0:00

Are you early in your software dev or data science

0:02

career? Maybe it hasn't even really started

0:04

yet and you're still in school. On

0:06

this episode, we have Sydney Runkle, who has had

0:08

a ton of success in the Python space and

0:11

she hasn't even graduated college yet. We

0:13

sit down to talk to her about what

0:15

she's done and might do differently again to

0:17

achieve that success. It's the Young

0:19

Coder's Blueprint to Success on episode 443 of Talk

0:21

Python to Me. This

0:25

episode was recorded November 8th, 2023. Welcome

0:42

to Talk Python to Me, a weekly podcast

0:44

on Python. This is your host, Michael Kennedy.

0:47

Follow me on Mastodon, where I'm

0:49

at M. Kennedy and follow the

0:51

podcast using at Talk Python, both

0:53

on bossedodon.org. Keep up with

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the show and listen to over seven years

0:57

of past episodes at TalkPython.fm. We've

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1:02

on YouTube. Subscribe to our

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YouTube channel over at TalkPython.fm slash YouTube

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to get notified about upcoming shows and

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be part of that episode. This

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episode is sponsored by us over at TalkPython

1:14

Training. Did you know that we have over

1:17

250 hours of Python courses? Yeah,

1:21

that's right. Check them out at TalkByThon.fm

1:23

slash courses. Sydney,

1:26

welcome to TalkByThon to Me. It's awesome to

1:28

have you here. Thanks. I'm excited

1:30

to be here. Yeah, it's really cool to have you here.

1:32

Lovely to have somebody who has a brand

1:34

new experience in the whole software

1:37

industry and you've certainly found a

1:39

lot of early success. That's

1:41

great and you're here to share it with everyone. So happy to

1:43

have you here. Yeah, I'm super excited to talk about it. Yeah,

1:46

so we're going to talk about your experience.

1:49

You're working on some pretty awesome projects

1:51

and as we were just talking before we

1:54

hit record you're still in college, still finishing

1:56

up your last year of college at Madison,

1:58

which is excellent. I think

2:00

you'll be an inspiration and provide

2:02

a lot of good tips for people who are

2:04

just getting into the software industry. All right. Well,

2:06

before we get to that though, tell people a

2:09

quick bit about yourself. Who are you? Yeah,

2:11

sure. So my name is Sydney,

2:13

obviously. I'm currently a senior at the University

2:15

of Wisconsin, Madison. I'm studying computer science. I

2:18

actually started off in both engineering and computer

2:20

science, but decided that I loved computer science

2:22

enough that I just wanted to focus on

2:24

that. Yeah. Why do you switch? What

2:27

engineering discipline were you in? I was in electrical engineering.

2:29

So there was a decent amount of crossover between

2:31

the two, but I was just finding that

2:33

I really liked my more advanced CS classes

2:36

more than the advanced engineering classes. Way

2:38

long ago, I think the way you got

2:40

a computer science degree is you did an

2:42

electrical engineering degree.

2:45

You're like, oh, that has to do with electrons and circuitry, and

2:47

that's computers, isn't it? So same thing,

2:49

right? Now it's way more focused, right? The

2:51

software side of education, isn't it? Yeah, definitely. And

2:54

the nice thing is we still have some cross-listed

2:56

classes, so I still get to dip my toes

2:58

in both sides. Yeah,

3:00

so I grew up in North Carolina originally

3:02

in Chapel Hill. Really loved it,

3:04

but for some reason decided to move up to where

3:06

it's quite cold. And

3:08

yeah, I really enjoyed my time at

3:11

Madison this far. I think it's a

3:13

great place to learn about CS. Well,

3:15

I have some really good friends who

3:17

were there for grad school at Madison

3:19

and just loved it. But I'm sure

3:21

as we come into November that perhaps

3:23

the weather's a little different than North

3:25

Carolina, which is, you know, sometimes it

3:27

gets chilly. The jacket. And some new,

3:29

like, nice winter experiences, you know? Yes, of

3:32

course. Of course. Cool. Well,

3:34

let's set the stage a little bit by

3:36

talking about what you're doing so people

3:39

get a sense, right? Like, obviously,

3:41

Madison, for those who don't know,

3:43

is a super highly respected school,

3:45

so it's a pretty top-tier computer

3:47

science apartment there. That alone is

3:50

pretty awesome. The fact you're about to graduate, it's pretty

3:52

awesome. But you're also working

3:54

on some cool, open-source slash-bunded, I guess.

3:56

I don't know what the term for

3:58

that is, like, backed open-source. source but

4:01

working with Hydantic. So yeah, talk a

4:03

bit about what you're doing these days.

4:06

Yeah, so I'm currently working part-time at

4:08

Hydantic. I know you've had Samuel

4:10

and some others on the team on the

4:13

show before, but I reached out to Samuel

4:15

kind of later in the summer actually after

4:17

I heard him talk on your podcast at

4:19

PyCon and asked if they were interested in

4:21

having an intern, you know, help with some

4:23

of the open source work because obviously they're

4:25

selling into new commercial things now and Samuel

4:27

got back to me. And so now I'm

4:29

primarily working on open source there. I help

4:31

with incoming issues and new feature

4:33

requests, etc. We're currently working on the

4:36

version 2.5 release, which has

4:38

lots of new features and fixes, which is

4:40

great. And it has certainly been the job

4:42

where I've learned that the most the fastest,

4:44

I think being surrounded by other developers who

4:47

have tons of open source experience makes such

4:49

a collaborative and fast moving team. And so

4:51

I've really enjoyed being able to learn so

4:53

much and, you know, dive into this really

4:55

well thought out and well-developed code base and

4:58

kind of go from there. That's awesome. Yeah,

5:00

Samuel is a great guy. The

5:02

Hydantic project, it's really

5:04

taken the world by storm, wouldn't you say?

