The Python Podcast.init

By Tobias MaceyTechnology Education

The Python Podcast.init episodes

February 13, 2016Airflow with Maxime Beauchemin
Visit our site to listen to past episodes, support the show, join our community, and sign up for our mailing list.
Summary
Are you struggling with trying to manage a series of related, interdependent batch jobs? Then you should check out Airflow. In this episode we spoke with the project’s creator Maxime Beauchemin about what inspired him to create it, how it works, and why you might want to use it. Airflow is a data pipeline management tool that will simplify how you build, deploy, and monitor your complex data processing tasks so that you can focus on getting the insights you need from your data.
Brief Introduction
Hello and welcome to Podcast.__init__, the podcast about Python and the people who make it great.
Subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, 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
I would also like to thank Hired, a job marketplace for developers and designers, for sponsoring this episode of Podcast.__init__. Use the link hired.com/podcastinit to double your signing bonus.
Your hosts as usual are Tobias Macey and Chris Patti
Today we are interviewing Maxime Beauchemin about his work on the Airflow project.
Interview with Maxime Beauchemin
Introductions
How did you get introduced to Python? – Chris
What is Airflow and what are some of the kinds of problems it can be used to solve? – Chris
What are some of the biggest challenges that you have seen when implementing a data pipeline with a workflow engine? – Tobias
What are some of the signs that a workflow engine is needed? – Tobias
Can you share some of the design and architecture of Airflow and how you arrived at those decisions? – Tobias
How does Airflow compare to other workflow management solutions, and why did you choose to write your own? – Chris
One of the features of Airflow that is emphasized in the documentation is the ability to dynamically generate pipelines. Can you describe how that works and why it is useful? – Tobias
For anyone who wants to get started with using Airflow, what are the infrastructure requirements? – Tobias
Airflow, like a number of the other tools in the space, support interoperability with Hadoop and its ecosystem. Can you elaborate on why JVM technologies have become so prevalent in the big data space and how Python fits into that overall problem domain? – Tobias
Airflow comes with a web UI for visualizing workflows, as do a few of the other Python workflow engines. Why is that an important feature for this kind of tool and what are some of the tasks and use cases that are supported in the Airflow web portal? – Tobias
One problem with data management is tracking the provenance of data as it is manipulated and shuttled between different systems. Does Airflow have any support for maintaining that kind of information and if not do you have recommendations for how practitioners can approach the issue? – Tobias
What other kinds of metadata can Airflow track as it executes tasks and what are some of the interesting uses you have seen or created for that information? – Tobias
With all the other languages competing for mindshare, what made you choose Python when you built Airflow? – Chris
I notice that Airflow supports Kerberos. It’s an incredibly capable security model but that comes at a high price in terms of complexity. What were the challenges and was it worth the additional implementation effort? – Chris
When does the data pipeline/workflow management paradigm break down and what other approaches or tools can be used in those cases? – Tobias
So, you wrote another tool recently called Panoramix. Can you describe what it is and maybe explain how it fits in the data management domain in relation to Airflow? – Tobias
Keep In Touch
Google Group
Gitter
GitHub
Picks
Tobias
Empire of the East by Fred Saberhagen
The Book of Swords by Fred Saberhagen

Chris
Buraka Son Sistema
Star Wars – Despecialized Edition
The Iron Druid Chronicles

Maxime
Flask App Builder

The intro and outro music is from Requiem for a Fish The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA
1 hr 4 min
February 07, 2016 WSGI 2
The Web Server Gateway Interface, or WSGI for short, is a long-standing pillar of the Python ecosystem. It has enabled a vast number of web frameworks to proliferate by not having to worry about how exactly to interact with the HTTP protocol and focus instead on building a library that is robust, extensible, and easy to use. With recent evolutions to how we interact with the web, it appears that WSGI may be in need of an update and that is what our guests on this episode came to discuss. Cory Benfield is leading an effort to determine what if any modifications should be made to the WSGI standard or if it is time to retire it in favor of something new. Andrew Godwin has been hard at work building the Channels framework for Django to allow for interoperability with websockets. They bring their unique perspectives to bear on how and why we may want to consider bringing WSGI into the current state of the web.
1 hr 5 min
February 07, 2016WSGI 2
Visit our site to listen to past episodes, support the show, join our community, and sign up for our mailing list.
Summary
The Web Server Gateway Interface, or WSGI for short, is a long-standing pillar of the Python ecosystem. It has enabled a vast number of web frameworks to proliferate by not having to worry about how exactly to interact with the HTTP protocol and focus instead on building a library that is robust, extensible, and easy to use. With recent evolutions to how we interact with the web, it appears that WSGI may be in need of an update and that is what our guests on this episode came to discuss. Cory Benfield is leading an effort to determine what if any modifications should be made to the WSGI standard or if it is time to retire it in favor of something new. Andrew Godwin has been hard at work building the Channels framework for Django to allow for interoperability with websockets. They bring their unique perspectives to bear on how and why we may want to consider bringing WSGI into the current state of the web.
Brief Introduction
Hello and welcome to Podcast.__init__, the podcast about Python and the people who make it great.
Subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, 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
I would also like to thank Hired, a job marketplace for developers, for sponsoring this episode of Podcast.__init__. Use the link hired.com/podcastinit to double your signing bonus.
Your hosts as usual are Tobias Macey and Chris Patti
Today we are interviewing Cory Benfield and Andrew Godwin about a proposed update to the WSGI specification.
Interview with Cory Benfield and Andrew Godwin
Introductions
How did you get introduced to Python? – Chris
First off, what is WSGI? – Tobias
What are some of the ways the current WSGI spec has fallen out of step with the needs of the modern developer? – Chris
How did you come to be involved with the new WSGI specification? What brought you into this process? – Chris
Do you think the WSGI name itself brings a lot of expectation, or is it good to keep it as a well-recognised Python landmark? – Tobias
Would it be better to make a clean break and implement an entirely new set of APIs and style of interaction? – Tobias
What kind of compatibility guarantees should be made between the current spec and the proposed upgrade? What would the impact be if the new specification was incompatible? – Tobias
How has the response been to your call for comments? What are some of the most frequently raised concerns or suggestions? – Tobias
What are some of the proposed changes to the specification? – Tobias
Are there any future directions you think WSGI should take that perhaps haven’t been considered yet? – Chris
Has your opinion or vision of the proposed update changed as you reviewed responses to the conversation on the mailing list? – Tobias
Do you have any ideas of how to design the new specification in order to avoid a similar situation of needing to deprecate the current standards in order to accomodate new web protocols? – Tobias
What are some of the points of contention or rigorous debate that have kept previous WSGI 2 attempts from succeeding? – Chris
Keep In Touch
Andrew
Twitter
GitHub

