Summary Adding translations to our projects makes them usable in more places by more people which, ultimately, makes them more valuable. Managing the localization process can be difficult if you don’t have the right tools, so this week Michal čihař tells us about the Weblate project and how it simplifies the process of integrating your translations with your source code. Brief Introduction Hello and welcome to Podcast.__init__, the podcast about Python and the people who make it great. I w...
Dec 17, 2016•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast Summary As the amount of text available on the internet and in businesses continues to increase, the need for fast and accurate language analysis becomes more prominent. This week Matthew Honnibal, the creator of SpaCy, talks about his experiences researching natural language processing and creating a library to make his findings accessible to industry. Brief Introduction Hello and welcome to Podcast.__init__, the podcast about Python and the people who make it great. I would like to thank every...
Dec 11, 2016•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast Summary Are you looking for a backend as a service offering where you have full control of your data? Look no further than Kinto! This week Alexis Metaireau and Mathieu Leplatre share the story of how Kinto was created, how it works under the covers, and some of the ways that it is being used at Mozilla and around the web. 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...
Dec 04, 2016•56 min•Transcript available on Metacast Summary Plone is one of the first CMS projects to be built using Python and it is still being actively developed. This week Eric Steele, the release manager for Plone, tells us about how it got started, how it is architected, and how the community is one of its greatest strengths 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 s...
Nov 26, 2016•50 min•Transcript available on Metacast Summary In this episode Chris and I look back at the past 83 episodes of the show and talk about what we learned, what we’ve enjoyed, and some of the highlights. 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. When you’re ready to launch your next project you’ll need somewhere to deploy it. Check o...
Nov 19, 2016•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast Summary Housing is something that we all have experience with, but many don’t understand the complexities of the market. This week Travis Jungroth talks about how HouseCanary uses data to make the business of real estate more transparent. 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. When you’re ready ...
Nov 12, 2016•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast Summary Speech is the most natural interface for communication, and yet we force ourselves to conform to the limitations of our tools in our daily tasks. As computation becomes cheaper and more ubiquitous and artificial intelligence becomes more capable, voice becomes a more practical means of controlling our environments. This week Steve Penrod shares the work that is being done on the Mycroft project and the company of the same name. He explains how he met the other members of the team, how th...
Nov 05, 2016•1 hr 5 min•Transcript available on Metacast Summary Annapoornima Koppad is a director of the PSF, founder of the Bangalore chapter of PyLadies, and is a Python instructor at the Indian Institute of Science. In this week’s episode she talks about how she got started with Python, her experience running the PyLadies meetup, and working with the PSF. 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 contrib...
Oct 29, 2016•19 min•Transcript available on Metacast Summary Location is an increasingly relevant aspect of software systems as we have more internet connected devices with GPS capabilities. GIS (Geographic Information Systems) are used for processing and analyzing this data, and fortunately Python has a suite of libraries to facilitate these endeavors. This week Sean Gillies, an author and contributor of many of these tools, shares the story of his career and contributions, and the work that he is doing at MapBox. Brief Introduction Hello and wel...
Oct 22, 2016•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast Summary K Lars Lohn has had a long and varied career, spending his most recent years at Mozilla. This week he shares some of his stories about getting involved with Python, his work with Mozilla, and his inspiration for the closing keynote at PyCon US 2016. He also elaborates on the intricate mazes that he draws and his life as an organic farmer in Oregon. Brief Introduction Hello and welcome to Podcast.__init__, the podcast about Python and the people who make it great. I would like to thank ev...
Oct 15, 2016•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Summary One of the great strengths of the Python community is the diversity of backgrounds that our practitioners come from. This week Lorena Mesa talks about how her focus on political science and civic engagement led her to a career in software engineering and data analysis. In addition to her professional career she founded the Chicago chapter of PyLadies, helps teach women and kids how to program, and was voted onto the board of the PSF. Brief Introduction Hello and welcome to Podcast.__init...
Oct 08, 2016•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Summary Podcasts are becoming more popular now than they ever have been. Podbuzzz is a service for helping podcasters to track their reviews and imporove SEO to reach a wider audience. In this episode we spoke with Kyle Martin about his experience using Python to build Podbuzzz and manage it in production. 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 contributi...
Oct 01, 2016•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast Summary We’re delving into the complex workings of your mind this week on Podcast. init with Jonathan Peirce. He tells us about how he started the PsychoPy project and how it has grown in utility and popularity over the years. We discussed the ways that it has been put to use in myriad psychological experiments, the inner workings of how to design and execute those experiments, and what is in store for its future. Brief Introduction Hello and welcome to Podcast.__init__, the podcast about Python...
