Meet the PyBay2018 Speakers: Rudy Mutter
This post is part of a series introducing the speakers at the PyBay2018 conference in San Francisco this August. It’s a great chance to learn and connect with an engaged and diverse community of Python developers. We hope you’ll join us!
What are you going to be speaking about at PyBay 2018, and why are you excited to give this talk?
I’ll be speaking about Django Channels and my experience with using it in production with a newly launched mobile app. The application, Jetpack, is a peer to peer marketplace that involves a lot of back and forth between buyers and sellers. This seemed like a prime use case for websockets, especially during delivery of items in the marketplace so we dove in head first to use Channels.
Besides the documentation, an example project, and a blog article or two there’s not much else out there so it took some trial and error to get it all working, hosted, and tested. I’m really excited to share what we learned about it with the community and potentially get some feedback too as to what we could of done differently.
How did you get into programming and Python?
As a kid I loved playing video games both PC and console. This led me to start creating websites using website builders like Geocities and Homestead in the early days of the internet, gif torches, and site counters. I also used a program called RPG Maker to create my own video games, which had pseudo variables, switches, counters. Essentially basic programming logic but in a GUI.
This led me to attending Northeastern University in Boston for computer science where my first exposure to python was in a video gaming class that used Panda3D. Shortly after this I started doing some freelance and subsequently started my own design and development agency, Yeti, where we use Django as the backend framework for most of our applications.
What’s your favorite Python library (core or third-party), and why?
I’ve got to go with Django Rest Framework (DRF) as my favorite python library. APIs aren’t necessarily the coolest thing out there in software but it makes it extremely simple to spin up a new backend for an application we’re working. Designing, developing, and testing APIs with DRF for me is often very satisfying as there is a high confidence that it works, you’re done, and can move on to the next ticket. Comparatively front-end development and the potential different platforms, screen sizes, devices, etc that you run into for me often leaves me not feeling as “finished”.
What’s the coolest or most memorable thing that’s ever happened to you interacting with other Python devs?
What comes to mind for me is Raymond Hettinger’s talks. He is by far my favorite python related speaker and I’ve been lucky enough to hear him speak multiple times at PyCons and with the SF Python Meetup group. His speaking style is entertaining as well as very informative. I walk away from any of his talks with a bunch of tips, tricks, or insights about python that I hadn’t known before even after using the language for years.
There was a talk he gave at the SF Python Holiday Party on CPython, which would normally be a more intimidating topic since it’s actually C, not python code. I got quite a bit of insight about python under the hood and so did my teammates that attended with me.
And, speaking of Raymond Hettinger, PyBay2018 is delighted that he will be keynoting for us this August. Get a ticket to join us and follow to catch more interviews with the PyBay2018 speakers!
