Core Python Devs on how COVID has changed core Python development
Python is a programming language that we all know and love. We’ve come to expect amazing new features in recent releases of Python, like async programming, type hints, f-strings, and so much more. Join this interactive session with Guido Van Rossum, Carol Willing, Mariatta Wijaya, and Brett Cannon as they talk about how COVID has affected the path of Core Python development. And, if we’re lucky, they may even share news about new and exciting features in the pipeline!
About Guido van Rossum
Guido van Rossum is the creator of the Python programming language. He grew up in the Netherlands and studied at the University of Amsterdam, where he graduated with a Master's Degree in Mathematics and Computer Science. His first job after college was as a programmer at CWI, where he worked on the ABC language, the Amoeba distributed operating system, and a variety of multimedia projects. During this time he created Python as side project. He then moved to the United States to take a job at a non-profit research lab in Virginia, married a Texan, worked for several other startups, and moved to California. In 2005 he joined Google, where he obtained the rank of Senior Staff Engineer, and in 2013 he started working for Dropbox as a Principal Engineer. In October 2019 he retired. Until 2018 he was Python's BDFL (Benevolent Dictator For Life), and he is still deeply involved in the Python community. Guido, his wife and their teenager live in Silicon Valley, where they love hiking, biking and birding.
About Carol Willing
Carol Willing works as a Technical Evangelist for Noteable. As a core developer of Python, she was elected recently to serve a third term on Python's Steering Council. She also serves on Project Jupyter's Steering Council and is a core member of the JupyterHub and mybinder.org teams. She received the 2017 ACM Software System Award for Project Jupyter's lasting influence on computing. She's a PSF Fellow and former Director of the Python Software Foundation. In 2019, she was honored with the Frank Willison Award for technical and community contributions to Python. She serves as a co-editor of The Journal of Open Source Education (JOSE) and co-authored the open source book, Teaching and Learning with Jupyter. Carol has an MS in Management from MIT and a BSE in Electrical Engineering from Duke University.
About Brett Cannon
Brett has been a member of the Python development team for nearly 18 years and a member of Python's steering council since its inception. To help pay for his open source habit, he is the dev manager for the Python extension for VS Code.
You can find Brett's musings on his blog.
About Mariatta Wijaya
Mariatta is a Python Core Developer, Staff Software Engineer at Uplight, and the Vancouver PyLadies co-organizer, and one of the founding members of the PyCascades conference. She moved to Canada almost two decades ago, and now lives in Vancouver with her husband and two children. In her free time, she contributes to open source, builds GitHub bots, and fixes typos.
About Nina Zakharenko (Panel Host)
Nina is a Software Engineer with a passion for speaking and teaching, and over a decade of experience writing software for companies like Reddit, Meetup, and HBO. She currently focus on Python at Microsoft on the Cloud Developer Advocacy team.
In her spare time, she enjoys snowboarding, hiking, and tinkering with wearable electronics.