We're back with a brand new episode, on our 8th anniversary today, the 19th of Dec. 🥳

We have some exciting updates, mainly around our new v2 platform and how it's going to impact people in Africa, new things that are coming, and of course book tips. 📈

Happy holidays 😎 and thanks for tuning in! 🙏

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
02:10 News, community shout outs
05:50 Believe Resourcing Group (BRG) partnership
08:40 What to gain from our v2 platform + some stats
15:59 Networking lesson
17:48 Pybites coaching ad
18:14 Learning paths + what's coming on v2
22:38 Book tips
27:24 Happy holidays
29:30 Wrap up

Links:
- BRG press release
- Pybites 8 years anniversary stats
- Code on our v2 platform
- Say Hi in our community
- Books: Python Concurrency with asyncio / The Winds of War / Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop

What happens when a professional dancer trades it in for a keyboard? Join us as we uncover the incredible journey of Sara Moad, who went from being a professional dancer to managing tech solutions as a Solutions Architect at Sydney Airport.

Her transition wasn't just about switching careers; it was about embracing change, self-belief, and the profound impact of soft skills cultivated in teaching children. Sara shares her story of stepping into the tech world during the COVID-19 pandemic, inspired by friends and fuelled by a yearning for fresh challenges.

Sara's path is sprinkled with invaluable insights for anyone dreaming of a tech career. She shows how personality and empathy, honed through years of teaching dance, have been her greatest allies on this new stage. Her involvement with the Girls Programming Network is a testament to her belief in inclusivity in tech, as she passionately teaches Python and champions the importance of community support. With Sara, we explore how to overcome imposter syndrome and the power of connecting with those around us to find our footing in unfamiliar territory.

For those feeling the itch to transition, Sara offers more than inspiration—she provides a roadmap. From setting short-term goals to exploring personal projects, her advice is about aligning your career with your passions. She emphasises leveraging networks and communication to uncover opportunities and shares anecdotes about how hobbies like playing Dungeons & Dragons can bolster skills vital in tech.

Sara's story is a celebration of discovering joy in building tech solutions that resonate with one's own experiences and interests.

Links:

• Connect with Sara on LinkedIn
• Book: Invisible Women - Caroline Criado Perez
• Girls Programming Network
• The _nology Program Sara went through.
• Join our Community
• Pybites Python Coaching

Chapters:
0:00 - From Dance to Python
4:50 - Transitioning Careers in Tech
15:19 - Navigating the Tech Transition
19:42 - Building Confidence and Finding Career Paths
33:10 - Exploring Perspectives in Tech Education

This week, we’re joined by Dan Dresser, who shares how he re-built his trading app in Rust, see also his community win post:

Wrote a Trading App in Rust

We dive into the app's purpose, the performance challenges he encountered, and how Rust became the best solution for increasing performance demands.

Dan shares the complexities / hurdles he faced in the process, his mindset for pushing through when stuck, and valuable tips for learning Rust.

We wrap up with two cool book recommendations. I (Bob) got a lot out of this conversation, and I hope you do too.

Enjoy and thanks for tuning in!

Links:
- Connect with Dan on LinkedIn
- Join our Circle community and connect with him there
- Pybites Rust exercises (WIP)
- Pybites coaching (ad segment)
- Rust book tip
- Non-tech book tip

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
02:04 Dan's trading background
03:25 Win of the week
05:00 Trading app, goal and scaling
09:40 Audience / automating an existing process
11:25 Lessons learned - writing async code
13:30 The importance starting small
16:40 Getting stuck + mindset to persist
20:30 The v2 rewrite, when and why?
24:00 Why Rust? Learning tips
28:35 How Rust boosted the app's performance
32:05 Pybites coaching ad segment
32:35 Rust transition and impact of performance
38:04 Additional Rust learning tips / exercises
40:40 Final CTA / non-coding activities
41:30 Book tips: Zero to production in Rust / Frostbite
43:32 Wrap up / outro

Who isn’t using Ruff for its blazing speed? Who hasn’t yet tried uv to make project management seamless and fast?

What goes into building these tools, managing their increasing popularity + community of adopters?

Hear from the creator himself, Charlie Marsh, as he shares insights on designing fast, ergonomic Python tooling that elevates the developer experience. 😍 📈

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
01:45 Charlie's background
03:32 2 reasons to work on new Python tooling
07:10 Inspiration from Rust / Cargo
11:00 Thinking about software design (uv)
15:00 uv's two use cases (low vs high level)
17:15 Balancing feedback vs roadmap while being nice
23:00 How shipping evolved
24:28 Managing open source + quality / testing tooling
32:31 Pybites coaching ad segment
32:57 Astral's vision / what's coming (type checking 🎉)
37:50 Support Conda? uv can be embedded
39:53 What helped you to learn Rust (build!)
45:25 Book tip, CTA and how to reach out
49:12 Wrap / outro

Reach out to Charlie on X or LinkedIn.

Join our Python developer community

Take your Python dev skills to the next level? Join our coaching program

Welcome back to the Pybites Podcast! This week, Julian talks with Tanner Martin, a Python developer and valued graduate and community member of our Pybites Developer Mindset (PDM) program.

In this episode, Tanner shares insights on productivity, mindset, and personal growth.

He reflects on his journey to transform his productivity approach, reduce anxiety through weekly planning, and embrace self-kindness.

Tanner and Julian also dive into strategies for setting priorities, managing time, balancing personal and professional life, and share book recommendations.

Plus, hear about Tanner's current project with his coach Robin in the PDM program.

Whether you’re a developer or simply looking for ways to improve your time management, this episode offers practical tips for achieving more with less stress.

