0:00

So you've created a Python-based open source project

0:02

and it's starting to take off. You're

0:04

getting contributors, lots of buzz in the

0:07

podcast space and more. But

0:09

you have that day job working on

0:11

Java still. How do you

0:13

make that transition from popular hobby project

0:15

to a full-time job? After

0:18

all, you're giving away your open source

0:20

project for free, right? Well,

0:22

on this episode, I put together an amazing

0:24

panel of guests who all have done exactly

0:26

this. Turn their project into full-time

0:28

work and even companies in some cases.

0:31

We have Samuel Colvin, Gina

0:34

Huska, Sebastian Ramirez, Charlie

0:36

Marsh, Will McGugan and Eric Holscher

0:38

on to share their stories. This

0:40

is Talk Python to Me, episode 448, recorded December 7th, 2023.

0:48

Welcome to Talk Python to

0:50

Me, a

1:02

weekly podcast on Python. This is

1:04

your host, Michael Kennedy. Follow me

1:06

on Mastodon, where I'm at mkennedy

1:09

and follow the podcast using at

1:11

TalkPython, both on bastodon.org. Keep

1:13

up with the show and listen to over

1:15

seven years of past episodes at talkpython.fm. We've

1:19

started streaming most of our episodes live

1:21

on YouTube. Subscribe to our YouTube channel

1:23

over at talkpython.fm slash YouTube to get

1:26

notified about upcoming shows and be part

1:28

of that episode. This

1:30

episode is sponsored by Base Dash. Base

1:33

Dash uses AI to build a dashboard

1:36

for your database. Get

1:38

a custom admin view in

1:40

your Postgres, Microsoft SQL Server,

1:42

MySQL, MariaDB or Redshift database.

1:46

Get started for free at talkpython.fm slash

1:48

base dash. And

1:50

it's brought to you by Sentry. Don't

1:52

let those errors go unnoticed. Use

1:54

Sentry. Get started at talkpython.fm slash

1:56

Sentry. Hello

1:59

everyone. Charlie, Will, Eric. Sebastian, Gina, and Samuel.

2:01

What a big group of people we

2:03

have here today. An awesome, awesome group.

2:05

Thanks for being here, everyone. It's gonna

2:07

be super fun to have you on

2:09

the show. You know, I know there's

2:11

so many people out there that are

2:13

dreaming of an open source project or

2:15

even working on open source and contributing

2:17

to it, but it's something they squeeze

2:19

in the last hour of their day.

2:22

And at some point, all of you

2:24

have made this amazing transition to where

2:26

there's enough support, there's enough interest in

2:28

what you all built. That

2:30

becomes your full-time thing, right? Which is, I know

2:33

for many out there, living the dream. So you

2:35

all are living the dream. Hopefully

2:37

you feel that way. But it's

2:39

gonna be really great to kinda just explore

2:41

your projects, how do you make that transition,

2:44

and you know, what you're up to.

2:47

So we have Samuel Colvin on from

2:49

Titanic, and he has the

2:51

tightest schedule. He's squeezing us in on

2:53

a far-flung trip, a work trip. So

2:56

let's go to you first, Samuel. Tell

2:58

people a bit about who you

3:00

are and what your project is to

3:02

get started. Yeah, I'm Samuel. I maintain

3:04

Titanic, which is a data validation library

3:06

for Python that uses Python. So

3:09

those weird things you've seen after K-long

3:11

in Python that mostly do nothing unless

3:13

you run my Py or Playwright. I've

3:15

actually been in the whole system almost

3:18

exactly a year ago. I

3:20

was sort of working on PyDantic full-time back then,

3:22

but really, my mom used to do so. And

3:24

a big American VC got in touch. And

3:27

fast forward, I've raised some money and

3:29

started a company beginning of this

3:31

year. I hired now 10 people. And

3:33

I'm actually, as you mentioned, I'm an Istanbul, and I'm

3:35

not going to the whole team. It

3:37

turns out if you have a team with

3:40

Americans, Iranians, and Russians, that Istanbul is one

3:42

of the few places that you can actually

3:44

meet efficiently. So yeah, having a really fun

3:46

weekend Istanbul, mostly working together and then going

3:48

off to dinner, which is where we are

3:50

at the moment. I hope that's a good

3:52

success, I'm really excited. Absolutely, and what a

3:55

cool experience that you get to hang out

3:57

with all these people. Talking about your project

3:59

in Istanbul. I just had, by the

4:01

way, I just had. I was just thinking about

4:03

the other thing I would add is that one

4:05

of the best bits of them being able to

4:07

hire friends of mine from open source, people who

4:09

have, I think, all but similar to people here

4:11

have come to be quite empty before we started

4:14

the company, which is how I hired the first,

4:16

I think, six people, and then a few more.

4:18

So one of the best bits has been hiring

4:20

other people to come and work on open source

4:22

with me while still being able to like, get

4:24

paid abruptly. It's been really fun. Yeah, awesome. I

4:26

see a lot of people shaking their head out

4:28

there as well. I just coincidentally, I recently had

4:31

Sydney Runkle on who works

4:33

with you and she's such an inspiration. That

4:35

show is not out yet, but has already

4:37

been done yet through the weird time shifting

4:40

of podcasting. So it'll be out before this,

4:42

but it's not out yet. So anyway,

4:44

very, very cool team you got there. I

4:47

guess we'll go around the order of the

4:49

video. Pretty bunch

4:51

pictures here. So Charlie, you're up next. Quick,

4:54

quick, what about you? Hey, so I'm

4:56

Charlie. I am the author

4:58

of Rough, which is a Python,

5:00

Linter, code formatter and code transformation

5:02

tool written in Rust. I started

5:04

working on Rough about a year

5:07

ago, like maybe like October last

5:09

year. Similar timeframe to Samuel. Yeah.

5:11

Yeah. And I worked on

5:13

it full time for a while, similar to

5:15

Samuel, although probably not for quite as

5:17

long. I was working on it full

5:19

time without any funding. And then similarly,

5:21

I started a company around Rough and

5:23

really around the vision of trying to

5:25

build high performance Python tools. So take

5:27

some of the things that make Rough

5:30

nice to use and popular and well

5:32

liked and try to apply those principles to

5:34

other parts of the Python tool chain. Yeah.

5:36

We're a team of six and

5:38

we're fully remote. So no, no two of

5:40

us live in the same, in

5:42

the same, I guess a couple of us live

5:45

in the same country, but most of us live

5:47

in different countries. And we span

5:49

basically US central time to, I don't

5:51

know what we have one. We

5:53

have one person in India and

5:56

one person in Minneapolis. And that kind

5:58

of stretches like the full taxes. In

6:00

African stretch to concerts there was

6:02

yes Absolutely congratulations on Ruff It

6:04

is really really taken off and

6:06

I know the guy right below

6:08

you Anna. Where's

6:10

Sebastian when I saw him say nice things about

6:13

it with fast a P, I N and so

6:15

on. Yeah yeah I know I think slot is

6:17

funny because I think are saying before so recording

6:19

I think when I came on Talk Python last

6:21

time I think that might have been my first

6:24

time ever on a podcast saw and us to

6:26

talk Iraq and Cyrus like go out to be

6:28

careful what I'm doing that super. Cool and

6:30

pedantic. an Sos if ya or some

6:32

other earliest adopters that people had her

6:35

does so they were like very early

6:37

on in the in the life cycle

6:39

and help a lot with them. You

6:41

know getting people to to see Ross

6:43

and for care are awesome and know

6:46

that smart people are using it's that's

6:48

awesome. Well when you visit talk Python

6:50

or the courses website or others it's

6:52

it's all rust's side and a know

6:54

what the the adjective of ruff is

6:57

but it's been rice whatever. your recently

6:59

at over moved. Into a rough Now

7:01

it's been roughed up in hours. Grades

7:03

is really amazing. Eleven suckered Sunderland adds

7:05

to our efforts made in at the

7:07

base. I say that sick like I

7:09

was a sick trick they did. admit

7:12

it. Me I go to the route

7:14

of code is rough man or a

7:16

well of your code ruff who are

7:18

you is go some rough edges. Certainly

7:20

welcome in I'm well. I'm probably best

7:22

known for Library called I Rinse and

7:24

Riches or my Be for writing for

7:27

mattered content, terminal, Amd, Apu, Tables and

7:29

Progress bars and. sometimes how to code

7:31

all sorts of things and then that

7:33

became quite popular in the python world

7:35

a thing that was a there was

7:37

a need for it and two years

7:39

ago i found it's tax wise i

7:41

would say company which bills on reds

7:43

to produce a lie be called takes

7:46

to i which allows you to build

7:48

user interfaces inside terminal and the they're

7:50

kind of moonlight web interfaces unless like

7:52

courses up case yeah just the gum

7:54

was like selects box you can doc

7:56

stuff to the side and that's part

7:58

of you i bet it's It's pretty

8:00

amazing what you've built. I think it's pushed

8:02

the terminal far beyond what many people thought

8:04

the terminal should be doing. It's

8:06

been very cool. It's been a process of

8:08

discovery. It's kind of strange. We've got technology

8:10

that's been around for decades and

8:13

are still discovering things like they can do

8:15

which people haven't tried before. So yeah, it's

8:17

been a lot of fun. And

8:19

it's been great to work with a small team

8:21

of developers. We've got a small core here in

8:24

Edinburgh, Scotland. And we've got

8:26

one developer in Portugal. So yeah, it's been

8:28

great. I love the reception and I love

8:30

what people are building with it. Yeah. So

8:33

many people are interested in using

8:35

Rich. And there's a ton of plug-ins, right?

