The Python Podcast.init

By Tobias MaceyTechnology Education

The Python Podcast.init episodes

May 28, 2016Pillow with Alex Clark
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Summary
If you need to work with images the Pillow is the library to use. The Python Image Libary (PIL) has long been the gold standard for resizing, analyzing, and processing pictures in Python. Pillow is the modern fork that is bringing the PIL into the future so that we can all continue to use it moving forward. This week I spoke with Alex Clark about what first led him to fork the project and his experience maintaining it, including the migration to Python 3.
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 new 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.
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 host as usual is Tobias Macey
Today we’re interviewing Alex Clark about the Pillow project
Interview with Alex Clark
Introductions
How did you get introduced to Python? – Tobias
What were you working on that led you to forking the Python Image Library (PIL)? – Tobias
What does Fredrik Lundh (author of PIL) think of Pillow?
When you first forked the PIL project did you think that you would still be maintaining and updating that fork by now? – Tobias
Who else works on the project with you and how did they get involved? – Tobias
What kinds of special knowledge or experience have you found to be necessary for understanding and extending the routines in the library and for adding new capabilities? – Tobias
Can you describe what PIL and now Pillow are and what kinds of use cases they support? – Tobias
How does Pillow compare to libraries with a similar purpose such as ImageMagick? – Tobias
I have seen Pillow used in computer vision contexts. What are some of the capabilities of the library that lend themselves to this purpose? – Tobias
What architectural patterns does Pillow use to make image operations fast and flexible? Have you found the need to do any significant refactorings of the original code to make it compatible with modern uses and execution environments? – Tobias
Have you kept up to date with newer image formats, such as webp? Are there any image formats that Pillow does not support that you would like to see added to the project? – Tobias
What are some of the most interesting or innovative uses of Pillow that you have seen? – Tobias
What do you have planned for the future of Pillow? – Tobias
Keep In Touch
Website
Picks
Tobias
Minimalist Baker
Bisect module

Alex
Muse – Uprising
Fanstatic

Links
Image-SIG
Random (Psychedelic) Art
The intro and outro music is from Requiem for a Fish The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA
21 min
May 21, 2016 Wagtail with Tom Dyson
If you are operating a website that needs to publish and manage content on a regular basis, a CMS (Content Management System) becomes the obvious choice for reducing your workload. There are a plethora of options available, but if you are looking for a solution that leverages the power of Python and exposes its flexibility then you should take a serious look at Wagtail. In this episode Tom Dyson explains how Wagtail came to be created, what sets it apart from other options, and when you should implement it for your projects.
53 min
May 21, 2016Wagtail with Tom Dyson
Visit our site to sign up for the newsletter, explore past episodes, subscribe to the show, and help support our work.
Summary
If you are operating a website that needs to publish and manage content on a regular basis, a CMS (Content Management System) becomes the obvious choice for reducing your workload. There are a plethora of options available, but if you are looking for a solution that leverages the power of Python and exposes its flexibility then you should take a serious look at Wagtail. In this episode Tom Dyson explains how Wagtail came to be created, what sets it apart from other options, and when you should implement it for your 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 also have a new 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.
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 are interviewing Tom Dyson about Wagtail, a modern and sophisticated CMS for Django.
Interview with Tom Dyson
Introductions
How did you get introduced to Python? – Chris
Can you start by explaining what a content management system is and why they are useful? – Tobias
How did the Wagtail project get started and what makes it stand out from other comparable offerings? – Tobias
What made you choose Django as the basis for the project as opposed to another framework or language such as Pyramid, Flask, or Rails? – Tobias
What is your target user and are there any situations in which you would encourage someone to use a different CMS? – Tobias
Can you explain the software design approach that was taken with Wagtail and describe the challenges that have been overcome along the way? – Tobias
How did you approach the project in a way to make the CMS feel well integrated into the other apps in a given Django project so that it doesn’t feel like an afterthought? – Tobias
For someone who wants to get started with using Wagtail, what does that experience look like? – Tobias
What are some of the features that are unique to Wagtail? – Tobias
Given that Wagtail is such a flexible tool, what are some of the gotchas that people should watch out for as they are working on a new site? – Tobias
Does Wagtail have any built-in support for multi-tenancy? – Tobias
Does Wagtail have a plugin system to allow developers to create extensions to the base CMS? – Tobias
Having built such a sizable plugin with deep integrations to Django, what are some of the shortcomings in the framework that you would like to see improved? – Tobias
Keep In Touch
Twitter
Site
GitHub
Picks
Tobias
Pumpkin Pie

