Protecting The Future Of Python By Hunting Black Swans

Summary

The Python language has seen exponential growth in popularity and usage over the past decade. This has been driven by industry trends such as the rise of data science and the continued growth of complex web applications. It is easy to think that there is no threat to the continued health of Python, its ecosystem, and its community, but there are always outside factors that may pose a threat in the long term. In this episode Russell Keith-Magee reprises his keynote from PyCon US in 2019 and shares his thoughts on potential black swan events and what we can do as engineers and as a community to guard against them.

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• Your host as usual is Tobias Macey and today I’m interviewing Russell Keith-Magee about potential black swans for the Python language, ecosystem, and community and what we can do about them

Interview

• Introductions
• How did you get introduced to Python?
• Can you start by explaining what a Black Swan is in the context of our conversation?
• You were the opening keynote for PyCon this year, where you talked about some of the potential challenges facing Python. What motivated you to choose this topic for your presentation?
• What effect did your talk have on the overall tone and focus of the conversations that you experienced during the rest of the conference?
  • What were some of the most notable or memorable reactions or pieces of feedback that you heard?
• What are the biggest potential risks for the Python ecosystem that you have identified or discussed with others?
• What is your overall sentiment about the potential for the future of Python?
• As developers and technologists, does it really matter if Python continues to be a viable language?
• What is your personal wish list of new capabilities or new directions for the future of the Python language and ecosystem?
• For listeners to this podcast and members of the Python community, what are some of the ways that we can contribute to the long-term success of the language?

Keep In Touch

• BeeWare
• freakboy3742 on GitHub
• @freakboy3742 on Twitter
• Website

Picks

• Tobias
  • Jethro Tull
• Russell
  • pytest-tldr
  • pdbpp

Links

• PyCon 2019 Keynote Presentation
• Perth
• Western Australia
• Django
• BeeWare
• RedHat
• Emacs
• Vim
• Lisp
• Glyph
• Twisted
• Cal Henderson
• Flickr
• Slack
• Black Swan
  • Animal
  • Book
  • Metaphor
• Nassim Nicholas Taleb
• PyCon US
• Ewa Jodlowska
• Python Software Foundation
  • Podcast Interview
• Swift
• JavaScript
• Django Girls
• Briefcase packaging tool
• PyPy
• Web Assembly (WASM)
• COBOL
• Tidelift
• Cricket unit test runner

The intro and outro music is from Requiem for a Fish The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA