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

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• 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