8:37

There's like Rich Click and there's PyTest Rich

8:40

and all these things like, well, whatever we're

8:42

doing, it should also have OIE built, you

8:44

know? Yeah, I love to see that. I

8:46

love to see the ecosystem building. Our

8:49

adjective is richified. Richified, okay. Yeah.

8:52

Yo, that's rich. My code is rich. Okay. Richify,

8:55

got it. I love it. We all

8:57

have adjectives we've got to put on things. Yeah.

9:00

I'm a big fan of your, you and your team's

9:02

work, by the way. I mean, I'm sure you hear

9:04

all the time that you built awesome stuff. Cheers. I

9:07

appreciate it. Yeah, indeed. We all are. Eric,

9:10

welcome. You and I are coming in somewhat local

9:12

here out of Portland, not Istanbul. I'm actually out

9:14

in Bend at the moment. So

9:16

yeah. I absolutely love Bend. So lots

9:18

of mountains and whatnot. But yeah, so my background in

9:20

agriculture, folks probably know me from kind of the read

9:22

the docs ecosystem. I feel like I've been doing this

9:25

for a while compared to everyone else here.

9:27

The project actually started in 2010, which is

9:29

kind of amazing. And then we actually built

9:31

the, started the company around it in 2014.

9:34

So coming up next year, that'll be 10 years. And

9:36

so yeah, and we're all bootstrapped. So we haven't done

9:39

any venture capital. It's all been kind of just built

9:41

up the open source and then kind of turned it

9:43

into a company on top of that. We

9:45

kind of have a business model of doing

9:48

paid for private hosting companies as well as

9:50

advertising on open source. And we spun out

9:52

a kind of a separate business called ethical

9:54

ads that we built kind of to basically

9:56

make better advertising on the internet, Not

9:59

doing any of the creepy. tracking stuff so

10:01

read the docs is so critical to the

10:03

open source space. Not just Python but especially

10:05

Python. yeah Yemeni. so awesome work on that

10:07

and then to secure. Good job on that

10:10

the and stuff as well. It's the tendency

10:12

of the whole ad space has to be

10:14

super creepy and just like how much can

10:16

we reseller? How much can we buy to

10:18

mix in to like creepy shadow profiles? And

10:20

it's not a good social trends, it's it's

10:23

not good for people and it's not really

10:25

necessary right? Like if I wanna your i've

10:27

sponsored ads are now read: the docs are

10:29

bad. Run ads and read the docs for

10:31

and I we're forced course and let's just

10:33

you know run that add on for ask

10:35

him sit or lie goods the week. Track

10:37

somebody through Instagram over to Facebook who knew

10:39

over at lack of yeah exactly. We call

10:41

your newspaper advertising and and it's or been

10:43

really caught the advances of ammo like the

10:45

content targeting has gotten pretty good traits or

10:47

it's it's just a lot easier technically distaste

10:49

have to kind of do that content matching

10:51

be I think in terms of the kind

10:53

open source of maybe the way that I'm

10:55

a little different than other folks years were

10:57

actually running something more akin to a service

10:59

three. The dots ah the code is open source

11:02

but a lot of the usage is open source.

11:04

projects using are hosted service I would you obviously

11:06

subplot a code probably or sphinx theme is he

11:08

started most kind of well known as or software

11:10

the people running a little bit similar to folks

11:12

here the and aside by the west and and

11:14

yeah so I think that's kind of the background

11:16

as yeah we have a little bit everything but

11:18

yeah it's a little more akin to something I

11:20

guess ass up I would say but a code

11:22

is open source. We do get a contribution in

11:24

that way as both yeah awesome at the sounds.

11:27

a little similar to what Tesla is is is

11:29

working towards as well. hosting i mean it's more

11:31

hosting people's absence of us in people's dogs

11:33

but not terribly different paying for services as

11:35

a classic open source modernization strategy right like

11:37

you have some way to kind of build

11:39

them under se sont ops aka sega way

11:41

bill is great but it's kinda hard for

11:43

me to run could you just do that

11:45

i guess or we can do that sebastian

11:47

always good to see a welcome back danger

11:49

and was for signing hello everyone says here

11:51

i'm yes or the look a i created

11:53

this is a deal to for building where

11:55

they'd be ice that he school fuck they'd

11:57

be a and you have been growing people

12:01

have liked it fortunately and like

12:03

yeah that's it. I'm probably the

12:05

only one that hasn't built a

12:07

company here I guess. Okay,

12:11

okay, so

12:16

this year I have been able to work

12:18

full-time on open source because Sequoia Capital, the

12:20

VC firm started this open source fellowship and

12:22

I am the first fellow so I am

12:25

kind of the trial of like the program

12:27

so I get you know like just to

12:29

work full-time on open source and that's how

12:31

I've been able to just yeah release that one

12:33

just stuff in fast API and the ecosystem like

12:36

the other like fast API, SQL model, hyper and

12:38

a couple of other things. But

12:40

yeah, that's pretty much it. Yeah, awesome.

12:42

Well, fast API is definitely the poster

12:44

child for modern Python on the web,

12:46

you know, and Samuels work obviously is

12:49

central to that as well right with

12:51

pedantic being such a core element there.

12:53

So very awesome. Yeah, like I mean,

12:55

fast API is built on top of

12:57

like great open source tools underneath so

13:00

it's like I think those all the

13:02

data validation, validation, documentation and on the

13:04

other side, startleth does all the web

13:06

parts. So yeah, it's like, I like,

13:08

you know, like it's a very close

13:11

how do you call it like close

13:13

friendship between all the projects by Dante

13:15

starlet uvcorn fast API like you know,

13:17

like we actually know each by this

13:20

point, you actually know each other in

13:22

person like the current container of started

13:24

on uvcorn works for the by Dante

13:27

company. And he's like

13:29

the top class API experts right

13:31

now. Like, you know, like it's

13:33

a it's very nice because helps

13:35

the dynamic the dynamic of like,

13:37

yes, absolutely. All these stuff is

13:39

great. Yeah, I Imagine a lot of

13:41

people don't realize the interconnections between these different

13:44

projects that are at play here. Yeah, definitely

13:46

super fun. Absolutely. And Then it's worth saying

13:48

we in pedantic use Fast API as well

13:50

as contribution for the library for building. We

13:53

also use Fast API for the services that

13:55

we're building for where like consumers, both directly

13:57

and indirectly and for things that we made.

14:00

It is an author chat fight off as

14:02

fast as they saw his turtle's all the

14:04

way down basically vaccine. This.

14:07

Portion of top by the enemy is brought. You

14:09

might be das. Ist. Das is

14:11

the custom admin panel for your database

14:13

that you don't have to build. We've.

14:16

All dealt with endless ad hoc request

14:18

for data access. Your. Support Team:

14:20

Once user records, your non technical cofounder

14:22

needs to see charts or your engineering

14:25

team needs an easy way to share

14:27

your sequel queries. These. All sound

14:29

like relatively simple task, but between building

14:32

an internal tool, setting up an analytics

14:34

product, and then switching back and forth

14:36

between that and you're sequel clients, you've

14:38

lost so much time. Based.

14:41

As gives you that time back. With.

14:43

Base as you can instantly generate

14:45

a visual you I for your

14:47

database. Or. You have to do is

14:49

connect your data source. It uses a I

14:51

under the hood to generate the perfect admin

14:53

panel for your data. While. Are

14:55

now? anyone in your company has access to

14:58

the data they need. The. Rolling out

15:00

a ton of new features like the ability

15:02

to create charts using only natural language. You

15:05

gonna get hours back in your

15:07

day and I promise you want

15:09

to build an internal to ever

15:12

again. Check them out by visiting

15:14

Puck Python.a family/base ass that's tough

15:16

Python that a femme/based asks the

15:18

link isn't your podcast player. Show

15:20

Notes: Basis. Is free for

15:22

small teams so give it a try. It's

15:24

got nothing to lose. Think. Youtube a

15:26

stash for supporting the park s. G

15:29

Now! So awesome the have you back they'll

15:31

come in. A Very happy to be that

15:34

that's really really great to be here now

15:36

I think for that sentence so I decide

15:38

if we can't patent. But so yeah, my

15:40

name is T. nice girl and I'm probably

15:42

yeah, I don't know. It's an active and

15:44

that well known throughout the pies and a

15:46

community but I'm quite well known in the

15:48

City printed community for having created Octa Print

15:50

which is the snazzy web interface for you

15:52

for different a ends the sun a part

15:54

of that are written in Python and I

15:57

started a project back in twenty twelve when

15:59

I got myself. The deeper into as

16:01

your regular pet project on the side

16:03

after hours the case and blah blah

16:05

blah. In Twenty fourteen I got hired

16:07

by us Are You Printing company to

16:10

work on it fulltime and in twenty

16:12

six to in that company ran out

16:14

of money and ice on default myself

16:16

with a full fledged full grown open

16:18

source projects and no funding our whatsoever.

16:20

So I tried this whole crowd funding

16:23

stuff with Patreon and that is pretty

16:25

much how I've been working ever since.

16:27

So I'm self employed, it's under German

16:29

law. And the freelancer ends. Yeah,

16:32

oh, my income comes from

16:34

people. Who just sent the money

16:36

for working on oct of friends and

16:38

so generous. And twenty six years since,

16:40

Twenty Six Senior on a Cross. Or

16:42

full time since twenty fourteen and self

16:45

employed and crowd. Funded since twenty sixteen,

16:47

so it's been a while. That's awesome. Also

16:49

went full time on all my stuff here

16:51

and Twenty sixteen. although it's technically not open

16:53

source, it puts a whole lot about opensource

16:56

stuff, so on and off of that says

16:58

in our congratulations thank You and Susan Rice

17:00

it worth to be honest. I'm I'm

17:02

awaiting every day that it stops working.

17:04

And yeah, actually, this year. It came up

17:07

with clothes and then I put out like of look

17:09

both basically along the lines of you know like. The

17:11

income is going this but the use it's

17:13

numbers are going that saw something is and

17:15

this year and we need to talk and

17:17

then the community ready it's and stuff six

17:19

itself again So. That's pretty amazing as

17:21

really awesome. Congratulations is easy for people.

17:23

Xisco always free and there's some people

17:26

supporting and and just kind of assume

17:28

that things are taken care of. Fact

17:30

that they're really good. Really good. Yeah,

17:32

you have a ton of supporters on

17:35

get hub sponsors as well, right? Actually,

17:37

As diversified over the years and in the

17:39

beginning it was on the Patron, the Paypal

17:41

and then they started adding new payment platforms

17:43

and options because people prefer to be able

17:45

to use the stuff that they know and

17:47

some people don't like, Patrons will keep it

17:49

on like and to get our. Sponsors and

17:51

stuff and so you just give them the

17:53

options to choose. Whatever they feel comfortable

17:55

with and this increases the likelihood that

17:58

they actually will go through with. something

18:00

in your head, so to speak. At least

18:02

that's my feeling, I don't know. I think

18:04

the GitHub sponsors has been really positive for

18:07

open source. I think it's made it pretty

18:09

easy to just check a box. They already

18:11

have your credit card potentially, and you just

18:13

want to give a little support instead of

18:15

a one-time PayPal donation here that you forget

18:18

about after once and all that. Before we

18:20

move on here, there's a funny comment, nice

18:22

comment out. Kanishka says, the

18:24

group, look at all of you. You guys

18:26

are the Avengers of Python open source, which

18:29

is kind of like the super heroes. I love it.

18:31

It's somewhat actually true, it seems. The

18:34

next thing I want to ask is a little bit

18:36

of an origin story. What

18:38

projects did you try and they didn't really get

18:41

traction? How do you

18:43

think that your project got traction here? I know,

18:45

Samuel, you might vanish any minute. You're up first

18:47

on this one. That's a really interesting. I feel

18:49

that a number of things that I could do

18:51

is I started something last week. I

18:54

actually saw it on Fridays. It has gotten more

18:56

stars over the last three days or I guess week

18:58

now. The first project

19:00

I started, AR Feud, has been

19:02

coming up on six years. I

19:05

mean, that front end and the front end

19:07

gets a lot more traction than

19:09

queuing in RPC does. I

19:12

don't know how, obviously there were some things I

19:14

played with back then and then I took off.

19:17

I think I was at the right time and

19:19

right place with Python. They'd obviously been around in

19:21

Python for a long time. I think 2017 when

19:23

I started PyLantic, their usage was going really fast.

19:25

I think there were lots of people I knew

19:27

who sounded kind of frustrated that they were there

19:29

and didn't do anything. I think being

19:31

the right time and right place was super valuable for me.

19:34

Obviously, great projects like FastAPI

19:37

adopting PyLantic has made a

19:39

big difference. I don't know.

19:42

What's weird if you look at the download chart, is like

19:44

this is actually going at the beginning of 2021. Then

19:48

we had like five minutes download a month and

19:50

since then it's been almost exactly linear growth to

19:52

now 125 million downloads a month. Something

19:55

weird happened in 2021. No,

19:57

after the project started, I don't know. It

20:00

was like my first time I I

20:02

love frustration as a starting point. I'll

20:04

not know I'm gonna have said Russia

20:06

headsets the everyone and I'm sure I'm

20:08

in New Orleans a conference A but

20:10

I think a dominant it is here

20:12

are all right Charlie keep going around

20:14

the circle here just it's item and

20:16

among the I used to. as interesting

20:19

because I like this is Ross is

20:21

really my first time being a mean

20:23

Chino like publishing open Wheel like I've

20:25

been a consumer of open source trade

20:27

for my whole career, but I was

20:29

never really. Yeah I guess in the creator

20:31

of publisher him and to an air of

20:33

open source. yeah around the time that I

20:35

started work on Roth iras work out like

20:37

a couple different projects and they all as

20:39

can try to fair when I want to

20:41

do not Said Lost my job recently and

20:43

and Ruff was kind of motivated by allied

20:45

experience I had at my job rise of

20:48

Beating Large by unconvinced did you leave your

20:50

job with the intent to going to work

20:52

and referees like I'm alleys and them on

20:54

a figure something out and kind of I

20:56

was the process. I left my job with

20:58

the intent of starting a company but. I

21:00

did not think it would be. Ross and Ruff

21:02

was like this distracting side project that I was

21:04

working on while I was laid eyes were hit

21:06

with a friend and we were like trying to

21:08

figure out like the Venn diagram of interests of

21:10

like what should we what are we willing to

21:13

work on full time together? what makes sense given

21:15

like our interests and and then l a free

21:17

time I was laid eyes on work on developer

21:19

tools and like I worked on i don't I

21:21

don't wrath I am I started building Ross I

21:23

I worked on my garden yeah what a lot

21:25

of as of now lot the like and it

21:27

was around a cupboard and projects I did late

21:29

as. a sort of see i see d

21:32

thing where you like right soccer files and blades

21:34

see i thousand tied scrapped in the like

21:36

transvaal down i was dialing i think i have

21:38

one cool idea as i worked on my car

21:40

he was pretty early in the law the l

21:43

and stuff i worked on like i could

21:45

be slide recycling to over you like giving examples

21:47

of like before and after and that tries to

21:49

find examples he was like a copilot for your

21:51

entire code base time i didn't work out well

21:54

like a scale that it was like cool idea

21:56

sounds like organs up his of open source that

21:58

maybe could have enough time I mean, maybe

22:00

today that would be all the other day. Yeah,

22:02

I mean, it's also an effort thing. I

22:06

put a lot more into

22:08

rough and it was interesting because I kept

22:10

viewing rough as like, you know, it

22:13

was probably open source, but at that point, I don't think I had

22:15

launched it. And I kept

22:17

viewing it as like, like I said, like a little

22:19

bit of a distraction. And my friend was like, you

22:21

know, I think you should really like push to like

22:23

release this because like, if you think it's like interesting,

22:26

then like other people will probably think it's interesting. And

22:28

he was the person that really like motivated me

22:30

to actually like see it through to doing

22:32

the release. And then I did the

22:34

release and like a lot of people were actually interested

22:36

in it. So that kind of gave me like the

22:39

energy to like really start working on full time and

22:41

just kind of see where it went. And

22:43

it was really like projects like Pydantic and

22:45

like Sebastian started like commenting on issues and

22:48

stuff. And I was like, wow, like real

22:50

serious projects are looking at this like crazy

22:52

tool. And let me just see,

22:54

I'm just going to do whatever it takes to make

22:56

it like a feasible choice and just started like cranking

22:58

through like all the issues and all the things

23:00

that we are missing. It escalated pretty quickly.

