Latest Episodes

Hardware Hacking Made Easy With CircuitPython - Episode 212

May 20, 2019 Tobias Macey

Learning to program can be a frustrating process, because even the simplest code relies on a complex stack of other moving pieces to function. When working with a microcontroller you are in full control of everything so there are fewer concepts that need to be understood in order to build a functioning project. CircuitPython is a platform for beginner developers that provides easy to use abstractions for working with hardware devices. In this episode Scott Shawcroft explains how the project got started, how it relates to MicroPython, some of...

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Building A Privacy Preserving Voice Assistant - Episode 211

May 13, 2019 Tobias Macey

Being able to control a computer with your voice has rapidly moved from science fiction to science fact. Unfortunately, the majority of platforms that have been made available to consumers are controlled by large organizations with little incentive to respect users' privacy. The team at Snips are building a platform that runs entirely off-line and on-device so that your information is always in your control. In this episode Adrien Ball explains how the Snips architecture works, the challenges of building a speech recognition and natural language understanding toolchain that...

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Hacking The Government With The USDS - Episode 210

May 7, 2019 Tobias Macey

The U.S. government has a vast quantity of software projects across the various agencies, and many of them would benefit from a modern approach to development and deployment. The U.S. Digital Services Agency has been tasked with making that happen. In this episode the current director of engineering for the USDS, David Holmes, explains how the agency operates, how they are using Python in their efforts to provide the greatest good to the largest number of people, and why you might want to get involved. Even if you don't...

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Probabilistic Modeling In Python (And What That Even Means) - Episode 209

April 29, 2019 Tobias Macey

Most programming is deterministic, relying on concrete logic to determine the way that it operates. However, there are problems that require a way to work with uncertainty. PyMC3 is a library designed for building models to predict the likelihood of certain outcomes. In this episode Thomas Wiecki explains the use cases where Bayesian statistics are necessary, how PyMC3 is designed and implemented, and some great examples of how it is being used in real projects.

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Exploring Indico: A Full Featured Event Management Platform - Episode 208

April 22, 2019 Tobias Macey

Managing an event is rife with inherent complexity that scales as you move from scheduling a meeting to organizing a conference. Indico is a platform built at CERN to handle their efforts to organize events such as the Computing in High Energy Physics (CHEP) conference, and now it has grown to manage booking of meeting rooms. In this episode Adrian Mönnich, core developer on the Indico project, explains how it is architected to facilitate this use case, how it has evolved since its first incarnation two decades ago, and...

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Exploring Python's Internals By Rewriting Them In Rust - Episode 207

April 15, 2019 Tobias Macey

The CPython interpreter has been the primary implementation of the Python runtime for over 20 years. In that time other options have been made available for different use cases. The most recent entry to that list is RustPython, written in the memory safe language Rust. One of the added benefits is the option to compile to WebAssembly, offering a browser-native Python runtime. In this episode core maintainers Windel Bouwman and Adam Kelly explain how the project got started, their experience working on it, and the plans for the future....

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Version Control For Your Machine Learning Projects - Episode 206

April 8, 2019 Tobias Macey

Version control has become table stakes for any software team, but for machine learning projects there has been no good answer for tracking all of the data that goes into building and training models, and the output of the models themselves. To address that need Dmitry Petrov built the Data Version Control project known as DVC. In this episode he explains how it simplifies communication between data scientists, reduces duplicated effort, and simplifies concerns around reproducing and rebuilding models at different stages of the projects lifecycle. If you work...

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Building Scalable Ecommerce Sites On Saleor - Episode 205

April 1, 2019 Tobias Macey

Ecommerce is an industry that has largely faded into the background due to its ubiquity in recent years. Despite that, there are new trends emerging and room for innovation, which is what the team at Mirumee focuses on. To support their efforts, they build and maintain the open source Saleor framework for Django as a way to make the core concerns of online sales easy and painless. In this episode Mirek Mencel and Patryk Zawadzki discuss the projects that they work on, the current state of the ecommerce industry,...

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A Quick Python Check-in With Naomi Ceder - Episode 204

March 25, 2019 Tobias Macey

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.

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Wes McKinney's Career In Python For Data Analysis - Episode 203

March 18, 2019 Tobias Macey

Python has become one of the dominant languages for data science and data analysis. Wes McKinney has been working for a decade to make tools that are easy and powerful, starting with the creation of Pandas, and eventually leading to his current work on Apache Arrow. In this episode he discusses his motivation for this work, what he sees as the current challenges to be overcome, and his hopes for the future of the industry.

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