5:06

Yeah, absolutely. Number of downloads per month, I

5:09

think. Recently, we hit over a million downloads

5:11

per month. It's quite impressive and, you know,

5:13

crazy given that it only started a couple

5:15

of years ago. I think that I saw,

5:18

I can't remember, was it an ex-Twitter post

5:20

or was it a Mastodon post that

5:23

Samuel had put up there that

5:25

Hydantic had been, at this point,

5:27

downloaded over a billion times, which

5:29

is kind of unimaginable. Yeah, it's

5:31

quite crazy. I haven't taken a Mast class super

5:34

recently, but I know that it's quite a large

5:36

number. That's right. It's

5:38

definitely a lot of zeroes. So

5:40

I pulled up the GitHub page here for Hydantic

5:42

and it says the project is used by 270,000

5:44

other GitHub projects. Yeah,

5:48

it's definitely quite ingrained in a

5:50

lot of projects, obviously also used

5:52

to support a lot of other

5:54

popular open source projects like the

5:56

one that comes to mind immediately

5:58

is FastAPI, which... Obviously, many

6:00

of the podcast listeners also know about,

6:02

but it's exciting that it's able to

6:04

serve as such a consistent foundational block

6:06

for so many other libraries. Yeah, it

6:08

really is. The podcast website

6:10

is based on Beanie, which is MongoDB

6:13

plus pedantic. And

6:15

I was literally just working on some fast API

6:18

code. I'm like, oh, I got to put this

6:20

away. I got to do the podcast with Sydney.

6:22

So yeah, it's definitely something that's pretty wild. I

6:25

don't know about how you feel about this, but does

6:27

it make you a little bit nervous to

6:29

work on a project that affects so many people?

6:31

Yeah, that's a good question. I think starting

6:33

off, I thought I would feel a bit

6:35

more nervous. But once I kind of got

6:37

into the swing of things, I think we

6:39

have a really great code review system there.

6:41

So, you know, I feel supported even though

6:43

if I'm, you know, making changes that seem

6:45

kind of new or different to me, I

6:47

feel like we have a great team and

6:49

not only just the team at pedantic, but

6:51

obviously other open source contributors that can get

6:53

feedback, etc. And it's nice to be able

6:55

to rely on them for feedback before obviously

6:57

we release too. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, right below

7:00

the number they used by count is the contributors and there's

7:02

447 at least directly to pedantic. I

7:06

don't know the pedantic one. Maybe there's a

7:08

pedantic core that's a separate repo these days.

7:10

There used to be one thing, but then

7:13

the whole v2 was about splitting that up,

7:15

right? Yeah, exactly. So we have a core

7:17

written in Rust that handles a lot of

7:19

the validation and serialization logic now. Yeah, yeah,

7:22

very cool. So you're about to

7:24

graduate. You talked about jumping into

7:26

this project and learning

7:29

so much. I had a really similar experience when

7:31

I was in grad school. I was studying math

7:33

and then I got to work on some actual

7:35

software projects and they were desktop apps. Can

7:37

you believe it back then? Really,

7:40

really fun projects though. And I had the

7:42

same experience like, wow, I've learned so much

7:44

here and you know, I did less computer

7:46

science in college because I studied math and

7:49

computer science minor. But still my

7:51

interactions with my computer

7:53

science side of those courses, I felt

7:55

there were a little bit. I mean,

7:58

I guess you should be this way. felt a

8:00

little academic being at the university. And

8:02

a little bit not entirely in touch

8:05

with what's the latest way of writing

8:07

code, what's the latest technologies, what's the

8:09

latest open source, or what's the latest

8:11

tools. Been a long time, let's

8:14

say. A couple years since I did that in the

8:16

mid-90s. Totally

8:19

changed. What's your experience? Is it similar, or

8:21

how the new project kind of gave you

8:23

a lot of exposure? Yeah, I would say

8:26

my experience has been quite similar, kind of

8:28

with the juxtaposition of standards in my computer

8:30

science classes and more academic

8:32

applications of computer science versus

8:34

in my various internships. I

8:36

think that's been one of the most

8:38

valuable thing about seeking out diverse opportunities

8:40

outside of class is really being

8:42

able to get experience with person

8:45

control systems and continuous deployment systems, and how

8:47

do I work on a code review, how

8:50

do I interpret a code review, things like

8:52

that. And then beyond that, just modern

8:54

coding standards and current libraries, et

8:57

cetera. I definitely do think

8:59

there is a gap, but I do think

9:01

there's still a lot of value in some

9:03

of the fundamental concepts that are language agnostic

9:05

or just easier to learn in a classroom

9:07

and aren't quite as dependent on code quality

9:09

and production quality, et cetera. But I think

9:11

it's also really important to get the experience

9:13

outside of class that gives a lot more

9:16

feedback as to, is this good code, is

9:18

this bad code, et cetera. Because that's certainly

9:20

something that's really emphasized in class. Even

9:22

if they try, I think one thing that's super hard

9:24

to simulate is working on a

9:27

team where stuff is used

9:29

by other people and there are consequences.

9:31

It's one thing to say, well, we're gonna do a PR and

9:34

how'd that go for you? It's another to say, we're gonna

9:37

take down 270,000 projects if

9:39

we get this wrong. So the continuous

9:41

integration should probably be working, right? Yep,

9:44

definitely. What languages has your

9:46

courses mostly been in? So

9:49

our foundational computer science courses,

9:52

learning about data structures, et cetera, are

9:55

in Java. There are a couple of kind of like

9:57

on-ramp courses that you can take in Python if you've

9:59

never really. learned code before obviously it's

10:01

a little bit easier to get started with

10:04

and then I've taken some courses in C

10:06

as well that are architecture related etc. And

10:08

now that I'm kind of past the intro,

10:10

past the computer architecture and into the elective

10:12

focus classes we've kind of pivoted back to

10:15

Python. I think part of that I'm taking

10:17

a lot of more data science machine learning

10:19

focus classes and so obviously Python's pretty convenient

10:21

language to write up those things. That's pretty

10:23

much the de facto on there for sure.

10:26

Yeah, when I took

10:28

the couple of computer science classes that I did

10:30

or programming classes it was it was a little bit

10:32

out of sync with what I was wanting to do.

10:35

So when I was I also started out in engineering

10:37

I'm like maybe I'll switch to something else. But before

10:39

I did they said well you're gonna need to take

10:41

a programming class. I'm like oh that sounds awesome. They're

10:43

like yeah we gotta have Fortran 77 class where

10:46

I'm like are you serious? This is the most important

10:48

class you're ever gonna take. Don't skip

10:50

on it. I'm like um maybe not so

10:53

sure about that. Yeah. Then I said then

10:55

I wanted to take another course. I'm like

10:57

maybe I'll take a C++ course. They're like

10:59

great but first you got to take a Lisp course.

11:01

I'm like oh boy. Really?

11:03

Can I just like take something that modern

11:05

software is built with please? No,

11:08

no, no but yeah yeah very

11:10

fun. Quite the journey though it sounds like

11:12

and knowing Java is a good skill. It's a kind

11:14

of a different paradigm for how

11:16

code executes. It's same for C right? Yeah, yeah

11:18

I definitely think it was helpful. I think at

11:20

the time in class I was like man I

11:22

really loved Python. You know why can't we be writing

11:24

Python but definitely great to get you know

11:26

exposure to different languages and I think it

11:29

helps you know to better understand general like

11:31

patterns in programming etc. If you have to

11:33

implement that and see the different implementations in

11:36

different languages. Yeah for sure. I thought with

11:38

its types it's getting a little a little

11:40

bit more like Java but hopefully not too

11:42

much like Java. So yeah excellent. Alright so

11:45

you mentioned that you're doing a lot of

11:47

Java. A quick audience question out there. Arjun

11:49

says I'm an IT professional. I've not had

11:51

any experience in any coding. What's the best

11:55

way to start with Python? I initially

11:57

few years ago started learning Java

11:59

but kind of lost interest. What are your thoughts?

12:01

That's a great question. Honestly, I started

12:04

by reading a how to write Python book

12:06

and kind of pivoted from that to online

12:08

courses. I think my number one recommendation would

12:11

be online courses. I know you guys at

12:13

TalkPython have some awesome online courses that people

12:15

can take. And before, I think in like

12:17

middle school and high school, I took some

12:20

courses through edX and Udemy. And I think

12:22

that's a great way to get started because

12:24

you can kind of have the balance of

12:26

I'm writing code, I'm seeing other people write

12:29

code, you know, often there's like auto graded

12:31

questions involved. And the nice thing about an online

12:33

course is that it's asynchronous, right? So you can

12:35

do things when it fits into your own time.

12:37

And another nice thing is that there's a pretty

12:40

large community of people online who love to write

12:42

Python and are getting started writing Python. And so

12:44

I think there's also a lot of support there,

12:46

which is great. Yeah, there's definitely more

12:48

resources now than there ever have been,

12:50

right? Yeah, yeah, I agree with online

12:53

courses. I really, really like the focus,

12:55

you know, when I started doing online

12:57

courses that we have, one of the things I wanted to

12:59

do is try to go like, how do people

13:02

who might otherwise take a semester long course at

13:04

say a community college, because if you're in a

13:06

full on university, you probably have a program you're

13:08

following, but if you're like, I'm just going to

13:10

take a course, how do you take that and

13:12

change that from 16 weeks

13:14

to five hours, you know, and still get

13:16

something meaningful out of it. Since

13:18

this kind of focus that young people and

13:20

not we're talking like,

13:23

you know, 20s type of young person, but

13:26

just you know, if people come along,

13:28

like, but what about my middle

13:30

school or something? Are

13:32

you familiar with this project? Code

13:34

combat? Have you seen? Yeah, yeah, I used

13:36

it in middle school. Did you? Amazing. What

13:38

a cool way to write code. Tell people

13:40

what it is. What are your thoughts? And

13:43

see, actually, you say there are a lot

13:45

of sites like this that basically allow you

13:47

to write code with, you know, some pretty

13:49

significant guidance and support to move along characters

13:51

and games and help in this case, like

13:53

fight other characters with your code. And, you

13:55

know, I can think of other examples like

13:58

I worked on a like robot program. where

14:00

I was helping a robot, Carol, like, you

14:02

know, walk around a maze and things like

14:04

that. And so I think websites like Code

14:06

Combat or Code Academy or even code.org have

14:08

a lot of really great opportunities, especially geared

14:10

towards younger people who might need help writing

14:12

code for the first time and can't like

14:14

just jump right into the deep end with

14:16

one of the more complex courses on like

14:18

Udemy, for example, offered a lot more like

14:20

collegiate level things. But I think these sites

14:22

are particularly great and entertaining, you know, it

14:24

makes you feel like you're playing a game,

14:26

but you're also learning in the background, which

14:28

is great. Yeah, this is such a neat

14:31

game. They've got these different worlds or whatever,

14:33

and they each have maybe on this one

14:35

here, Cloud Drip Mountain has 110

14:37

programming puzzles. And the reason I really

14:40

when people ask sometimes I recommend this

14:42

one is a lot of

14:44

these things that are like for really true

14:46

younger people are really just true beginners. They hide so

14:49

much of the code. They're like, well, if we could

14:51

just teach the concept of loops, you know, and then

14:53

you just drag a circle around this thing, and then

14:55

you click this block in, you know, I think that

14:57

still is a pretty big gap. But this is you

15:00

write real Python with an editor, but the

15:02

little editor is like the world's most aggressive

15:04

autocomplete you've ever seen, right? You type the

15:06

letter e h, it'll like hero

15:09

dot attack. And like, should you what should you

15:11

type in here? You know, it's like, Whoa, okay.

15:13

Yeah. But yeah, I think this is this is

15:15

really awesome for young young people. But you know,

15:17

I think even maybe older people might just if

15:19

they want to kind of play an online game,

15:21

right? If you're sitting around, you're like, Oh, maybe

15:24

I'll play Candy Crush or something like I'd rather

15:26

play co combat than that, you know, yeah, it's

15:28

definitely great to have the additional engagement there. And

15:30

you know, if it's just like, write this

15:32

for loop to do whatever that's not even

15:34

close to as engaging as like, you know,

15:36

the enemy or things like that. Yeah, exactly.