23:02

I think it didn't surprise you. Oh, yes.

23:05

Yes. Absolutely. I was convinced

23:07

that I had faced like this problem

23:09

around tooling as like our code base

23:11

got large in my last company and

23:13

that there was an opportunity to like

23:15

build like better and more performant tooling.

23:17

I genuinely wasn't sure like how widely

23:19

that message would resonate with people. And

23:22

so I know it's like a little bit of luck,

23:24

right? Like sometimes you work on great projects and then

23:26

like they go nowhere and like just no one happens

23:28

to see it. And then sometimes you work on a

23:30

good thing and like it does go somewhere. And so there

23:33

are certain things that are within your control, certain things that

23:35

aren't. I feel like I feel like we did I did

23:37

a good job of like communicating the project and like why

23:39

it was interesting and why it was exciting. But I also

23:41

feel like I got a little bit lucky that it just

23:44

like gravitated towards the right people and got attention the right

23:46

ways. Sure. Also, maybe that

23:48

black had existed, which is a little ironic

23:50

because black kind of solves a real similar

23:52

problem. Like people were okay, we embrace the

23:54

idea of the thing that rough does really

23:56

well. You know, you just commit them to

23:58

use rough in that sense. Yeah, I mean, we have

24:01

a little bit, I mean, it gets back to

24:03

this, like we have a little bit of like

24:05

a second mover advantage, right? Exactly. There's

24:07

a lot of existing tools that people use

24:09

already and like a lot of those practices,

24:11

like the idea of using a format or

24:13

the idea of running code mods, like the

24:15

idea of using a linter and like the

24:17

knowledge of like what kinds of rules are

24:19

valuable and like what kinds of analysis we

24:21

can do, like all that stuff existed. And

24:24

that was part of the story really was I was like, these

24:26

tools are great and I get a lot of value out of

24:28

them, but I want them to be like easier and

24:30

faster. And so, yeah, there's definitely

24:32

a strong timing thing. I think like, I

24:34

think Rust too is maybe like a little

24:37

bit more specific to what we're doing. But

24:39

like, you know, I think like the intersection

24:41

between Python and Rust has already, I guess

24:44

the interoperability between them and sort of the ecosystem

24:46

around it has just grown a lot. I

24:49

mean, still, I would say like pretty early, but it's

24:51

like matured and grown a lot over the past few

24:53

years. And so even just the fact that like at

24:55

my last company, we started to introduce Rust and we

24:57

started to like move some of our core systems into

25:00

Rust and expose them over PIO3.

25:02

Like the fact that that was existed and the fact that

25:04

I was like exposed to that, like that's all just like

25:06

pure chance. Otherwise, I never would have thought to do this.

25:09

Very cool. Well,

25:11

congrats. Well deserved. We're all doing the all

25:13

using rough as we said is excellent. Will,

25:15

Rich is awesome. How, why do you think

25:17

it took off? Did you try stuff before?

25:20

What's the story? I tried a lot of stuff

25:22

before, before GitHub, you know, coding has always been

25:24

my hobby. You know, I do it for work

25:26

and I come home and work on a hobby

25:28

project and it just seemed natural to want to share

25:30

it. Pretty GitHub, I would just put

25:32

stuff on my blog and get some

25:35

feedback from it there. I quite enjoyed that. And

25:37

yeah, they have a number of open source projects.

25:39

Pretty Rich had a bbcode

25:41

parsing library. I had a

25:43

chess library. I had a

25:45

web toolkit. So yeah, when Rich

25:48

came along, it was another hobby project. Something to

25:50

keep me entertained. Why is this terminal so boring?

25:52

Come on, see what we can do about that.

25:54

You know, I'd always used the terminal and it

25:56

always struggled when you've got a page of white

25:59

text on black background. and you're trying

26:01

to pick out an IP address from somewhere. And

26:03

I'd always wished, oh, I wish it would just format

26:06

it and colorize it for me. I know this is

26:08

possible, but it doesn't happen. So

26:10

then, yeah, I just started it, and it

26:12

came together quite well. When I released it,

26:14

it was like, boom. The

26:16

stars just started accumulating. Got lots of

26:19

feedback. It was very exciting. And I

26:21

kept building on it. It was kind

26:23

of like issue-driven development, so people would

26:25

just ask for something. Oh, that's a

26:28

good idea. And go ahead and implement

26:30

it. And it grew from

26:32

there, and it became really large. I did

26:34

it actually prior to Rich. I had a

26:37

library called Py File System, and this is

26:39

kind of like a wrapper to file systems.

