Summary In modern work environments the email is being edged out by group chat as the preferred method of communication. The majority of the platforms used are commercial and closed source, but there is one project that is working to change that. Zulip is a project that aims to redefine how effective teams communicate and it is already gaining ground. This week Tim Abbott shares the story of how Zulip got started, how it is built, and why you might want to start using it. Preface Hello and welco...
Jul 16, 2017•1 hr 1 min•Transcript available on Metacast Summary Routers and switches are the stitches in the invisible fabric of the internet which we all rely on. Managing that hardware has traditionally been a very manual process, but the NAPALM (Network Automation and Programmability Abstraction Layer with Multivendor support) is helping to change that. This week David Barroso and Mircea Ulinic explain how Python is being used to make sure that you can watch those cat videos. Preface Hello and welcome to Podcast.__init__, the podca...
Jul 09, 2017•58 min•Transcript available on Metacast Summary The venerable ‘if’ statement is a cornerstone of program flow and busines logic, but sometimes it can grow unwieldy and lead to unmaintainable software. One alternative that can result in cleaner and easier to understand code is a state machine. This week Glyph explains how Automat was created and how it has been used to upgrade portions of the Twisted project. Preface Hello and welcome to Podcast.__init__, the podcast about Python and the people who make it g...
Jul 02, 2017•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast Summary Access to affordable and consistent electricity is one of the big challenges facing our modern society. Nuclear energy is one answer because of its reliable output and carbon-free operation. To make this energy accessible to a larger portion of the global population further reasearch and innovation in reactor design and fuel sources is necessary, and that is where Python can help. This week Dr. Katy Huff talks about the research that she is doing, the problems facing the nuclear industry...
Jun 24, 2017•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast Summary We all use items that are produced in factories, but do you ever stop to think about the code that powers that production? This week Jonas Neubert takes us behind the scenes and talks about the systems and software that power modern facilities, the development workflows, and how Python gets used to tie everything together. Preface Hello and welcome to Podcast.__init__, the podcast about Python and the people who make it great. I would like to thank everyone who supports u...
Jun 18, 2017•1 hr 2 min•Transcript available on Metacast Summary When you’re writing python code and your editor offers some suggestions, where does that suggestion come from? The most likely answer is Jedi! This week David Halter explains the history of how the Jedi auto completion library was created, how it works under the hood, and where he plans on taking it. Preface Hello and welcome to Podcast.__init__, the podcast about Python and the people who make it great. I would like to thank everyone who supports us on Patreon . Yo...
Jun 11, 2017•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast Summary Functional programming is gaining in popularity as we move to an increasingly parallel world. Sometimes you want access to purely functional syntax and capabilities but you don’t want to have to learn an entirely new language. Coconut is here to help! This week Evan Hubinger explains how Coconut is a functional language that compiles to Python and can be mixed and matched with the rest of your program. Preface Hello and welcome to Podcast.__init__, the podcast about...
Jun 04, 2017•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast Summary The notebook format that has been exemplified by the IPython/Jupyter project has gained in popularity among data scientists. While the existing formats have proven their value, they are still susceptible with difficulties in collaboration and maintainability. Scott Ernst created the Cauldron notebook to be testable, production ready, and friendly to version control. This week we explore the capabilities, use cases, and architecture of Cauldron and how you can start using it today! Prefac...
May 28, 2017•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast Summary Healthy code makes for happy coders, and there are many ways to measure the health of a project. This week Andrew Mason talks about the Undebt project from Yelp!, as well as some of the other tools and practices that have been developed to make sure that the balance on their technical debt card stays low. Give it a listen to learn how and why to measure and address the painful parts of your software. Preface Hello and welcome to Podcast.__init__, the podcast about Python ...
May 20, 2017•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast Summary Content discovery and delivery and how it works in the digital realm is one of the most critical pieces of our modern economy. The blockchain is one of the most disruptive and transformative technologies to arrive in recent years. This week Jeremy Kauffman explains how the company and platform of LBRY are combining the two in an attempt to redefine how content creators and consumers interact by creating a new distributed marketplace for all kinds of media. Preface Hello and welcome to Po...
May 14, 2017•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast Summary Movies are magic, and Python is part of what makes that magic possible. We go behind the curtain this week with Dhruv Govil to learn about how Python gets used to bring a movie from concept to completion. He shares the story of how he got started in film, the tools that he uses day to day, and some resources for further learning. Preface Hello and welcome to Podcast.__init__, the podcast about Python and the people who make it great. I would like to thank everyone who sup...
May 06, 2017•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Summary Network protocols are often inscrutable, but if you have an effective way to experiment with them then they expose a lot of power. This week Guillaume Valadon explains how Scapy can be used to inspect your network traffic, test the security of your systems, and develop brand new protocols, all in Python! Preface Hello and welcome to Podcast.__init__, the podcast about Python and the people who make it great. I would like to thank everyone who supports us on Patreon . Your...
Apr 29, 2017•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast Summary Astrophysics and cosmology are fields that require working with complex multidimensional data to simulate the workings of our universe. The yt project was created to make working with this data and providing useful visualizations easy and fun. This week Nathan Goldbaum and John Zuhone share the story of how yt got started, how it works, and how it is being used right now. Announcements The Open Data Science Conference is coming to Boston May 3rd-5th. Get your ticket now so you don’...
Apr 22, 2017•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast Summary Computer vision is a complex field that spans industries with varying needs and implementations. Scikit-Image is a library that provides tools and techniques for people working in the sciences to process the visual data that is critical to their research. This week Stefan Van der Walt and Juan Nunez-Iglesias, co-authors of Elegant SciPy , talk about how the project got started, how it works, and how they are using it to power their experiments. Preface Hello and welcome to Podcast._&...
Apr 16, 2017•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Summary If you have a product to sell, whether it is a physical good or a subscription service, then you need a way to manage your transactions. The Oscar ecommerce framework for Django is a flexible, extensible, and well built way for you to add that functionality to your website. This week David Winterbottom and Michael van Tellingen talk about how the project got started, how it works under the covers, and how you can start using it today. Preface Hello and welcome to Podcast.__init&#...
Apr 08, 2017•54 min•Transcript available on Metacast Summary Everyone who uses a computer on a regular basis knows the importance of backups. Duplicity is one of the most widely used backup technologies, and it’s written in Python! This week Kenneth Loafman shares how Duplicity got started, how it works, and why you should be using it every day. Preface 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 contribution...
Apr 01, 2017•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast Summary As the internet and digital technologies continue to infiltrate our way of life, we are forced to consider how our concepts of identity and security are reflected in these spaces. Brian Warner joins me this week to discuss his work on privacy focused projects that he has worked on, including the Tahoe LAFS, Firefox Sync, and Magic Wormhole. He also has some intriguing ideas about how we can replace passwords and what it means to have an online identity. Preface Hello and welcome to Podca...
Mar 25, 2017•47 min•Transcript available on Metacast Summary As our system architectures and the Internet of Things continue to push us towards distributed logic we need a way to route the traffic between those various components. Crossbar.io is the original implementation of the Web Application Messaging Protocol (WAMP) which combines Remote Procedure Calls (RPC) with Publish/Subscribe (PubSub) communication patterns into a single communication layer. In this episode Tobias Oberstein describes the use cases and design patterns that become possibl...
Mar 18, 2017•53 min•Transcript available on Metacast Summary What’s the weather tomorrow? That’s the question that meteorologists are always trying to get better at answering. This week the developers of MetPy discuss how their project is used in that quest and the challenges that are inherent in atmospheric and weather research. It is a fascinating look at dealing with uncertainty and using messy, multidimensional data to model a massively complex system. Preface Hello and welcome to Podcast.__init__, the podcast about...