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
01:15 Meet Tanner
03:06 Wins of the week
05:08 Tanner's productivity before PDM
08:18 Applying Pybites productivity course lessons
11:18 How to manage productivity in a corporate environment
13:40 How do you manage priorities?
16:16 What about sound habits?
18:20 PDM coaching ad segment
18:50 Planning, tracking and managing distractions
23:20 Impact for Tanner of increased productivity
26:30 What are you building in PDM?
29:08 Rapid fire productivity tips
32:13 Book tips
35:20 Reach out to Tanner
36:15 Wrap + outro

Book tip:
- Extreme Ownership

Reach out to Tanner:
- On Circle
- On LinkedIn

Do you want to seriously upskill in Python and as a developer? Check out our PDM program

Welcome back to the Pybites podcast! Today we have some really exciting news: we’ve just launched our brand-new coding platform!

Check it out here.

After nearly 7 years and almost 50K sign-ups on v1 (codechalleng.es), the design started to show its age. That’s why we did a complete overhaul to create our new 2.0 platform. It's faster, cleaner, more responsive, and more affordable.

In this episode, Bob and Julian discuss why v2 is such a big improvement, the motivation behind the rewrite, behind-the-scenes insights into how it all came together, some technical challenges we faced, and one of our most exciting new features: parity pricing (pricing in your local currency based on where you live).

Enjoy, and we hope to see you coding more Python with us on the new platform!

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
02:00 PyBites Platform 2.0!
02:46 Platform’s history
05:10 How v2 came about: ruthless minimalism
08:10 Why v2 is faster and more responsive
12:02 Challenges of migrating from v1 to v2
14:20 Seamless design improvements
17:40 Parity pricing: making it more affordable
24:05 Humble bundles now available on v2
25:00 Roadmap and Julian’s use of GitHub Issues!
27:44 Wrap up

Don’t forget to join our Python developer community

And feel free to reach out to us with any feedback or questions on Circle or LinkedIn:

- Bob: Circle / LinkedIn
- Julian: Circle / LinkedIn

Thanks for listening, and we’ll be back next week!

"The sooner you make your first five thousand mistakes, the sooner you will be able to correct them." - The Natural Way to Draw - Kimon Nicoliades

Jeff Haemer’s career spans over five decades, and in this episode, he openly talks about his continuous passion for learning and solving interesting problems.

We talk about his experience teaching computer science with almost no prior knowledge, his love for Unix, how he landed a job at Twitter in his late sixties, and why he believes networking is key to landing jobs.

Jeff also generously shared his list of books he keeps going back to for inspiration and wisdom.

If you’ve ever felt stuck or uncertain in your tech career, Jeff’s journey will inspire you to take bold steps, embrace failure and adopt a persistent mindset to succeed at work and in life.

Reach out to Jeff or us if you like this conversation, thanks for listening.
- Jeffrey Haemer
- Pybites community

Chapters:
00:00 Introduction, welcome Jeff
03:33 Wins: learning Rust / Pybites Rust platform
08:10 Jeff’s journey: from punch cards to modern programming
16:20 Random luck vs being prepared (networking!)
20:04 What's great about Unix, what makes it timeless?
25:05 How to learn and making engaging presentations
29:21 Persistent mindset, embracing failure (it's inevitable!)
33:37 PDM ad segment
34:02 Jeff's favorite books
44:11 Practical SW dev vs book learning
46:35 Wrap up and CTA

---
Jeff's reading list:

* Current audiobooks
- J. K. Rowling: Harry Potter y La Piedra Filosofal
- Robert Galbraith's The Ink Black Heart

* Paper
- The Living Talmud
- Edward Frenkel Love and Math
- Tulsi Gabbard For Love of Country

* Daily Reads
- Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic
- The Holy Bible

* PDM books (useful advice + inspiration)
- Kimon Nicoliades, The Natural Way to Draw
- Eric Temple Bell, Men of Mathematics - There is no one, true path.
- John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (I recommend All Minus One, which is just Mill's arguments on free speech, and only about 30 pages).
- Plutarch, Life of Caesar - Caesar was assassinated; when I read this, I was amazed that he lived long enough to get assassinated.
- Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn - “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.” – Ernest Hemingway)
- Bob Drury & Tom Clavin, The Last Stand of Fox Company - Marines
- Jim Watson, The Double Helix
- Kernighan & Plauger, Software Tools (not "... in Pascal") - Perhaps the best practical book ev

Welcome back everybody! This week we have another exciting podcast episode, this time with Claudio Jolowicz, well known for his "Hypermodern Python" article series which he recently turned into a book.

We dive into what Hypermodern Python means, uv's current quick rise, Nox, 80/20 tooling for (beginner) Python devs, Rust, mindset, and last but not least, some good book tips.

We hope you enjoy this interview with Claudio and make sure to check out his great materials.

Chapters:
00:00 Intro episode
01:42 Intro Claudio
02:44 Music background
04:21 Hypermodern Python
08:20 uv rapid develment
10:20 Making uv default tool
12:56 Nox for local CI
15:20 Hypermodern Python, the book
19:57 80/20 tooling for beginners
22:37 PDM ad segment
23:03 uv making it easier
25:02 Cloudflare and Rust
27:33 Developer mindset and persistence
30:23 Book tips
32:25 Design patterns and TDD
33:40 Monkeypatching and dependency injection
37:12 Final CTA and wrap up

Links:
- Hypermodern Python article series
- Hypermodern Python book
- NOX vs TOX – WHAT are they for & HOW do you CHOOSE? 🐍
- Harry Percival's Stop using mocks video
- Book tip #1 - The Manager's Path by Camille Fournier
- Book tip #2 - Designing Data-Intensive Applications by Martin Kleppmann
- Book tip #3 - Architecture Patterns with Python by Harry Percival and Bob Gregory
- Claudio's GitHub and X