEP 514

The intro and outro music is from Requiem for a Fish The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA
55 min
August 06, 2016 PyCon Canada with Francis Deslauriers and Peter McCormick
Aside from the national Python conferences such as PyCon US and EuroPyCon there are a number of regional conferences that operate at a smaller scale to service their local communities. This week we interviewed Peter McCormick and Francis Deslauriers about their work organizing PyCon Canada to provide a venue for Canadians to talk about how they are using the language. If you happen to be near Toronto in November then you should get a ticket and help contribute to their success!
46 min