Mar 11, 2017•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast Summary If you write software then there’s a good probability that you have had to deal with installing dependencies, but did you stop to ask whether you’re installing what you think you are? My guest this week is Professor Justin Cappos from the Secure Systems Lab at New York University and he joined me to discuss his work on The Update Framework which was built to guarantee that you never install a compromised package in your systems. Preface Hello and welcome to Podcast.__...
Mar 04, 2017•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast Summary Pandas is one of the most versatile and widely used tools for data manipulation and analysis in the Python ecosystem. This week Jeff Reback explains why that is, how you can use it to make your life easier, and what you can look forward to in the months to come. Preface 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 sustai...
Feb 26, 2017•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast Summary HDF5 is a file format that supports fast and space efficient analysis of large datasets. PyTables is a project that wraps and expands on the capabilities of HDF5 to make it easy to integrate with the larger Python data ecosystem. Francesc Alted explains how the project got started, how it works, and how it can be used for creating sharable and archivable data sets. Preface Hello and welcome to Podcast.__init__, the podcast about Python and the people who make it great. I ...
Feb 18, 2017•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast Summary As circuits and electronic components become more complex, visual circuit building tools are more difficult to use effectively. If you wish that you could just write your circuits in Python then you’re in luck! Dave Vandenbout created a library called SKIDL that brings the power and flexibility of Python to the realm of Electrical Engineering and he tells us all about it in this weeks show. Preamble Hello and welcome to Podcast.__init__, the podcast about Python and...
Feb 11, 2017•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast Summary If you have ever found yourself frustrated by a complicated regular expression or wondered how you can build your own dialect of Python then you need a parser. Dave Beazley and Erik Rose talk about what parsers are, how some of them work, and what you can do with them in this episode. Preface 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 ...
Feb 04, 2017•50 min•Transcript available on Metacast Summary Don’t you wish you could make all of your devices talk to each other? Check out Home Assistant , the Python 3 platform for unified automation. Paulus Schoutsen shares the story of how the project got started, what makes it tick, and how you can use it today! 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...
Jan 28, 2017•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Summary Sooner or later you will need to encrypt or hash some data. Thankfully we have the Cryptography library, along with the other projects maintained by the Python Cryptographic Authority, to make sure that your crypto is done right. In this episode Paul Kehrer talks about how the PyCA got started, the projects that they maintain, and how you can start using cryptography in your programs today. Brief Introduction Hello and welcome to Podcast.__init__, the podcast about Python...
Jan 21, 2017•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Summary What is internationalization, when should you add it to your program, and how do you get started? This week Dwayne Bailey and Ryan Northey tell us about their work with Translate House and the different projects that they have built to make translating your software easier. 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 ...
Jan 14, 2017•59 min•Transcript available on Metacast Summary Python has a wide and growing variety of web frameworks to choose from, but if you want one with super powers then you need Morepath. This week Martijn Faassen shares the story of how Morepath was created, how it differentiates itself from the other available options, and how you can use it to power your next project. 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 ...
Jan 07, 2017•1 hr 6 min•Transcript available on Metacast Summary If you need to track all of the pieces of a business and don’t want to use 15 different tools then you should probably be looking at an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system. Unfortunately, a lot of them are big, clunky, and difficult to manage, so Rushabh Mehta decided to build one that isn’t. ERPNext is an open-source, web-based, easy to use ERP platform built with Python. Brief Introduction Hello and welcome to Podcast.__init__, the podcast about Python...
Dec 31, 2016•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast Summary Jackie Kazil has led a distinguished and varied career with a strong focus on providing information and tools that empower others. This includes her work in data journalism, as a presidential innovation fellow, co-founding 18F, co-authoring a book, and being elected to the board of the Python Software Foundation. In this episode she shares these stories and more with us and how Python has helped her along the way. Brief Introduction Hello and welcome to Podcast.__init__, the podcast abou...
Dec 24, 2016•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