15:38

Exactly. Cool. So there's a whole spectrum of

15:40

online resources there. All right, how about we

15:42

jump into some of the tips, some of

15:44

the things as well. Before we do one

15:46

thing, I think you kind of hinted at

15:48

that with your answer here,

15:50

your response there, how much Programming

15:53

experience did you have when you got

15:55

to Madison? Because I Think one of

15:57

the challenges is while the maybe the

15:59

principle. The computer science is you could show

16:01

up with zero coding expanse in there like

16:04

this is a keyboard also of and we're

16:06

going to start with that. a lot of

16:08

people don't and so you might be sitting

16:10

next to somebody like our buts were going

16:12

to Prado. How are you done? might well

16:14

have been coding for you know our a

16:16

log rice What was your experience going and

16:19

see I I would say for you know

16:21

college freshmen that I did have quite a

16:23

bit of experience I had. You know Donald

16:25

is code combat as things in Middletown none.

16:27

Are looking up the my high school offered

16:29

some coding classes even. Other eighty level,

16:32

so more advanced courses. Side. Taken

16:34

those and then especially more java. Re met

16:36

them at a peeping through. a lot of

16:38

i actually took one in Python but I

16:40

think that there is deathly another one a

16:42

java. And then especially during the pandemic

16:44

I said start to get about and seen

16:46

as like man i really one of the

16:48

you know working in applying that so i

16:51

started having computer. Science internships in high school settings.

16:53

Definitely coming and I was a bit more prepared

16:55

for some the classes, especially my first job a

16:57

class I know written java before but I at

16:59

least understood. You know, some the paradigm that were

17:01

mobile and I do think it's helpful to come

17:03

in with some experience because like you said, if

17:05

you have been with that, it's a little bit

17:07

harder to jump into our odds of a horse.

17:10

Yeah, for sure you can do it. Nothing can

17:12

do it by the I guess. The thing is

17:14

you know if you look around the clock you

17:16

like there's some people that are really good at

17:18

this may be there probably is true, but it

17:20

also could be that there's. Some people have lot

17:22

of experience and your brand new and we all

17:24

know that the of first bit of code that

17:27

you ride is always a bit of a gonna

17:29

get your mind into sort of thing. Yeah definitely.

17:31

I think the good news is to you know

17:33

if you take one quick horse like even introduce

17:35

yourself or five to ten hours like that can

17:38

be a really big benefit of work to get

17:40

over the initial in a learning curve. Yeah this

17:42

is a super good point I remember as learning

17:44

see post was I was so psyched that I

17:46

got cut it to compile when I learned about

17:49

runtime box of how much are they are oh

17:51

my. God this is this is worse is

17:53

is way worse or the I was jump

17:55

into the tips. So. tip

17:57

number one you have work on a

18:00

Open source contributions. Tell us about

18:02

this. I can't say that during my first

18:04

couple of years of programming experience that I

18:06

did this, it was really only more recently

18:08

as this past summer. But

18:10

I think getting involved in the

18:12

open source community can be really beneficial,

18:14

especially in terms of seeing other well-written

18:16

code and standards in the

18:18

industry. I think another thing I

18:20

want to mention here is that open source contributions

18:22

seem a little bit intimidating at first. It's like,

18:25

oh my gosh, here's this huge project that has

18:27

been worked on for years. I don't know where

18:29

to start, but even minor documentation

18:31

updates are super helpful. We're

18:33

just writing an example in the docs or writing an

18:35

extra test, things like that. I think

18:38

even just those little micro contributions can

18:40

really help you get involved in that

18:42

community and then also just learning more

18:44

about the tools you're using day-to-day anyways.

18:46

Yeah, absolutely. Many projects

18:48

are very welcoming. People

18:51

who want to raise their hand to get

18:53

involved, right? Absolutely. I mean, filtering

18:55

on the good first issue tag is always a

18:58

good way to start. We're trying to mark more

19:00

and more of those at Hydantic just because there

19:02

are certainly a lot of people that want to

19:04

help and we more than welcome their assistance. It's

19:06

really great to see first-time contributors popping up every

19:08

day. For people who maybe are

19:10

listening and they're thinking about just getting into

19:12

this, right? But I'm going

19:15

to label this good first issue. If you go

19:17

to the issues, you can actually see which things

19:19

have been labeled as, look, you don't need to

19:21

understand a whole bunch about this system to get

19:24

started. So that's a really good way to kind

19:26

of see what's already out there because I think

19:28

you might look at a project, I want to

19:30

help, but how? What do they need help with?

19:33

Well, here's a whole list of small steps that

19:35

somebody could raise their hand and help with, right?

19:38

Exactly. I

19:40

even start? And then searching by that tag

19:43

is a great way to just jump in

19:45

and filter, especially in large projects like we

19:47

currently have about 400 issues, right? So it's

19:49

nice to have that filter there. Honestly, I'm

19:51

pretty impressed. There's only 400 issues. Yeah.

19:54

I know. I'm trying to keep it clean.

19:56

We'll see. It's not easy, is it? Definitely

19:58

a lot coming in. coming in after

20:00

every release, but it's great to see so

20:03

many people engaging and interested in new features

20:05

and helping report in six bugs. Yeah, yeah.

20:07

And I'm looking here in one of these

20:09

just open ones, but it's numbered 8,058. So,

20:13

you know, that's a whole bunch

20:15

of closed or deleted, ignored

20:17

issues, but somebody had to deal with them

20:19

along the way. Yeah, certainly. And I think

20:21

another great thing about working on open source

20:23

contributions, especially if you don't have a ton

20:25

of experience with software development, you know, maybe

20:27

you're a student and you've worked a lot

20:30

with computer science concepts is it's a great

20:32

way to practice your version control skills, right?

20:34

Like you're going to need to make commits,

20:36

you're going to need to submit a pull

20:38

request and get that reviewed and iterate with

20:40

other developers. And so it's an awesome way

20:43

to just pick a project and develop those

20:45

skills kind of in parallel with your actual

20:47

coding skills as well. Yeah, absolutely. And also

20:49

get a sense of what does releasing and

20:51

testing software feel like because probably you got

20:54

a PR, then the PR has got to

20:56

run some continuous integration. And then, you know,

20:58

which branch does it go into all those

21:00

sort of things that we were talking about before

21:03

that make it hard to simulate in school, like

21:05

you throw it in the somewhat deep end. But

21:07

you know, it's good, good learning. Yeah, definitely. And

21:09

there's a lot of documentation to help with how

21:12

do I make my first commit? How do I

21:14

pull this code down, etc, which is good. Yeah,

21:17

I also think the tutorials and the documentation

21:19

side can be really helpful. I was working

21:21

on some project and it had documentation

21:23

for the, you know, whatever

21:26

property function, whatever it was that I was

21:28

working with. So kind of enumeration and

21:30

it was like split segments. And

21:32

then you look at it, the documentation says,

21:35

this setting this to true will split the

21:37

segments like, okay, what

21:39

does it base the splitting on? Like, what

21:41

does this even do? Okay, I understand they

21:43

will be split, but I would need to

21:45

be more precise, right? And like just if

21:47

you look at it, it kind of has

21:49

just the name turned into a sentence, like

21:52

that thing is ripe for getting a little bit of extra

21:55

detail, I would say. Yeah, definitely. You know,

21:57

if you're confused, I'm sure someone else is

21:59

confused and always. to at least you

22:01

know reporter he'll fix that etc. Yeah

22:03

the other thing I like about your

22:05

first tip here is you you make

22:07

connections in the industry pretty

22:09

quickly right like jumping to pydanek you get

22:11

to know Samuel Colvin who's connected to all

22:13

these other people and you probably work with

22:15

Sebastian Ramirez from fast API because those two

22:18

projects work closely together right and all the

22:20

sudden people are like oh yeah that guy's

22:22

amazing I wish I could meet him right

22:24

you know you're you're working you know virtually

22:26

side-by-side right yeah it's really great and you

22:28

know awesome to have such a community that's

22:30

focused on like helping other projects and obviously

22:33

it's just you know general improvement of projects

22:35

for public use which is a really great

22:37

motive and as you mentioned like any contribution

22:39

that you're gonna make is gonna get you

22:41

noticed and help you make connections which is

22:43

great when you're for example student like me

22:46

looking to you know like make connections in

22:48

the computer science and software community and maybe

22:50

look for jobs and hopefully etc. Yeah absolutely

22:52

and if people show how you know you

22:54

go to a job interview and there's 10

22:58

20 applicants and they're like okay look we work

23:00

with fast API have you so are you familiar

23:02

with it somebody says no I think I've heard

23:04

of it is that is that a Python framework

23:06

yes it's a Python framework okay then

23:08

the next person like yeah I've written a little demo

23:10

app with it and then you know you show up

23:12

you're like yeah I actually contributed and

23:15

added this feature they're like hired you know what

23:17

I mean you know a lot of people focus

23:19

on what does your kind of github profile look

23:21

like what projects do you have etc and you

23:24

know if you're like man I don't have the time to

23:26

develop all these awesome projects on my own but you know

23:28

how I can boost my profiles just work

23:30

on other people's other people's projects help out etc

23:33

right and then you know someday you'll probably come

23:35

up with something that catches on and you'll have

23:37

your own project but you know when you're really

23:39

new it's kind of hard to

23:42

those things are not easy to make a popular

23:44

project in the first place and so you can

23:47

really jumpstart that whole process yeah all right related

23:49

to this and you kind of hinted that it

23:51

is the next tip is reading other people's code

23:53

yeah as we discussed at the beginning of the

23:56

podcast sometimes the code that you might write in

23:58

class you perhaps are a little bit more

24:00

focused on, you know, getting it to work, then

24:02

how clean is this? How maintainable is this? How

24:05

well would it work with other systems? So

24:07

I think reading other people's code, especially often

24:09

through, you know, open source contributions can be

24:11

really beneficial in just helping you understand like

24:14

what are the industry norms? How can I

24:16

improve my own code so that I'm, you

24:18

know, matching these and another great

24:20

kind of tie in with the open source contributions

24:22

is if I write some code to fix a

24:25

bug and then get reviews from the, you

24:27

know, maintainers of a repository, like I'm getting immediate

24:29

feedback about like, how am I doing in my,

24:31

you know, patterns that I'm using and the ways

24:33

that I'm refactoring things, et cetera. And I think

24:36

that's one of the best ways to learn the

24:38

most quickly is, you know, you already had to

24:40

come up with the solution to implement this fix

24:42

yourself, but then let me collaborate with

24:44

other people who are really experienced in this field

24:46

to get a better idea of what I, how

24:48

I should be solving problems like this. Sure.

24:51

And when you learn through a

24:53

tutorial or online course or even

24:55

a college course, there's really

24:57

different kind of expectations about how the code

24:59

runs a lot of times. It's like, Oh,

25:02

okay. So if I type this in and

25:04

I do this loop and I do this

25:06

thing, then it'll work. But what about the

25:08

air handling? What about the robustness? Right? Like

25:10

those things are my experience. When I was

25:12

working with interns more quite a

25:15

while ago, but it was like, we'd have a

25:17

project project would be going along great and they'd

25:19

write awesome code, but I'd say, okay, see

25:21

where you're supposed to put that number, type the

25:23

word seven in there and see what happens, you

25:26

know, and it poops the program dies. Like, okay,

25:28

we still got a little more work to do.

25:30

Like, how about an error message? Like this has

25:32

to be a number rather than just killing the

25:35

program. Yeah. Right. That kind of those, those kinds

25:37

of things you learn by working on like real

25:39

projects, like open source ones, I think. Also, you

25:41

know, you get to better understand for a given

25:43

language. Obviously I'm most familiar with Python. Like where

25:46

should I be writing documentation for my code? You

25:48

know, where should I be putting my examples? Where

25:50

should I put my tests? Um, and things like that.

25:52

You don't necessarily have to think about it. You're just

25:54

writing a script, you know, for a class or, you

25:56

know, online or in person, whatever that might be. Understand

28:00

like every function that thing spoke there, every

28:02

class. but I'm at least like getting that

28:04

kind of higher level understanding of like where

28:06

the heck is the thing coming from and

28:08

then really focus more on you know, whereas

28:11

the issue that needs it needs to be

28:13

sexton. Let me really take a look at

28:15

those couple lines of code. another you get

28:17

for me, the other people's code is an

28:19

appreciation of style. I like a format Iain

28:21

M M Polish and presentation because a lot

28:23

of good code and lot of emphasis. Open

28:26

Source good is written to be read more

28:28

than it's meant to be written right. Definitely

28:30

we like our automatic or matters a lot

28:32

of identikey. So we just implemented the new

28:34

Ruff for Matter which is written in rust,

28:37

super fast and adheres to. I think it's

28:39

like ninety nine point nine percent compatible with

28:41

Black which is for him and then before

28:43

that we are using Black for everything. So

28:46

another benefit of those contributions as getting used

28:48

to using Code for Matters. You know once

28:50

it on reading your code and now I

28:52

find myself you know just creating an environment

28:55

as is using Code for Matters for my

28:57

academic code anyways because I can send the

28:59

look at have a look of it if

29:01

it doesn't match share The professors was love

29:03

you their hosts are suspicious or whole night

29:06

as I can read and prepare devices for

29:08

the reserve. the other one that got soon

29:10

as the eyes. I switched over to use

29:12

In Rough for all of all my projects

29:15

as well and ran ruff against like and

29:17

the thousands of mind, the Python and Brussel

29:19

sprouts and it was like that you her

29:21

Internet has done is like for reform, added

29:24

Noom, three hundred and ninety two Python files

29:26

and they did it. really do a quick

29:28

yes Sebastien was quoted as saying. Like you

29:30

know sometimes I purposely introduce little bugs or

29:32

it out well for balloting. Some I could

29:35

just to make years working and it is

29:37

but I just want to make sure it

29:39

does it So darned. Baths Towers are so

29:41

I integrated and have pie charm and there's

29:43

a way now with the plugin to say

29:46

when you do reformat code and by charm

29:48

just run reform it seems as and really

29:50

cool and said I just had the Heathrow

29:52

to reform managed to seek of in cook

29:54

I target the arena. Awesome! I know what

29:57

I'll be doing up to this comment. Alyssa

29:59

says I'm a T for college Intro Python

30:01

course what advice would you have for students

30:03

getting into Python for the first time and

30:05

cause of off and went to focus their

30:08

time on it's own. yeah that's a great

30:10

question. I think kind of. The fundamental data

30:12

structures can be really helpful to focus on

30:14

at first and a fundamental concepts to programming

30:16

like or loops while it functions, classes, etc.

30:19

And one nice thing about I thought is

30:21

that you know it's relatively easy to read

30:23

code that's written with those structures right? like

30:25

it's a bit more into as some. Other

30:28

languages like see for example and so I

30:30

think getting. Started with those basics is nice

30:32

and Python because if you just look at

30:34

you know some it's example code who's implemented

30:36

that you can kind of read it like

30:38

the English if it's written well enough good

30:40

names are from variables and functions and that

30:43

kind of suffering. Yeah definitely. and I think

30:45

to and of like we mentioned the beginning

30:47

a few and a fine of pull an

30:49

easy projects that can help to contextualize and

30:51

meter were more exciting right? If it's not

30:53

just okay, well me in hoping for these

30:55

ten concepts that I need to learn to

30:57

let go. Let me write our rock paper

30:59

scissors function and or. Things like that.

31:01

Their one thing I'd also thrown their ad

31:04

is maybe get them started with good tools.

31:06

Billie soon ride bikes or charmer vs code

31:08

some like that like rather than just know

31:10

patter he some random being they would be

31:13

schools are really really help you though. The

31:15

like help auto format at the like do

31:17

the format in for you though. give you

31:19

advice and sorry there's before even run it

31:21

you know, like the and I'm on the

31:24

right path of that. Yeah, that's a great

31:26

tip. I think it makes everything fell little

31:28

bit less overwhelming right? It's like okay this.

31:30

this is gonna do half my work for me

31:33

and i'd say to do with the thinking that

31:35

exactly and it's got my back i think you

31:37

know if you say like okay you type the

31:39

as dame at the had colon than you only

31:41

have four spaces like my kind of press space

31:43

for time for this is what have you just

31:45

said type gonna hit enter that i keep typing

31:47

and it's like auto indented like it's already done

31:49

what i need than like okay this is actually

31:51

it sounds weird but it's actually to if i

31:54

doubt that like oh you're next piece of advice

31:56

here is to join some kind of club here

31:58

science club or the bet your years to

32:00

get going. Yeah, like I mentioned, I was

32:02

really fortunate in high school to have a

32:05

teacher that taught some CS courses and

32:07

I even helped lead like the coding

32:09

club at my school and I think this is a

32:11

really great opportunity to engage with other

32:13

students who are interested in coding. Even

32:15

if you don't have coding courses, you

32:17

can all kind of get together

32:19

once a week even or once every two

32:21

weeks and just work on projects or learn

32:24

together in the club that I was leading

32:26

week sort of did a combination of little

32:28

lessons and then also you know working on

32:30

projects together and then sometimes we would do

32:33

little competitions you know there are

32:35

things like we code and other websites like that

32:37

that allow you to practice your algorithm skills and

32:39

not only are you getting better with coding but

32:41

it also helps to connect with other

32:44

coders in your community I think obviously by

32:46

the nature of the work sometimes it can feel

32:48

a little bit lonely and so it's nice to

32:50

connect like that and if you're not in school

32:52

but still looking to engage their you know Python

32:54

meetups and other like data

32:56

meetups and yeah yeah exactly. I

32:59

don't know why I chose this location but

33:01

yeah I just threw Python I told it

33:04

near you but it actually put it in

33:06

Verizon New York where there's there's tons and

33:08

tons of these place right and even in

33:10

a Python coding Python and APIs Python 100

33:12

days of code and there's just tons of

33:15

options right because when you're in school there's

33:17

usually like clubs either in high school or in

33:19

college or maybe even more but once

33:21

you graduate they're like well go

33:24

back to high school that'd be weird

33:26

yeah but these these meetups and also

33:28

you know icon just got announced for

33:31

Pittsburgh and icon is such a major

33:33

experience I think for a lot of people yeah getting

33:35

from outside I feel like people a lot of people

33:37

were like well I was really intimidated to go

33:39

and really it's just like the programming party and

33:41

everyone's so welcoming and you should really check it out

33:43

I think for people listening I'm excited

33:46

I'm gonna go for the first time and are

33:48

you yeah awesome yeah

33:50

I love icon always always tons of

33:52

fun what's our next tip here reach

33:55

out to local companies for job opportunities you talked

33:57

about your internships and I was gonna ask you

33:59

about Like, how did you find them so soon?

