A Quick Python Check-in With Naomi Ceder

Summary Naomi Ceder was fortunate enough to learn Python from Guido himself. Since then she has contributed books, code, and mentorship to the community. Currently she serves as the chair of the board to the Python Software Foundation, leads an engineering team, and has recently completed a new draft of the Quick Python Book. In this episode she shares her story, including a discussion of her experience as a technical author and a detailed account of the role that the PSF plays in supporting and growing the community. Announcements Hello and welcome to Podcast.__init__, the podcast about Python and the people who make it great. When you’re ready to launch your next app or want to try a project you hear about on the show, you’ll need somewhere to deploy it, so take a look at our friends over at Linode. With 200 Gbit/s private networking, scalable shared block storage, node balancers, and a 40 Gbit/s public network, all controlled by a brand new API you’ve got everything you need to scale up. And for your tasks that need fast computation, such as training machine learning models, they just launched dedicated CPU instances. Go to pythonpodcast.com/linode to get a $20 credit and launch a new server in under a minute. And don’t forget to thank them for their continued support of this show! Visit the site to subscribe to the show, sign up for the newsletter, and read the show notes. And if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions I would love to hear them. You can reach me on Twitter at @Podcast__init__ or email hosts@podcastinit.com) To help other people find the show please leave a review on iTunes and tell your friends and co-workers Join the community in the new Zulip chat workspace at pythonpodcast.com/chat Check out the Practical AI podcast from our friends at Changelog Media to learn and stay up to date with what’s happening in AI You listen to this show to learn and stay up to date with what’s happening in databases, streaming platforms, big data, and everything else you need to know about modern data management. For even more opportunities to meet, listen, and learn from your peers you don’t want to miss out on this year’s conference season. We have partnered with organizations such as O’Reilly Media, Dataversity, and the Open Data Science Conference. Go to pythonpodcast.com/conferences to learn more and take advantage of our partner discounts when you register. Your host as usual is Tobias Macey and today I’m interviewing Naomi Ceder about her career and contributions in the Python community Interview Introductions How did you get introduced to Python? How are you using Python in your current day-to-day? You have been working with Python for a long time at this point, and you have become very involved in supporting and growing the community. What is your motivation for dedicating so much of your time and energy into work that isn’t directly related to paying the bills? You have been the chair of the PSF for a few years now. What are your responsibilities in that position? What do you find to be the most under-rated, misunderstood, or overlooked activities of the PSF? How much of the success of the Python language and its community can be attributed to the presence and support of the PSF? In addition to the work you do with the PSF, other community activities, and your day job, you have also written the 2nd and 3rd editions of the Quick Python Book. Can you give a synopsis of what the book covers and the audience that it is intended for? In the process of writing the book and updating it between revisions, what are some of the features of the language or standard library that you discovered or learned more about which you have been able to use in your work? What are some of the other language communities that you have been involved with and what lessons have you learned from them that you would like to see reflected in Python? What are some of the other projects that you have been involved with that you are most proud of, whether technical or otherwise? What are you most excited about in the near to medium future? Keep In Touch @NaomiCeder on Twitter Web Quick Python Book Get 40% off everything at Manning with code podinit19 at checkout Enter to win a free copy Picks Tobias Inkscape vector graphics editor Naomi La Casa de las Flores (House of Flowers) (Netflix) Links The Quick Python Book Dick Blick Art Materials The PSF @ThePSF on Twitter Manning Publishers PEP8 ETL Collections Module Turtle Library PyCon Hatchery PyCon Charlas Podcast Episode The GIL The intro and outro music is from Requiem for a Fish The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA