Hunting Black Swans With Bees: Catching Up With The Inimitable Russell Keith-Magee

The Python Podcast.__init__

Summary

Russell Keith-Magee is an accomplished engineer and a fixture of the Python community. His work on the Beeware suite of projects is one of the most ambitious undertakings in the ecosystem and unfailingly forward-looking. With his recent transition to working for Anaconda he is now able to dedicate his full focus to the effort. In this episode he reflects on the journey that he has taken so far, how Beeware is helping to address some of the threats to Python’s long term viability, and how he envisions its future in light of the recent release of PyScript, an in-browser runtime for Python.

Announcements

• Hello and welcome to Podcast.__init__, the podcast about Python’s role in data and science.
• When you’re ready to launch your next app or want to try a project you hear about on the show, you’ll need somewhere to deploy it, so take a look at our friends over at Linode. With the launch of their managed Kubernetes platform it’s easy to get started with the next generation of deployment and scaling, powered by the battle tested Linode platform, including simple pricing, node balancers, 40Gbit networking, dedicated CPU and GPU instances, and worldwide data centers. Go to pythonpodcast.com/linode and get a $100 credit to try out a Kubernetes cluster of your own. And don’t forget to thank them for their continued support of this show!
• Your host as usual is Tobias Macey and today I’m interviewing Russell Keith-Magee about the latest status of the Beeware project, the state of Python’s black swans, and how the PyScript project ties into his ambitions for world domination

Interview

• Introductions
• How did you get introduced to Python?
• For anyone who hasn’t been graced with the BeeWare vision, can you give the elevator pitch of what it is and why it matters?
• At PyCon US 2019 you presented a keynote about the various potential threats to the Python language community and its future viability. With the clarity of 3 years hindsight, how has the landscape shifted?
• What is PyScript and how does it fit into the venn diagram of BeeWare’s objectives and the portents of black swan events (and what is your involvement with it)?
  • How does it differ from the dozens of other "Python in the browser" and "Python transpiled to Javascript" projects that have sprouted over the years?
• Now that you have been granted the opportunity to dedicate your full attention to BeeWare and build a team to support it, what new potential does that unlock?
• What are the current areas of focus/challenges that you are spending your time on for the BeeWare project?
• What are some of the efforts in the BeeWare suite that proved to be dead-ends?
• What are the most interesting, innovative, or unexpected ways that you have seen the BeeWare suite/PyScript used?
• What are the most interesting, unexpected, or challenging lessons that you have learned while working on BeeWare?
• When is BeeWare the wrong choice?
• What do you have planned for the future of BeeWare/PyScript/Python/world domination?

Keep In Touch

• LinkedIn
• Website
• @freakboy3742 on Twitter

Picks

• Tobias
  • Joby Gorillapod
• Russell
  • PyScript
  • The Great TV Show

Links

• Black Swans Episode
• BeeWare Episode
• BeeWare
• Django
• Cordova
• Black Swan
• Apple II
• Altair
• Briefcase
• Web Assembly (WASM)
• Gary Bernhardt
• PyScript
• Pyodide
• Toga
• Kotlin
• Swift
• Gaffer Tape
• Repl.it
• Brython
• Transcrypt
• Python Anywhere
• Batavia
• Anaconda
• Conda
• Voc
• Maestral
• Eddington GUI

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