34:02

But I knew a tip was coming, so

34:04

save it for now. Like, this is a

34:07

great piece of advice. Yeah, so I think

34:09

sometimes getting your first job

34:11

in a computer science field or software

34:13

development field can feel a little bit intimidating,

34:15

especially when you're on the younger side, right? It's

34:18

like, oh, well, all these people that I see

34:20

working at thing companies are older and

34:22

have degrees and are more experienced. But there are

34:24

a lot of small computer

34:26

science startups or even medium-sized companies

34:28

that are more than happy to

34:31

hire younger high school interns. And

34:33

so my first ever computer science

34:35

experience was a company that was

34:37

in Chapel Hill, Park River, I grew up called

34:39

Quartworx. And I worked for them for two summers

34:41

in a row, and it was really great just

34:43

to start to get working with other

34:46

people. We did some work for a

34:48

local nonprofit group and then worked on

34:50

an API with COVID information. And

34:53

even those, we weren't like

34:55

huge projects you'd hear about at Google

34:57

or things like that. It was

34:59

really great to just get those local experiences.

35:02

And I think also it's a little bit easier to

35:04

get in that smaller companies, right? Like

35:06

if I was a 15-year-old email someone

35:08

at Google, like who knows about me

35:10

hearing your response, but local companies, I

35:12

think it's just a lot easier to

35:14

connect and start growing your career roots

35:17

there. Yeah, here's the big secret that

35:19

you don't learn until you've walked the

35:21

path, I think. If you get one

35:24

of those jobs at the amazing thing companies

35:26

or some big tech company, you're probably gonna

35:28

be doing something really focused and

35:31

specific, you won't get a real broad chance

35:33

to work on software. But if you get a

35:35

job at a small company, you

35:37

kinda gotta do a lot of stuff because, well,

35:40

it's maybe you and the one other

35:42

person, right? So I think

35:44

it helps you grow a little bit

35:46

quicker. Yeah, I completely agree. I've been

35:48

really grateful to have had kind of

35:50

all my job experiences be at smaller

35:53

companies. At the next company that I

35:55

worked at was an insurance

35:57

tech company. I got to work on an API. The

36:00

client and on. Even some

36:02

like marketing videos for our company. And then

36:04

you know that my first exposure to the

36:07

cloud infrastructure which what like you're saying like

36:09

those are it's know combinations of things aren't

36:11

something you'd get to do that you know,

36:13

a large company internship, living the benefits of

36:15

the others teams for each one of those

36:18

things. you just a. Few

36:20

months of of teens? Yep, the Us. exactly. And

36:22

as easy as you said, it's easier to get

36:24

those jobs. So they'd be cool to get a

36:27

job or Google or Microsoft or whatever. But here's

36:29

a look around. there's probably a lot of lot

36:31

more. Opportunity at me on small groups

36:33

that really need some computer help. You

36:35

know? I mean yeah, and the benefits

36:37

of looking local as like you might

36:39

already have a connection there that you

36:41

didn't know about Earth like that, so

36:43

are we supposed? Next up Next tip:

36:45

Learn about suffer design principles yourself. This

36:47

kind of tied nicely inserts or previous

36:49

have, but you know the earlier you

36:51

get to start working on some sort

36:54

of production system or even just get

36:56

on open source project that has releases,

36:58

etc, the earlier you get sent learning

37:00

about how do I. Integrate and deployed

37:02

us and how do I work

37:04

with I blinds and I are

37:06

all my tests feeling you know

37:08

and things like that and I

37:10

think having those skills going into

37:12

other opportunities. Billie makes employers excited

37:14

by because you're already experienced. In things

37:16

like that and so they don't have to stand in. The

37:19

first couple of weeks getting used to

37:21

their integration, deployment systems and contributing to

37:23

the repository and pull request something like

37:25

that and even things like address development

37:27

strategy so. Getting it's like how do I plan

37:29

out what. i'm going to develop and then

37:31

the next two weeks you know obviously there

37:34

are various different systems you can use for

37:36

that but i think just i'm seeing things

37:38

one step further from i know how to

37:40

the code like how do i write the

37:42

code with a team and said why you

37:44

don't make sure it's released consistently i'm reliably

37:47

et cetera can be really beneficial for eternity

37:49

united circling back socially quickly and i both

37:51

to the contributing open source and the join

37:53

a club big we a lot of first

37:55

thing about programming they think about he okay

37:58

wanna go into the basement and shut the

38:00

blinds and not see anyone and just write

38:02

code and become pale.

38:05

But a lot of software actually is a

38:08

pretty social, pretty interactive experience. I think you

38:10

get both of those from open source and

38:12

internships and the clubs as well. Yup, definitely.

38:14

And it's more fun. Come on. Certainly.

38:17

Being fun, find an opportunity to teach code. Yeah, so

38:19

this one I think is a little bit harder

38:22

to orchestrate, but obviously there are always

38:24

people wanting to learn how to code

38:26

and people of all ages learning, wanting

38:28

to learn how to code. So kind

38:30

of my own experience with this was

38:32

in high school, my school was promoting

38:34

this class for anyone of all ages.

38:36

It's going to happen from 7 to

38:39

9 p.m. once a week and we

38:41

were going to teach Apple Swift, so

38:43

the app development programming language. And

38:46

I had only learned it for a couple of weeks, but

38:48

they were looking for volunteers to help teach. And

38:50

it's similar to, I think, our viewer, Alyssa,

38:52

mentioned she's a TA, right? And I think

38:54

the more you teach something, the more you

38:57

are able to convince yourself

38:59

that you understand it, really grasp concepts. And

39:01

so I think if you get an opportunity

39:03

to teach, even if it's just volunteering or

39:05

if it's paid, it's really beneficial in helping

39:07

you understand those concepts and I think just

39:09

sparking kind of a general love for the

39:11

community, right? Like when you get to help

39:14

others learn, it's really positive experience. Yeah, it

39:16

is pretty amazing. And it doesn't have to

39:18

be a full-on college course.