Sep 25, 2016•1 hr 12 min•Transcript available on Metacast Summary Sandstorm.io is an innovative platform that aims to make self-hosting applications easier and more maintainable for the average individual. This week we spoke with Asheesh Laroia about why running your own services is desirable, how they have made security a first priority, how Sandstorm is architected, and what the installation process looks like. Brief Introduction Hello and welcome to Podcast.__init__, the podcast about Python and the people who make it great. I would like to thank ev...
Sep 17, 2016•1 hr•Transcript available on Metacast 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__, ...
Sep 10, 2016•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 Introducti...
Sep 03, 2016•1 hr 5 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 gre...
Aug 27, 2016•46 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 languag...
Aug 20, 2016•53 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 l...
Aug 13, 2016•54 min•Transcript available on Metacast Summary 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! Brief Int...
Aug 06, 2016•46 min•Transcript available on Metacast Summary We all know that testing is an important part of software and systems development. The problem is that as our systems and applications grow, the amount of testing necessary increases at an exponential rate. Cris Medina joins us this week to talk about some of the problems and approaches associated with testing these complex systems and some of the ways that Python can help. Brief Introduction Hello and welcome to Podcast.__init__, the podcast about Python and the people who make it great...
Jul 30, 2016•58 min•Transcript available on Metacast Summary The same week that we released our first episode of Podcast.__init__, Michael Kennedy was publishing the very first episode of Talk Python To Me. The years long drought of podcasts about Python has been quenched with a veritable flood of quality content as we have both continued to deliver the stories of the wonderful people who make our community such a wonderful place. This week we interviewed Michael about what inspired him to get started, his process and experience as Talk Python con...
Jul 23, 2016•1 hr 18 min•Transcript available on Metacast Summary Everyone loves to imagine what they would do if they had their own robot. This week we spoke with Gunther Cox and Kevin Brown about their work on Zorg, which is a Python library for building a robot of your own! We discussed how the project got started, what platforms it supports, and some of the projects that have been built with it. Give it a listen and then get building! Brief Introduction Hello and welcome to Podcast.__init__, the podcast about Python and the people who make it great...
Jul 17, 2016•25 min•Transcript available on Metacast Summary As Python developers we are fond of the dynamic nature of the language. Sometimes, though, it can get a bit too dynamic and that’s where having some type information would come in handy. Mypy is a project that aims to add that missing level of detail to function and variable definitions so that you don’t have to go hunting 5 levels deep in the stack to understand what shape that data structure is supposed to be. This week we spoke with David Fisher and Greg Price about their work on Mypy...
Jul 10, 2016•1 hr•Transcript available on Metacast Summary When you have good tools it makes the work you do even more enjoyable. Russel Keith-Magee has been building up a set of tools that are aiming to let you write graphical interfaces in Python and run them across all of your target platforms. Most recently he has been working on a capstone project called Toga that targets the Android and iOS platforms with the same set of code. In this episode we explored his journey through programming and how he has built and designed the Beeware suite. G...
Jul 02, 2016•1 hr 11 min•Transcript available on Metacast Summary Armin Ronacher is a prolific contributor to the Python software ecosystem, creating such widely used projects as Flask and Jinja2. This week we got the opportunity to talk to him about how he got his start with Python and what has inspired him to create the various tools that have made our lives easier. We also discussed his experiences working in Rust and how it can interface with Python. Brief Introduction Hello and welcome to Podcast.__init__, the podcast about Python and the people w...
Jun 26, 2016•1 hr•Transcript available on Metacast Summary Making sure that your code is secure is a difficult task. In this episode we spoke to Eric Brown, Travis McPeak, and Tim Kelsey about their work on the Bandit library, which is a static analysis engine to help you find potential vulnerabilities before your application reaches production. We discussed how it works, how to make it fit your use case, and why it was created. Give the show a listen and then go start scanning your projects! Brief Introduction Hello and welcome to Podcast.__ini...
Jun 18, 2016•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast Visit our site to listen to past episodes, support the show, join our community , and sign up for our mailing list. Summary As developers we all have to deal with bugs sometimes, but we don’t have to make our users deal with them too. Sentry is a project that automatically detects errors in your applications and surfaces the necessary information to help you fix them quickly. In this episode we interviewed David Cramer about the history of Sentry and how he has built a team around it to provide ...
Jun 12, 2016•1 hr 9 min•Transcript available on Metacast Visit our site to listen to past episodes, support the show, join our community , and sign up for our mailing list. Summary As developers, one of the most important tools that we use daily is our version control system. Mercurial is one such tool that is written in Python, making it eminently flexible, customizable, and incredibly powerful. This week we spoke with Augie Fackler to learn about the history, features, and future of Mercurial. Brief Introduction Hello and welcome to Podcast.__init__...
Jun 05, 2016•55 min•Transcript available on Metacast Visit our site to listen to past episodes, support the show, join our community , and sign up for our mailing list. 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 ...
May 28, 2016•20 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