Cory
Twitter
GitHub

Picks
Tobias
Discourse

Chris
The Expanse
Puerto Rico for IOS
Dominion for IOS
Splendor for IOS

Cory
Wusthof Knives
Australian Football
XCOM 2

Andrew
Archery
Tromsø Norway

The intro and outro music is from Requiem for a Fish The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA
1 hr 5 min
January 31, 2016 SymPy With Aaron Meurer
Looking for an open source alternative to Mathematica or MatLab for solving algebraic equations? Look no further than the excellent SymPy project. It is a well built and easy to use Computer Algebra System (CAS) and in this episode we spoke with the current project maintainer Aaron Meurer about its capabilities and when you might want to use it.
1 hr 4 min
January 31, 2016SymPy With Aaron Meurer
Visit our site to listen to past episodes, support the show, join our community, and sign up for our mailing list.
Summary
Looking for an open source alternative to Mathematica or MatLab for solving algebraic equations? Look no further than the excellent SymPy project. It is a well built and easy to use Computer Algebra System (CAS) and in this episode we spoke with the current project maintainer Aaron Meurer about its capabilities and when you might want to use it.
Brief Introduction
Hello and welcome to Podcast.__init__, the podcast about Python and the people who make it great.
Subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, 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 at discourse.pythonpodcast.com to follow up with the guests and help us make the show better!
nn
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
I would also like to thank Hired, a job marketplace for developers, for sponsoring this episode of Podcast.__init__. Use the link hired.com/podcastinit and double your signing bonus to $4,000.
We are recording today on January 18th, 2016 and your hosts as usual are Tobias Macey and Chris Patti
Today we are interviewing Aaron Meurer about SymPy
Interview with Aaron Meurer
Introductions
How did you get introduced to Python? – Chris
What is Sympy and what kinds of problems does it aim to solve? – Chris
How did the SymPy project get started? – Tobias
How did you get started with the SymPy project? – Chris
Are there any limits to the complexity of the equations SymPy can model and solve? – Chris
How does SymPy compare to similar projects in other languages? – Tobias
How does Sympy render results using such beautiful mathematical symbols when the inputs are simple ASCII? – Chris
What are some of the challenges in creating documentation for a project like SymPy that is accessible to non-experts while still having the necessary information for professionals in the fields of mathematics? – Tobias
Which fields of academia and business seem to be most heavily represented in the users of SymPy? – Tobias
What are some of the uses of Sympy in education outside of the obvious like students checking their homework? – Chris
How does SymPy integrate with the Jupyter Notebook? – Chris
Is SymPy generally used more as an interactive mathematics environment or as a library integrated within a larger application? – Tobias
What were the challenges moving SymPy from Python 2 to Python 3? – Chris
Are there features of Python 3 that simplify your work on SymPy or that make it possible to add new features that would have been too difficult previously? – Tobias
Were there any performance bottlenecks you needed to overcome in creating Sympy? – Chris
What are some of the interesting design or implementation challenges you’ve found when creating and maintaining SymPy? – Chris
Are there any new features or major updates to SymPy that are planned? – Tobias
How is the evolution of SymPy managed from a feature perspective? Have there been any occasions in recent memory where a pull request had to be rejected because it didn’t fit with the vision for the project? – Tobias
Which of the features of SymPy do you find yourself using most often? – Tobias
Picks
Tobias
Functional Geekery
Nekrogoblikon
Heavy Meta

Marble Fun Run

Chris
Surprisingly Awesome
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace
Pizzicato 5
Mayflower Hoppy Brown Ale

Aaron
Fermat’s Library
catimg
iTerm2

Keep In Touch
Twitter
Mailing List
Gitter Channel
Links
Project Euler
Richardson’s Theorem
Doing Math With Python by Amit Saha (and Aaron’s book review)
The intro and outro music is from Requiem for a Fish The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA
1 hr 4 min
January 22, 2016 RPython with Maciej Fijalkowski
RPython is a subset of Python that is used for writing high performance interpreters for dynamic languages. The most well-known product of this tooling is the PyPy interpreter. In this episode we had the pleasure of speaking with Maciej Fijalkowski about what RPython is, what it isn’t, what kinds of projects it has been used for, and what makes it so interesting.
36 min
January 22, 2016RPython with Maciej Fijalkowski
Visit our site to listen to past episodes, support the show, join our community, and sign up for our mailing list.
Summary
RPython is a subset of Python that is used for writing high performance interpreters for dynamic languages. The most well-known product of this tooling is the PyPy interpreter. In this episode we had the pleasure of speaking with Maciej Fijalkowski about what RPython is, what it isn’t, what kinds of projects it has been used for, and what makes it so interesting.
Brief Introduction
Hello and welcome to Podcast.__init__, the podcast about Python and the people who make it great.
Subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, 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
I would also like to thank Hired, a job marketplace for developers, for sponsoring this episode of Podcast.__init__. Use the link hired.com/podcastinit to double your signing bonus.
We are recording today on December 17th, 2015 and your hosts as usual are Tobias Macey and Chris Patti
Today we are interviewing Maciej Fijalkowski on RPython
Interview with Maciej Fijalkowski
Introductions
How did you get introduced to Python? – Chris
What is RPython and how does it differ from CPython? – Tobias
Can you share some of the history of RPython in terms of the major improvements and design choices? – Tobias
In the documentation it says that RPython is able to generate a Just In Time compiler for dynamic languages. Can you explain why that is significant and some of the ways that it does that? – Tobias
The most well-known use of RPython is the PyPy interpreter for Python. Can you share some of the other languages that have been ported to the RPython runtime and how their performance has been improved or altered in the process? – Tobias
Are there any languages that have been designed entirely for use with RPython, rather than translating an existing language to run on it? – Tobias
Do you know of any cases where an application has been written to run directly on RPython? – Tobias
What are the computer architecture and operating system platforms that RPython supports and do you have any plans to expand that support? – Tobias
Are there any minimum hardware specifications that are necessary to be able to effectively run a language written against the RPython platform? – Tobias
Is RPython similar in concept to other efforts like Parrot in the Perl world? – Chris
Are there any particular areas of the project that you need help with and how can people get involved with the project? – Tobias
Picks
Tobias
PyCoders 2015 Recap
Shape Up
Xbox One
Xbox One Kinect
Selfless