26:41

So you can have the same interface for

26:43

your FTP server as a hard drive or

26:45

a zip file, SD bucket. And

26:48

that got some use in the

26:50

community. It wasn't enormous, but that

26:52

taught me a lot about building

26:54

open source, managing

26:56

feedback. Issues, et cetera. So that

26:58

was a great experience when I

27:00

started working on Rich. And

27:02

I was very surprised, actually,

27:04

how successful it became. I remember the

27:06

first time I realized that this is

27:09

bigger than just a hobby project is

27:11

when someone told me off for violating

27:13

SemVer, I released a clear, a clear

27:15

breaking change because I thought, nobody's using

27:17

that yet. But they were. So

27:20

the next day, I got told off quite

27:22

appropriately. And then I thought, okay, I've got

27:24

to take this more seriously. If people

27:26

are using this in the day job, they

27:28

can't just have someone who's just like throwing

27:31

new bits of code and changing functionality. They

27:34

had to treat it like it was

27:36

an actual, my day job. Yeah, well,

27:38

everyone on the call here probably has

27:40

a little bit of nervousness about like,

27:42

if I break this, there are a lot of people that

27:45

depend on this thing. And it's so

27:47

different. Like it just changes so much. Like

27:49

the early, like when you were talking about

27:51

the issue-driven development thing too, I was like,

27:53

I just remember that phase of like, for

27:55

anyone who cared at all about the project, all I

27:57

wanted to do is like make them happy. Oh,

28:00

wow, that seems like a cool idea. Like let's

28:02

definitely do it I'm just like, you know, it's

28:04

the point time where I could like fix the

28:06

bug cut release the same day And then like

28:08

their thing is fixed and then it's like, okay

28:11

great now we have a relationship Like

28:13

thanks for using my thing like blah blah blah

28:15

I just think like but that change that's changed

28:17

so much right because then I went through those

28:19

same Experiences of like I I ship a release

28:21

with the breaking change. I didn't really document what

28:24

we'll get upset and then do your eyes Okay,

28:26

I actually have some more responsibility now These

28:28

days it's more like trying to find

28:30

the balance between saying no to stuff

28:32

that you then have to end up

28:35

Maintaining and not like disappointing people

28:37

too much because you say no or

28:39

things like that and then trying to

28:41

keep this whole Interaction

28:44

with people nice even though you

28:46

don't want to do stuff that they want you

28:48

to do because you know, it's better for the

28:50

project You This

28:53

portion of talk by the enemy is brought to you

28:55

by century You know century for the air monitoring service

28:57

the one that we use right here at talk by

28:59

thon But this time I want to

29:02

tell you about a new and free workshop He

29:05

mean the Kraken managing a python

29:07

mono repo with century join

29:09

Salma alam Nayor senior developer advocate

29:11

at century and David Winterbottom head

29:14

of engineering at Kraken technologies for

29:16

an inside look into how he and

29:19

his team develop deploy and maintain a

29:21

rapidly evolving Python mono repo with

29:24

over 4 million lines of code

29:26

that powers the Kraken utility platform

29:28

in This workshop David will

29:30

share how his department of 500 developers

29:32

who deploy around 200 times a day

29:36

Use century to reduce noise prioritize issues

29:38

and maintain code quality without relying on

29:40

a dedicated Q&A team You'll

29:42

learn how to find and fix root

29:44

causes of crashes ways to prioritize the

29:47

most urgent crashes and errors and

29:49

tips to streamline your Workflow join

29:51

them for free on Tuesday, February 27th 2024

29:54

at 2 a.m. Civic time just

29:57

visit talk by thon.fm slash century

29:59

down That link is

30:01

in your podcast player show notes. 2am

30:04

might be a little early here in the

30:06

US, but go ahead and sign up anyway

30:08

if you're a US listener because I'm sure

30:10

they'll email you about a follow-up recording as

30:12

well. Thank you to Sentry

30:14

for supporting this episode. PRs

30:18

are like cake or puppies. If it's a

30:20

simple bug fix that's like cake, you'd like

30:22

thank you. I enjoyed that

30:25

cake, then move on, but some PRs are like

30:27

a puppy. It's like perfect, you like

30:29

puppies, but you've got to feed them and clean

30:31

up after them. Why am I standing in

30:33

the rain with this puppy on like a

30:35

Friday night? How do I get here? Collecting

30:37

the bulky spooks. Yes, exactly. Sometimes you say

30:40

thank you, but I just can't look after

30:42

another puppy right now. That's a

30:44

difficult thing to come to terms with when the project gets

30:46

a bit more mature because people say you're accepting all the

30:48

puppies, but then you have to start saying no to

30:50

puppies. And Rich definitely got

30:53

there because it accumulated. Do you hate puppies? Come

30:55

on, that's a pretty hard stand. I'm

30:57

a bit of a cat person to be honest with you. But

31:00

yeah, I mean, you have to say no eventually. I

31:03

think this is where plugins always kind of

31:05

like take the stutter stage, right? You're like,

31:07

just, oh, that sounds like a great idea

31:09

for you to maintain external to my library.

31:11

That was exactly my approach to the

31:13

whole situation. Yeah, here's a

31:15

plugin API. Have fun. But also

31:18

the probability of some little change

31:20

breaking someone's code and like being

31:22

considered a breaking change grows as

31:24

the project grows in usage. And

31:26

like, you know, like at some

31:28

point, it's like almost any change

31:30

will end up breaking someone in

31:32

very unexpected ways because they are

31:34

doing something really, really weird. But

31:36

you know, like someone is doing

31:38

it. So like it

31:40

becomes more and more difficult to know like,

31:42

is this a breaking change or not? Like

31:45

no one should be using this variable here

31:47

or this parameter, but like, you know, there's

31:50

someone out there doing that. So I feel

31:52

defining what is actually a breaking change and

31:54

what is what is what is this trick

31:56

symbol? It's more difficult

31:59

as things grow. Yeah, I don't know

32:01

one of the things I like that the Django project did

32:03

was kind of basically only things that are documented Are

32:05

supported basically that was kind of the line they drew

32:07

and I thought that was a pretty good pretty good

32:10

way to draw it But yeah, you're always you know,

32:12

that never actually works. That doesn't make people happy. It

32:14

just gives you plausible deniability Don't

32:17

yell at me. It's not my fault I think

32:19

adding a normal like reversioning policy is one of

32:21

the best things that we did because for a

32:23

long time Rough was just

32:25

we only use patch releases So we got like

32:28

0 0 like 285 or something and

32:31

we had basically no Guarantees about what

32:33

water wouldn't change like across releases and

32:35

as the project got more and more

32:37

popular like that started to cause Problems

32:40

and so they need someone on our team Like

32:42

when they joined one of the first few things

32:44

they did was like create an actual form formal

32:46

versioning policy and we added like preview behavior So

32:48

like you can opt similar that what black has

32:51

kind of opted into like breaking or more experimental

32:53

changes And so now we have like clear expectations

32:55

around what it means to like bump a minor

32:57

release Etc, etc And like that has

32:59

made our lives a lot easier like actually having

33:01

clear expectations around that that are connected and respected

33:04

But it's the kind of thing that you just

33:06

don't think about it all until it at least

33:08

I didn't Yeah,

33:11

some people's code runs things

33:13

like fast API or octopin

33:16

or whatever your Stuff rewrites

33:18

people's code Yeah,

33:20

I believe doesn't run at runtime. I don't know. I actually

33:22

think it's easier Yeah

33:26

Indeed. Alright, Eric. I finally talked about the plugins

33:28

thing cuz like I've actually very intentionally taken the

33:30

opposite approach Which is we have like almost no

33:32

public API Because

33:34

like the only public API is the CLI and

33:37

like we don't expose our API in any other

33:39

way And that's because like we

33:41

know we're gonna change like everything internally like

33:43

pretty dramatically And so we wanted to have like full

33:45

control over that without having to worry about breaking stuff

33:47

yet But it's like it's starting to become more of

33:50

a problem because more and more people want to use

33:52

it as library and like different Ways but

33:54

it's sort of a counterintuitive way to like

33:56

make our lives easier as maintainers was like

33:58

not expose any public apart from

34:01

the CLI. Yeah, very interesting.

34:03

Funny, funny sort of anecdote.

34:05

I'm rewriting a lot of

34:07

the documentation for SQL model because

34:09

I want to have examples. Right now I

34:11

have examples that I can buy with Python 3.7 and above,

34:14

but actually 3.6 and above. But I want

34:16

to have also the syntax for 3.9 and

34:18

3.10. In 3.10 you

34:20

can have like the unions using the vertical bar

34:22

and these things. And I want to have examples

34:24

for each one of those. So the approach I

34:26

did was to write a script that will automatically

34:28

update each one of the files by calling

34:31

rough as a soup process. So

34:33

that's the API. And then like,

34:35

you know, like having the process like doing

34:37

all that stuff. But like, yeah, it's like

34:39

another farm boy of rough trying to write

34:41

that. This is an API

34:44

before it's available. Yeah, with the lack of

34:46

an API, right? An API will be created.

34:49

Exactly. I've heard this before as like

34:51

Hiram's Law, which is like with a

34:53

sufficiently large number of users, like any

34:56

implementation detail become someone will eventually rely

34:58

on an implementation detail. Like any arbitrary

35:00

implementation, someone is probably relying on that

35:02

behavior, which is basically the behavior of

35:05

the program is the API, unfortunately. Go

35:07

find the underscore functions you've tried to

35:09

dissuade them from using and all the

35:11

things. Eric, what's the

35:14

origin story for Read the Docs and what did

35:16

you try and how do you think it caught

35:18

on? Yeah, so I mean, this was kind of

35:20

way back in the day, but yeah, I kind

35:22

of got started writing Django plugins, you know, apropos

35:24

to the conversation. You know, I was working at

35:26

the Lawrence Journal world that where Django came from,

35:28

and it was kind of early in my career.

35:30

And I was just kind of getting excited about

35:32

open source and blogging, and just basically

35:34

built a few of these kind of testing

35:36

related open source projects. And then that was

35:38

kind of where I got started with open

35:40

source. And then basically it was the classic

35:42

scratch, scratch own itch thing, right? Like it's

35:44

like, I have a bunch of open source

35:46

projects, I want to write documentation, how do

35:48

I solve that problem? And back in the

35:50

day, that was a much harder problem to

35:52

solve, right? It was basically just like, build

35:54

a zip file and upload it to packages.python.org,

35:56

if folks remember that one. or

36:00

whatever the docs, there was a docs hosting on

36:02

PyPI basically. And yeah, basically just wanted to kind

36:04

of build a better version of that that integrated

36:06

with GitHub. I feel like web hooks were like

36:08

the cool new thing back in 2010. And so

36:10

that was really kind of the insight,

36:13

right? It's like, let's build this kind of like

36:16

CI CD workflow on top of web hooks. And

36:18

actually did build kind of a version of that

36:20

the previous year around kind of like code quality

36:22

stuff. So it actually ran kind of like a

36:24

linter and built a website on commit and had

36:27

a similar kind of workflow, right where it like

36:29

gave you a grade and did all this kind of

36:31

stuff, which is like 2009. And yeah, that

36:33

that didn't really catch on at all. But then

36:35

I think read the docs just rebuilt it. And

36:37

then I was using it for my own projects

36:39

and actually had the need to kind of maintain

36:41

it and keep it updated. And then I think

36:44

people just kind of kind of grew naturally, you

36:46

know, give some conference talks, that kind of stuff.

36:48

But I think it just solved a problem that

36:50

people had. And that's always going to be the

36:52

you know, the best way to grow a thing.

36:54

So yeah, absolutely. Awesome. What's read the docs written

36:56

in and said Django? Yeah, it's all Django and

36:58

Python. Funny coincidence, I went to college

37:00

in Lawrence, at University campus. So I was

37:03

right there right at the heart of Django,

37:05

but I moved off to grad school like

37:07

a couple years before all that happened. So

37:09

I missed missed the excitement. I grew up

37:11

in Virginia, and everyone's like, you're going to

37:14

Kansas, you graduated school? Like, what? How are

37:16

you going there? Like what everybody thought is

37:18

the weirdest decision. But yeah, like, I really

37:20

do think, you know, ending up in that

37:22

Python and Django ecosystem has been pretty transformative

37:24

to my to my life. So you know,

37:27

worked out. Lawrence, a pretty cool little town,

37:29

actually, of all the places. Yeah. Sebastian,

37:32

how do you come about this crazy idea to

37:35

put types into our web apps? You know, Python

37:37

that's dynamic, it doesn't have types. What are you

37:39

doing? Yeah, I don't know. So

37:41

crazy. It's a fantasy set Michael Larson in

37:43

the chat like the maintainer

37:45

of your early three on the bottom

37:48

security developer in residence, just like chatting

37:50

along with us like he probably has

37:52

had to deal so much

37:54

stuff as us. So like some

37:57

of the

37:59

first things that I did in open source

38:01

were actually Docker images for deploying Flask because

38:04

I was working with Flask and deploying Flask

38:06

was difficult and I needed to be able

38:08

to combine Nginx with you with Gui and

38:10

like a bunch of things and like they

38:13

all have their own custom configuration files and

38:15

it was you know like so difficult. I

38:17

didn't like doing that and then I just

38:19

had to study how to do that stuff

38:22

and then after going through all that I

38:24

wanted to save everyone else's time doing that.

38:26

They were like well they just put a

38:28

Docker image with this and a lot

38:31

of documentation of how this okay might works and

38:33

how it how you can use it with some

38:35

sensible defaults. So you know it was just like

38:37

a weird contraption that was it but it actually

38:39

grew and like a few stars like a bunch

38:42

of stars. For me it was a lot like

38:44

you know like hundred stars oh my gosh I

38:46

have an open source and I

38:48

like at some point have like a thousand stars

38:50

or something like that I was so happy about

38:53

that and at some point it was kind of

38:55

the five to standard for doing class docker back

38:57

in that was the first thing that I did.

39:00

I ended up with fast API I was I

39:02

was avoiding building fast API for a long while

39:04

and I was trying all the other frameworks and

39:06

all the other tools. I was convinced that there

39:09

was something that would do the things that I

39:11

wanted I just had to find it and as

39:13

I was trying different frameworks also in different languages

39:15

I was extending the list of

39:17

things that I wanted to have and also a

39:19

list of things that I wanted not to have

39:22

for example I didn't want to have. It

39:24

takes you farther and farther away from any framework.

39:26

Having one that would tick all the voices. So

39:28

I was like oh but then I realized

39:30

like I really like this thing of having types. I

39:33

think types because you get out the completion and inline

39:35

errors and this is so cool it's so cool to

39:37

be able to have it. I want

39:39

to have this in Python and then Python added type

39:41

annotations and it is like this is great how

39:43

do I use them there's no way to

39:45

use them with the current phone. So at

39:47

some point I actually found their right framework

39:49

it was called API star by the same

39:51

author of Django REST framework. It was just

39:53

missing some authentication stuff. I said like okay

39:55

I'm gonna contribute to the out stuff when

39:57

I was about to jump into the code.

40:00

he said, I have to deprecate this,

40:02

I will go focus full on Starlit.

40:04

And then he went to build something, this

40:06

is Tom Christie, which is super prolific and

40:09

an amazing open source person in general. And

40:11

then at that point is when I said

40:13

like, I just have to try

40:15

it, let's just do it. So I'm just going

40:17

to try to build something that will be kind

40:19

of a spiritual successor to API start

40:21

built on top of Starlit. So I was,

40:23

you know, like I was actually narrating all

40:26

the learnings from Flask, Django, Django REST framework

40:28

and all the ecosystem and just like bringing

40:30

all those ideas together, at least that was

40:32

my intention. And then I wanted to have

40:35

a bit of better type annotations. So I

40:37

saw that Pythonic was using standard type annotations.

40:39

So people wouldn't have to learn these like,

40:41

you know, from past API for special string

40:44

or something like that. Just instead of just

40:46

pure string. So I wanted to have something

40:48

based on standards, like open

40:50

API, JSON, schema and all that stuff. And

40:52

based on standard Python and to have like

40:54

the simplest syntax possible and to give

40:57

the best developer experience possible while,

40:59

you know, like not adding like

41:02

any additional steps for developers to

41:04

build something that by default will have all

41:06

the best practices built in. That was the intention.

41:08

And I was just like trying to solve it

41:10

for the things that I was working on. I

41:13

was supposed to be doing AI and machine learning

41:15

and stuff, but like I had to stop for

41:17

a read to solve APIs. I got

41:19

stuck in APIs. And that's how I ended

41:21

up with the last API. Oh, I think

41:23

you made a pretty decent choice. It seems

41:26

like fast API is doing all right. Yeah,

41:28

I just saw you much better than what

41:30

I ever had expected. Yeah, I know. Congratulations.

41:32

Well, it's also deserved. But I also just

41:35

saw an ex I don't know, a post

41:37

on ex Twitter, whatever you have, you address

41:39

these things where you said you showed a

41:42

graph where the number of GitHub stars for

41:44

fast API just passed flask. And, you know,

41:46

I have a lot of respect for flask

41:48

and the pallets team and David Lord and

41:51

all those folks. But, you know, awesome. Awesome

41:53

that your stuff is taken off so much.

41:55

That's really cool. It's super cool. It's amazing.

41:58

And, you know, like fast was when. of

42:00

the big inspirations for FastAPI and I've been able

42:02

to be at this point, it's

42:04

crazy. I stay calm to

42:06

get over it. Super cool to

42:08

be able to build all this and to

42:11

keep building more stuff. So yeah, super nice.

42:13

Yeah, one final comment before we

42:15

move on to Octoprint. But one

42:18

of the things I kind of see you doing

42:20

in the world is you're like the combiner. You're

42:22

like, oh, we've got this cool stuff with the

42:24

pedantic and starlet. How

42:26

can we combine it in this way to

42:28

make this and swagger? And similarly with SQL

42:30

model, you're like, well, pedantic is cool, but SQL

42:32

alchemy is kind of cool, but

42:35

it could be more better. It could be better, right? So

42:37

anyway, good job. And also like type,

42:39

that is the language for the command line

42:41

applications, they just click with the type annotations,

42:43

the same ideas from pedantic, and

42:45

now with integrated building support

42:48

for rich. So also picking Will's

42:50

work, trying just to put a

42:52

bunch of things together. I'm

42:55

just making cocktails everywhere. Yes,

42:58

exactly. It's more than that, but there

43:00

is a lot of value in combining things

43:02

in a smart way, an accessible way. Awesome.

43:05

All right, Gina, you told us a little bit about

43:07

the origin story, but what did you try before? And

43:09

then I have a follow-up question I think is unique

43:11

to your project. I wouldn't necessarily

43:13

say that I tried anything before because

43:15

the whole thing was completely unintentional. I

43:18

basically bought myself a 3D printer in

43:20

late 2012. I wanted to

43:22

be able to put it in my spare bathroom and monitor

43:24

it from afar, because back

43:26

then this thing was tying up my PC. You

43:28

had to constantly keep it connected so it could operate,

43:31

and that for hours and hours, and it made

43:33

noises, and it produced fumes, and I just wanted

43:35

it out of my office, and

43:37

to be able to play games on my PC again

43:39

instead of having it, yeah, basically

43:42

communicate constantly with a 3D printer. And

43:44

so I bought myself a Raspberry Pi, and I was

43:46

looking online for something to be able to just put on this Pi

43:50

and attach it to the printer and throw a Wi-Fi dongle in, because

43:52

back then the Pi didn't have Wi-Fi built in, and throw

43:54

that in the spare bathroom, but there wasn't anything.

43:56

So over the course of

43:59

my Christmas break, back in 2012, I sat

44:01

down and changed that. And this is basically

44:03

the origin story of Octoprint. I just wanted

44:05

to scratch my own itch. I wanted to

44:07

put my printer in my spare bathroom. This

44:09

is all. And apparently, a lot

44:11

of people had the same problem because I just

44:13

you know, like how how we like to do

44:16

these things, we build something that we think might

44:18

be interesting, we throw it up on GitHub and

44:20

go just like here, go nuts, enjoy, have fun

44:22

with that. And I suddenly started getting emails from

44:25

all around the world like, Hey, I have this

44:27

in this printer, can you also make it work

44:29

with that? And so this escalated. And

44:31

I went like, Oh, someone is using it.

44:33

Of course, I'm going to add this support.

44:36

And of course, I'm going to add the

44:38

feature and it just grew and grew and

44:40

grew and grew. And apparently, I just hit

44:43

a nerve. So this was utterly unplanned. This

44:45

was never my intention at all. And I

44:47

just wanted to solve my own problem and

44:49

have continued to solve my own problems and

44:52

the problems of other people ever since. Before

44:55

Octoprint, I actually was also quite active in

44:57

a little project called Dokoviki, where I was

44:59

developing some plugins for that. And I

45:02

even did open source before I knew what

45:04

open source was with some PHP scripts when

45:06

I was 18 or so that

45:09

I threw up on my website. But

45:11

yeah, Octoprint was like it

45:13

took over my life. It just was an

45:15

accident. A happy little accident, maybe. How

45:18

do you decide, okay, this is a

45:20

job for me rather than just a

45:22

thing you worked on? The thing is by

45:24

mid 2013, I went to 80% on my regular day

45:26

job. I used to be a software architect

45:31

slash consultant with big corporations,

45:33

Java world, all the enterprise

45:35

stuff. And to be able

45:37

to dedicate one day per week fully to Octoprint plus,

45:39

of course, the weekends and the after hours and the

45:41

vacations and all of that. And

45:43

that still didn't suffice anymore by

45:46

2014. And I noticed that it

45:48

was impacting my health, it was

45:50

impacting my relationships. And that was

45:52

actually quite perfect timing really when

45:54

this this company that hired me initially approached me

45:56

and said, Hey, do you want to maybe fly

45:59

out to a company? us and we'll chat.

46:01

And if you like all of that, what we

46:03

have to propose, then we can just do that.

46:05

And this is how it then continued to go

46:07

from 2014 until 2016. And yeah,

46:11

it was never my intention to become

46:13

self employed. I'm a quite risk versus

46:15

person actually. So when this point came

46:17

where I was like, Okay, either I

46:19

find a way to keep funding this,

46:21

or I have to really drop it

46:23

because it was way too big by

46:25

then to be kept as a pet

46:27

project without being utterly, utterly unhealthy. Yeah,

46:30

I decided to jump into the cold water and have

46:32

been trying to keep up at the surface

46:35

ever since basically. So yeah, all

46:37

of that really completely unplanned. Cool.

46:39

What an adventure. Indeed. Yeah. And the

46:41

good thing is, even if people don't understand

46:43

what open sources or what code is, I

46:45

always have quite a topic at parties. So

46:48

that is fun because yeah, like people give

46:50

you money for something they can get for

46:52

free. Exactly. Yeah. If

46:54

you're not familiar with open source, then it definitely

46:56

is a weird weird thing to say. It was

46:58

tricky to find a text consultant to understand the

47:00

concept. So yeah, I can imagine how the reality

47:02

is. Interesting. I'm

47:05

sure. All right. I was there recently. I was

47:07

like, What do you do? What is your day?

47:09

Oh, I'm a software developer. So you work for

47:11

a company that's not really free for others to

47:13

use. And who's saying

47:18

you a company that pays money to

47:21

companies to build companies. So you're really

47:23

going to go back. No, it's like, you know, like

47:25

it was a long conversation. They got bored and they.

47:29

This doesn't make any sense. Yeah. I've just taken

47:31

to say I'm a software developer and I work with

47:33

3D printers and then people usually

47:36

stop asking questions because 3D printers are

47:38

this mysterious thing that no one understands

47:40

anyhow, usually at least. And then

47:42

yeah, unless they say, Oh, 3D printers, and then

47:44

I say, Yeah, do you know 3D printers? And

47:46

they go, Yeah, yeah, I have one. And then

47:48

I can say, Oh, do you know Octoprint? Yes.

47:50

Oh, yeah, I made that. And then, oh, yeah,

47:52

it's tricky to explain to people. I'm sometimes not

47:54

even sure my parents understand what I do. So

47:57

I'm sure that my parents don't understand what I do.

48:00

But that's okay. I'm

48:03

sure they're still proud of you anyway. It's fine.

48:05

Yeah, my definitely proud of me. I would like

48:07

to just maybe get a little short on time.

48:09

You're coming up to the end of our Avengers

48:11

meeting. Let's close it out with this. Go

48:13

around one more time and let you all, or

48:15

maybe just as a group, chime in on this.

48:17

Speaking to the people out there listening who want

48:19

to start an open source project or want to

48:21

contribute to open source, or somehow get involved in

48:23

similar ways. What would you do different if you

48:25

started now? Many of you have been working on

48:27

this for a long time. You've had a lot

48:29

of experience. If somebody said, well, the

48:32

world is somehow, the memory has

48:34

been erased from the fact that

48:36

rough or rich or Octopred or

48:38

whatever existed. Just start over, what

48:40

would you do different or the

48:42

same? I would use fast API. Yeah.

48:47

Good use of a time machine there. Everybody has like

48:49

I've had multiple conversations over the years where people are

48:51

like, why don't you use this library? I'm like, it

48:53

didn't exist. Exactly. Yeah, that is

48:55

the problem. Exactly. When you actually

48:57

have a plug-in system, then swapping out

49:00

stuff like that can become very tricky.

49:02

Absolutely. When I get asked what to work

49:04

on, what to study, what to focus, how

49:06

to get into open source, or like almost

49:09

any of those questions, I always say that

49:11

the main advice I give is just to

49:13

focus on a problem that is important to

49:15

you more than innovation, market

49:18

disruption or whatever. Just like focusing on a

49:20

problem that is actually important to you. Hopefully,

49:22

that is important to others as well. If

49:25

it's not a problem that affects you directly,

49:27

hopefully it affects someone that is very close

49:29

to you, so you can get a very

49:31

tight feedback loop of what you are

49:33

building. Then try to solve that and then

49:36

use that as the guide of what to

49:38

do, what to learn, what to focus on,

49:40

what to do. In many cases, it's just

49:42

learning a framework that it's already there. Why

49:45

will I go and build a system to

49:48

control 3D printers instead of just

49:50

learning how to use auto-print? In many

49:52

cases, solving the problem is just using the tool that

49:54

is already there. But then in some cases, you end

49:56

up figuring out that there's no tool and you just

49:58

have to build it. There's actually no

50:01

link there on format that can be super fast, so

50:04

you can run it every time you just hit save.

50:06

So then you just have to build it in Rust

50:08

and create Rust. Or there's

50:11

always this thing that you are trying

50:13

to solve that is just not solved

50:15

there yet, and that is what gives

50:17

you the best value and the best

50:20

outcome. In many cases, it can be

50:22

just contributing to another open source project

50:24

or building something new. But the thing

50:26

is, for me, it's just focusing on

50:28

a problem that is important. That

50:31

is what has worked

50:33

for me at least. Good advice. I would add

50:35

to that that you really shouldn't try to... You

50:37

need to be really passionate about the

50:39

thing as well, right? It needs to

50:41

be something that is really something you're

50:43

into, something that you will want to

50:46

spend a lot of time on that

50:48

is actually not your working hours and

50:50

such, because otherwise the whole jock until

50:52

this becomes anything viable, anything big enough

50:54

to support you in any kind of

50:56

way, even if it's just being able

50:58

to, I don't know, drink a traditional

51:00

coffee per week or something, that will

51:02

be a quiet long slog and a

51:05

lot of work and a lot of blood and sweat

51:07

and tears. And so you really need to be into

51:09

this so that you want to do that. If you

51:11

are just in that for the end goal of, I

51:13

don't know, becoming rich through open source, which by the

51:15

way, will probably not work. Only will I go

51:18

rich. Then

51:21

this will not work out. You need to

51:23

focus on the path to the goal and

51:25

not the goal. A lot of people try

51:27

to reach for the end goal before they

51:29

actually are willing to actually walk the path.