Tom
Hasbean Ethiopian Coffee
Hario V60

Links
Royal College of Arts
Simon Willison’s Blog
Vagrant
Willow project
Django Model Cluster
Divio
The intro and outro music is from Requiem for a Fish The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA
53 min
May 14, 2016 Buildbot with Pierre Tardy
As technology professionals, we need to make sure that the software we write is reliably bug free and the best way to do that is with a continuous integration and continuous deployment pipeline. This week we spoke with Pierre Tardy about Buildbot, which is a Python framework for building and maintaining CI/CD workflows to keep our software projects on track.
1 hr 26 min
May 14, 2016Buildbot with Pierre Tardy
Visit our site to listen to past episodes, support the show, join our community, and sign up for our mailing list.
Summary
As technology professionals, we need to make sure that the software we write is reliably bug free and the best way to do that is with a continuous integration and continuous deployment pipeline. This week we spoke with Pierre Tardy about Buildbot, which is a Python framework for building and maintaining CI/CD workflows to keep our software projects on track.
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, subscribe, join our newsletter, check out the show notes, and get in touch 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 Rollbar 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.
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 are interviewing Pierre Tardy about the Buildbot continuous integration system.
Interview with Pierre Tardy
Introductions
How did you get introduced to Python? – Chris
For anyone who isn’t familiar with it can you explain what Buildbot is? – Tobias
What was the original inspiration for creating the project? – Tobias
How did you get involved in the project? – Tobias
Can you describe the internal architecture of Buildbot and outline how a typical workflow would look? – Tobias
There are a number of packages out on PyPI for doing subprocess invocation and control, in addition to the functions in the standard library. Which does buildbot use and why? – Chris
What makes Buildbot stand out from other CI/CD options that are available today? – Tobias
Scaling a large CI/CD system can become a challenge. What are some of the limiting factors in the Buildbot architecture and in what ways have you seen people work to overcome them? – Tobias
Are there any design or architecture choices that you would change in the project if you were to start it over? – Tobias
If you were starting from scratch on implementing buildbot today, would you still use Python? Why? – Chris
What are some of the most difficult challenges that have been faced in the creation and evolution of the project? – Tobias
What are some of the most notable uses of Buildbot and how do they uniquely leverage the capabilities of the framework? – Tobias
What are some of the biggest challenges that people face when beginning to implement Buildbot in their architecture? – Tobias
Does buildbot support the use of docker or public clouds as a part of the build process? – Chris
I know that the execution engine for Buildbot is written in Twisted. What benefits does that provide and how has that influenced any efforts for providing Python 3 support? – Tobias
Does buildbot support build parallelization at all? For instance splitting one very long test run up into 3 instances each running a section of tests to cut build time? – Chris
What are some of the most requested features for the project and are there any that would be unreasonably difficult to implement due to the current design of the project? – Tobias
Does buildbot offer a plugin system like Jenkins does, or is there some other approach it uses for custom extensions to the base buildbot functionality? – Chris
Managing a reliable build pipeline can be operationally challenging. What are some of the thorniest problems for Buildbot in this regard and what are some of the mechanisms that are built in to simplify the operational characteristics? – Tobias
What were some of the challenges around supporting slaves running on platforms with very different environmental characteristics like Microsoft Windows? – Chris
What is on the roadmap for Buildbot? – Tobias
Keep In Touch
Buildbot Website
GitHub
Picks
Tobias
Viking Safety Razor

Chris
Lifeline
Suzaku Sake

Links
Crossbar.io
The intro and outro music is from Requiem for a Fish The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA
1 hr 26 min
May 07, 2016 Onion IoT with Lazar and Zheng
One of the biggest new trends in technology is the Internet of Things and one of the driving forces is the wealth of new sensors and platforms that are being continually introduced. In this episode we spoke with the founder and head engineer of one such platform named Onion. The Omega board is a new hardware platform that runs OpenWRT and lets you configure it using a number of languages, not least of which is Python.
36 min
May 07, 2016Onion IoT with Lazar and Zheng
Visit our site to listen to past episodes, support the show, join our community, and sign up for our mailing list.
Summary
One of the biggest new trends in technology is the Internet of Things and one of the driving forces is the wealth of new sensors and platforms that are being continually introduced. In this episode we spoke with the founder and head engineer of one such platform named Onion. The Omega board is a new hardware platform that runs OpenWRT and lets you configure it using a number of languages, not least of which is Python.
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 Rollbar 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.
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.
The Open Data Science Conference in Boston is happening on May 21st and 22nd. If you use the code EP during registration you will save 20% off of the ticket price. If you decide to attend then let us know, we’ll see you there!
Your hosts as usual are Tobias Macey and Chris Patti
Today we are interviewing Lazar and Zheng about the Onion IoT platform
Interview with Lazar and Zheng
Introductions
How did you get introduced to Python? – Chris
What is the Onion platform and how does it leverage Python? – Tobias
Can you compare and contrast the Python support you provide for Onion as compared with Raspberry Pi? – Chris
I noticed that you are using the OpenWRT distribution of Linux in order to provide support for multiple languages. What was the driving intent behind choosing it and why is multiple language support so important for an IoT product? – Tobias
Do you provide any libraries for using with the Omega to abstract away some of the hardware level tasks? What are some of the design considerations that were involved when developing that? – Tobias
What are some of the most interesting projects you have seen people build with Python on your platform? – Tobias
Keep In Touch
Forum
Twitter
Picks
Tobias
Now You See Me

Chris
Portrait / Landscape Phone / Tablet Stand
Tom Bihn Bags

Lazar
Ex Machina

The intro and outro music is from Requiem for a Fish The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA
36 min
May 01, 2016 LibCloud with Anthony Shaw
More and more of our applications are running in the cloud and there are increasingly more providers to choose from. The LibCloud project is a Python library to help us manage the complexity of our environments from a uniform and pleasant API. In this episode Anthony Shaw joins us to explain how LibCloud works, the community that builds and supports it, and the myriad ways in which it can be used. We also got a peek at some of the plans for the future of the project.
1 hr 25 min
May 01, 2016LibCloud with Anthony Shaw
Visit our site to listen to past episodes, support the show, join our community, and sign up for our mailing list.
Summary
More and more of our applications are running in the cloud and there are increasingly more providers to choose from. The LibCloud project is a Python library to help us manage the complexity of our environments from a uniform and pleasant API. In this episode Anthony Shaw joins us to explain how LibCloud works, the community that builds and supports it, and the myriad ways in which it can be used. We also got a peek at some of the plans for the future of the project.
Brief Introduction
Hello and welcome to Podcast.__init__, the podcast about Python and the people who make it great.
Subscribe on iTunes, TuneIn or RSS
Follow us on Twitter or Google+
Give us feedback! Leave a review on iTunes, Tweet to us, send us an email or leave us a message on Google+
Join our community! Visit discourse.pythonpodcast.com for your opportunity to find out about upcoming guests, suggest questions, and propose show ideas.
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
The Open Data Science Conference in Boston is happening on May 21st and 22nd. If you use the code EP during registration you will save 20% off of the ticket price. If you decide to attend then let us know, we’ll see you there!
Your hosts as usual are Tobias Macey and Chris Patti
Today we are interviewing Anthony Shaw about the Apache LibCloud project
Interview with Anthony Shaw
Introductions
How did you get introduced to Python? – Chris
What is LibCloud and how did it get started? – Tobias
How much overhead does using libcloud impose versus native SDKs for performance sensitive APIs like block storage? – Chris
What are some of the design patterns and abstractions in the library that allow for supporting such a large number of cloud providers with a mostly uniform API? – Tobias
Given that there are such differing services provided by the different cloud platforms, do you face any difficulties in exposing those capabilities? – Tobias
How does LibCloud compare to similar projects such as the Fog gem in Ruby? – Tobias
What inspired the choice of Python as the language for creating the LibCloud project? Would you make the same choice again? – Tobias
Which versions of Python are supported and what challenges has that created? – Tobias
What is your opinion on the state of PyPI as a package maintainer? What statistics are most useful to you and what else do you wish you could track? – Tobias
Could you walk our listeners through the under the cover process details of instantiating a computer instance in say, Azure using libcloud? – Chris
Does LibCloud have any native support for parallelization, such as for the purpose of launching a large number of compute instances simultaneously? – Tobias
What does it mean to be an Apache project and what benefits does it provide? – Tobias
What are some of the most notable projects that leverage LibCloud for interacting with platform and infrastructure service providers? – Tobias
Could you describe how libcloud could be extended to abstract away a new type of service that’s not yet supported – e.g. a database? – Chris
Would you suggest that libcloud users extend libcloud to cover ‘native’ services they might use like AWS Lambda, or should they mix libcloud and ‘native’ SDKs in cases like this? – Chris
Could you talk a little bit about the cloud oriented network services that libcloud supports? Is it possible to create AWS VPCs, subnets, etc using libcloud? – Chris
Do you know if people use LibCloud for abstracting the APIs of a single cloud provider, even if they don’t have any intention of using a different platform? – Tobias
Do you think that people are more likely to use LibCloud for bridging across muliple public cloud platforms, or is it more commonly used in a hybrid cloud type of environment? – Tobias
What is on the roadmap for LibCloud that people should keep an eye out for? – Tobias
Keep In Touch
Twitter
GitHub
GitHub
Picks
Tobias
Blue Yeti Microphone
Diablo Swing Orchestra

Chris
Rosewill RK Keycaps
Enki
Catch 22

Anthony
Hidden Brain Podcast
PyKwalify
Doing Nothing

Links
Dimension Data
Austin Bingham and Robert Smallshire Pluralsight Python Training
CloudKick
PyPI Ranking website
Apache JClouds
SaltStack
Scalr
Apache Software Foundation
Mist.io
StackStorm
The intro and outro music is from Requiem for a Fish The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA
1 hr 25 min
April 23, 2016 Pip and the Python Package Authority with Donald Stufft
As Python developers we have all used pip to install the different libraries and projects that we need for our work, but have you ever wondered about who works on pip and how the package archive we all know and love is maintained? In this episode we interviewed Donald Stufft who is the primary maintainer of pip and the Python Package Index about how he got involved with the projects, what kind of work is involved, and what is on the roadmap. Give it a listen and then give him a big thank you for all of his hard work!
53 min