Chris
Skunk Bear
Category 6
Environments)

Maciej
PyCon South Africa

Keep In Touch
IRC
Mailing List
PyPy consultancy
Links
Psyco (Python JIT)
Truffle
HippyVM
Topaz
Pycket
Pyxie-lang
The intro and outro music is from Requiem for a Fish The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA
36 min
January 16, 2016 Ben Darnell on Tornado
If you are trying to build a web application in Python that can scale to a high number of concurrent users, or you want to leverage the power of websockets, then Tornado just may be the library you need. In this episode we interview Ben Darnell about his work as the maintainer of the Tornado project and how it can be used in a number of ways to power your next high traffic site.
1 hr 7 min
January 16, 2016Ben Darnell on Tornado
Visit our site to listen to past episodes, support the show, join our Discourse community, and sign up for our mailing list.
Summary
If you are trying to build a web application in Python that can scale to a high number of concurrent users, or you want to leverage the power of websockets, then Tornado just may be the library you need. In this episode we interview Ben Darnell about his work as the maintainer of the Tornado project and how it can be used in a number of ways to power your next high traffic site.
Brief Introduction
Hello and welcome to Podcast.__init__, the podcast about Python and the people who make it great.
Subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, 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+
We are also running a listener survey to get feedback about the show. You can find it at bit.do/podcastinit-survey.
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
I would also like to thank Hired, a job marketplace for developers and designers, for sponsoring this episode of Podcast.__init__. Use the link hired.com/podcastinit to double your signing bonus to $4,000.
Your hosts as usual are Tobias Macey and Chris Patti
We recently launched a new Discourse forum for the show which you can find at discourse.pythonpodcast.com. Join us to discuss the show, the episodes, and ideas for future interviews.
Today we are interviewing Ben Darnell about his work on Tornado
Interview with Ben Darnell
Introductions
How did you get introduced to Python? – Chris
What is Tornado and what sets it apart from other HTTP servers? – Chris
How did you get involved with Tornado? – Ben
What was the inspiration for the name? – Tobias
Tornado was created before the recent focus on asynchronous applications. What prompted that design choice and when might someone care about using async in their development? – Tobias
What is involved in creating an event loop and what are some of the specific design decisions that you made when implementing one for Tornado? – Tobias
How does Tornado’s event loop compare to other packages such as Twisted or the asyncio module in the standard library? – Tobias
The web module appears to provide a minimal framework for developing web apps. How scalable are those capabilities and is there a recommended architecture for people using Tornado to develop web applications? – Tobias
What are some use cases in which a developer might choose Tornado over other similar options? – Chris
Could you please give our listeners an overview of Tornado’s concurrency options including coroutines? – Chris
I see that Tornado supports interoperability with the WSGI protocol and one of the use cases mentioned is for running a Django application alongside a Tornado app. Is that a common way for providing websocket capabilities alongside an existing web app? – Tobias
I noticed that Tornado provides non-blocking versions of bare sockets and TCP connections. Are there any add-on packages available to simplify the use of various network protocols along the lines of what Twisted includes? – Tobias
Please tell us about the transition of Tornado to Python 3. What obstacles did you face and how did you overcome them? – Chris
Based on your issue tracker it looks like http2 support is definitely on the roadmap. Could you please detail your future plans in this area? – Chris
What are some of the common “gotcha’s” for people who are just starting to use Tornado? – Tobias
Picks
Tobias
Adventures of Riley
Dayworld Trilogy by Philip José Farmer

Chris
Sense8
Habits of a Happy Brain
Ethereum

Ben
The Memory Palace
Newsblur

Keep In Touch
Mailing List
Links
Motor
The intro and outro music is from Requiem for a Fish The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA
1 hr 7 min
January 08, 2016 Yves Hilpisch on Quantitative Finance
Yves Hilpisch is a founder of The Python Quants, a consultancy that offers services in the space of quantitative financial analysis. In addition, they have created open source libraries to help with that analysis. In this episode we spoke with him about what quantitative finance is, how Python is used in that domain, and what kinds of knowledge are necessary to do these kinds of analysis.
1 hr 11 min