51:31

I also get this along. I happen to

51:33

be in the GitHub star program and

51:36

I've had a lot of people ask me, how do you

51:38

become a GitHub star? And that is just the wrong question

51:40

to ask. That's just the same as it

51:42

is. How do you become an open source maintainer of a

51:44

popular project? Like you just have

51:46

to do whatever you are interested in. You

51:49

have to do work and you have to

51:51

be passionate about your work. And then maybe

51:53

if you hit the right nerve, then that

51:55

will happen and maybe it won't. I

51:57

think it's very interesting that none of us.

52:00

had like a career path to where we are

52:02

now. We didn't set out to be where we

52:04

are now. It just feels like we were kind

52:06

of followed our own intuition and it worked out.

52:08

Which means it's very difficult when someone asks me,

52:10

well, how do you become an open source developer?

52:12

How do you start a company? It's like, I'm

52:14

not quite sure. I can tell you my path

52:16

to there, but very hard for me to articulate

52:18

to someone else how to get there. I think

52:20

there's a lot of luck involved as well, right?

52:22

It's like you have to do all this stuff

52:24

and then roll this dice. If it gets a

52:26

six, then you can be successful. Yeah,

52:29

there's an element of luck, but it's kind of like a luck

52:31

you make for yourself. Yeah. And it

52:33

might take you to somewhere else or it might

52:35

not. But as long as you're passionate about it

52:38

and you enjoy it, then great things will happen,

52:40

I think. Well, also Will and Charlie, you both

52:42

took some specific time on your own

52:44

money to really level up what you're working on,

52:46

which is pretty brave, right? Not a lot of

52:48

people would say, I'm just going to spend my

52:51

savings to work on this project and see if

52:53

I can make it go. So you earned some

52:55

of that through taking that chance and putting it

52:57

in that time and effort, I think. For me,

52:59

that didn't last quite long because after 15

53:01

months, I was living on GitHub sponsorship. We

53:03

each came along and then there was cash

53:05

and everything changed. So your world changed and

53:07

you had to learn a whole new set

53:09

of skills, I'm sure. Yeah, and then I

53:11

had a job and responsibilities. I do feel

53:13

really lucky that, like I said, this is

53:15

my first time being a maintainer. And it

53:18

was very clear to me quickly that for

53:20

Rust to have the pace of development and

53:22

the scope that it has, it had to

53:24

be a full-time thing. And that was pretty

53:26

obvious to me quickly. And I just, I

53:28

have a lot of respect for people who

53:30

have been maintainers for longer periods of time, and

53:32

in a way where it's not their full-time job

53:34

or they have to drill out the side. I

53:36

think I haven't really been in that

53:38

position, but it's already clear to me that that

53:40

takes a lot of dedication and commitment. So I

53:43

feel very lucky that I get to work on

53:45

open source full-time. I know it's not all entirely

53:47

luck, right? Like you were saying, you increase your

53:49

luck surface area and then opportunities come your way.

53:52

But I Do think it's just a very

53:54

fortunate position that these kinds of opportunities do

53:56

exist. Because Maintaining popular stuff is a lot.

53:59

It's a lot. Their privileges the come with

54:01

at one hundred percent but I mean yeah it's

54:03

a tough fitted it lot of work and watch

54:05

stress our responsibility for and you don't as fast

54:07

as start your own right away. I

54:09

disagree. Heavy sauces, thousand. Dollars have

54:11

to start your own either. You could contribute to

54:14

really popular one and kind of get into the

54:16

scene. and yeah like Eric that's a little bit

54:18

like your story like you are in the Jenga

54:20

see and then spun off from that. what you

54:22

guys are doing right now definitely and you know

54:24

part of an open source community and definitely kind

54:26

of going to break on and and just can

54:28

have been surrounded by the people that was always

54:30

the it. It's very lonely work to still have

54:32

a and inbox of get have issues and the

54:34

know inbox. thank you So. You

54:36

know and like going to conferences not kind

54:38

of stuff was really worried you feel the

54:40

appreciation and you've really kind of actually feel

54:43

that the but valued ever you're providing as

54:45

well as justice the stress of idea of

54:47

the things you're breaking some totally agree with

54:49

the absolutely the conferences or grade to really

54:51

feel the a person rather than just for

54:53

the requests and I'll say thank you and

54:55

then know give you a bug report but

54:57

at least to they it. A

55:00

was the was talking to. Yes, there is

55:02

is just so you. There's one thing. Order

55:04

And as now organize our last. Year

55:06

ago in interesting observation from years than the

55:08

Oig. A year ago I didn't really know

55:11

anyone in Python open source like at all

55:13

and I was a user of Python in

55:15

my day job every day but like I

55:17

was not in her interact with I am

55:19

a year yeah now like Sebastian we've interacted

55:21

a bunch like this is a lot of

55:23

people that I've come to know that they

55:25

give us like friends so I think they're

55:27

really your such as you're interested in getting

55:29

involved and like putting in work. I really

55:31

don't think there are significant barriers and like

55:33

you get out of it what you put

55:35

and so. i think i've been very impressive

55:38

just how alchemy and friendly in the community has

55:40

been especially at the beach and snow absolutely talk

55:42

to our people show up at pike on and

55:44

are like i was really nervous come here or

55:46

i feel like it didn't fit and in there

55:48

you know just had such a great experience and

55:50

asimov did you feel i like other thousand for

55:52

a fight on the cia nerve and if i'd

55:55

i'd never even if i non conference the size

55:57

limited up at such an amazing party for available

55:59

on a That's true.

56:01

I love the banniana. That was interesting.

56:03

Alright guys, well I think we are pretty

56:05

much out of time. Anyone want to have

56:07

some final thoughts for listeners before we wrap

56:09

it up? Go on and build some cool

56:12

stuff. Who's great enough? How come maintainer today,

56:14

I think. Give

56:16

cake, not puppies. Let's leave it with that, huh?

56:18

Alright, give cake, not puppies. And

56:20

be really careful before you start a

56:23

popular source project. It might take over

56:25

your life. If you want this, great, but

56:27

it's not that easy. Careful what you wish for,

56:29

you might get it. Exactly. Gina, Sebastian, Eric,

56:31

Will, Charlie, thank you all for being on the

56:33

show. This has been a ton of fun. Thank

56:35

you very much for having us. Thank you so

56:37

much. A pleasure and honor to be with these

56:40

amazing people. Thank you for the invitation. I agree.

56:43

Honestly, I had a blast just like hearing everyone's stories

56:45

because I hadn't heard any of this before. So thanks

56:47

to everyone else and thanks Michael. Yeah, you bet. Bye

56:49

all. Bye. This

56:51

has been another episode of Talk Python to Me.

56:54

Thank you to our sponsors. Be sure to check out

56:56

what they're offering. It really helps support the show. This

57:00

episode is sponsored by BaseDash. BaseDash

57:03

uses AI to build a dashboard

57:05

for your database. Get a

57:07

custom admin view in your

57:10

Postgres, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL,

57:12

MariaDB, or Redshift database. Get

57:15

started for free at talkbython.fm slash BaseDash.

57:18

Take some stress out of your life. Get

57:21

notified immediately about errors and performance issues

57:23

in your web or mobile applications with

57:25

Sentry. Just visit

57:28

talkbython.fm slash Sentry and

57:30

get started for free. And be sure

57:32

to use the promo code talkbython, all one

57:34

word. Want to level up

57:36

your Python? We have one of the largest catalogs

57:39

of Python video courses over at Talk Python. Our

57:41

content ranges from true beginners to deeply advanced topics

57:43

like memory and async. And

57:46

best of all, there's not a subscription in

57:49

sight. Check it out for yourself at training.talkbython.fm.

57:52

Be sure to subscribe to the show, open your

57:54

favorite podcast app, and search for Python. We should

57:56

be right at the top. You can

57:58

also find the iTunes feeder. at slash iTunes,

58:01

the Google Play feed at slash

58:03

Play, and the direct RSS feed

58:05

at slash RSS on talkpython.fm. We're

58:08

live streaming most of our recordings these days.

58:10

If you wanna be part of the show

58:12

and have your comments featured on the air,

58:14

be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel

58:17

at talkpython.fm slash YouTube. This

58:19

is your host, Michael Kennedy. Thanks so much for

58:21

listening. I really appreciate it. Now get out there

58:23

and write some Python code. We'll

58:26

be right back. Thanks everybody. Bye.

58:29

Bye. Bye bye. Bye. Bye

58:32

bye. Bye bye. Bye. Bye

58:34

bye. Bye. Bye bye.