39:20

It could be, we talked about

39:22

the meetups or clubs. Like, hey, I'm going

39:24

to volunteer to do a presentation at one

39:26

of the local meetups. Yeah. I

39:30

know some of the ones I've been to will be like,

39:32

well, we're going to have three presenters and they're each 20

39:35

minutes instead of one person who has to

39:37

be up there in front for a really

39:39

long time and a 20-minute presentation on something

39:41

that you're kind of passionate about. It's

39:44

pretty easy once you get over being nervous. It's

39:48

pretty easy. Definitely. And it's like,

39:50

okay, what code did you write last week and what

39:52

tool did you find really helpful? Like,

39:54

it's pretty easy to talk about that in front of other people

39:56

who are also going to be really excited to learn about it.

39:58

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I Thought this would be easy. It was

40:00

really hard his i didn't like he is how

40:02

we made it like got through and what. actually

40:04

a martin and like that kind of stuff is

40:06

really fun to talk about in and super helpful.

40:09

Yeah when he or the piece of advice of

40:11

think it's kind of leans into them internship say

40:13

the thing the radio Connect with nonprofits and see

40:15

if you can help with any their needs. We

40:17

talked a lot about community on this podcast right?

40:19

I think the more you involved with open source

40:22

projects and you know work at a company you

40:24

start to realize that I dislike really is a

40:26

welcoming and engaged community and kind of thing that

40:28

outside of the sphere of just computer. Science. Obviously

40:30

nonprofits really helps a do great things

40:32

for communities and often they have some

40:34

pretty significant techniques that are hard to

40:36

meet. and so I think another really

40:38

great opportunity for young people who aren't

40:40

me, the necessarily ready to start like

40:43

a fulltime job or even percent job

40:45

is. just can I work for a

40:47

couple of hours a week? With this

40:49

you know nonprofit to help them? that

40:51

might be. Can I help the maintain

40:53

their website? Where can I sell them

40:55

a spreadsheet that has a couple of

40:57

automation that's really gonna help them select.

40:59

One example is. That in Chapel Hill?

41:01

Him for him with this eight month

41:03

old porch that helps collect food from

41:05

the reporters and then redistributes. that's a

41:07

local Families in Need and food pantries

41:09

and you can imagine. Once you start

41:11

to hear about this organization and it

41:13

spreads there's a lot of people involved

41:15

and so I help. My first internship

41:17

Gonna build a tool for them to

41:19

select, organize. Their routes for pick up some

41:21

things like that and so it doesn't enough to

41:23

be as complicated as that, but just I think

41:26

reaching. Out to nonprofits is a great way to

41:28

not only feel like three I have a coating

41:30

community but also like I have a place and

41:32

by broader community as a whole. Gun also offers

41:35

some nice nice way to give back. If you're

41:37

working project for you you may be or join

41:39

Ryan the code measure an eyebrow, how much am

41:41

I can to be and like I'm trained or

41:44

you know optimize the the treaty and speed for

41:46

this algorithm like that's cool and all that a

41:48

kind of one I just feel like I'm I'm

41:50

using some of my powers for good in one

41:52

of the things that come to my as as

41:55

a thing called the. humanitarian toolbox and as

41:57

a whole bunch of different pieces are

41:59

some Yeah,

44:00

definitely. I think, you know, especially with Python, a

44:02

lot of people who get started with maybe a

44:04

more data science oriented trajectory are like, okay, this

44:06

is all I need. I've got everything right here,

44:09

you know, and I think it just makes you

44:11

a better programmer to have exposure to different languages

44:13

and, you know, maybe you don't have a ton

44:15

of time to study three at

44:17

once, but like, go read, you know, some

44:19

code from a different language. And I'm kind

44:22

of experiencing that right now getting used to

44:24

writing some code in Python core, which is

44:26

in Rust. And then being a little bit

44:28

more familiar with the PyGantic Python wrapper, but

44:30

it's really refreshing and great to learn about

44:33

new ways to solve problems. And, you know,

44:35

obviously Rust is quite impressive and fast. So

44:37

that's always exciting, too. Yeah. You can tell

44:39

that Python's getting older over 30 years now,

44:42

because there's a lot of Rust in it.

44:44

Yeah, exactly. Now it's, it really is impressive

44:46

how much it's gone from, oh, we're just

44:48

doing everything in C extensions to like all

44:50

the fancy shiny stuff is Rust internal somewhere.

44:53

Yep. Right. Yeah. You already talked about multiple

44:55

tools that are in libraries that are that

44:57

way. Right. And we use Py03, which is

44:59

an awesome library that kind of helps to

45:01

connect Python to Rust. And, you know, there

45:03

are more and more open source contributions to

45:06

projects like that, that help link languages, which

45:08

is awesome. Yeah. So one sort of sub

45:10

tip that you had in here is this

45:12

get 1% better every day. And you

45:15

sort of group that into the newsletters. I think that can go

45:17

kind of shared amongst many of

45:19

your piece of advice. Yeah, I think it's

45:21

a great mindset to have in general, you

45:23

know, as long as you're putting in relatively

45:25

consistent work to learn and practice what you're

45:28

learning, etc. I think you'll be quite surprised

45:30

and impressed with yourself at how much better you're

45:32

getting, how much more comfortable you feel with things.

45:34

And I feel like when you're just starting out

45:36

and you've got this huge learning term to work

45:38

on, it's really great to, you know, just be

45:40

consistent, like for five to 30 minutes a day,

45:42

like work on this thing. And then even in

45:44

two weeks, you're gonna be like, wow, I've learned

45:47

so much, you know, and then you can imagine

45:49

what you'll feel like in a year. Yeah, I

45:51

think it's so easy to

45:53

underestimate that how that compounds in

45:55

your career. I remember when I

45:57

first got my first real programming

45:59

job. I'm still in grad school but working

46:01

on it a lot. You would get,

46:03

officially, you got an hour for lunch.

46:06

But the way it really worked, we'd go grab some food, eat

46:09

it quick in the little courtyard, and then go back to

46:11

work. And just because, where else are

46:13

you gonna go? But

46:16

what I started doing was I would get

46:18

some new programming book, book on refactoring or

46:20

design patterns or I was doing C++ at

46:22

the time, so some C++ book. Now

46:25

I just say, look, I get an hour. I got 25 minutes before I

46:27

go back to work. I'm gonna just sit here and read the book and

46:30

just one, I felt like I was supposed to

46:32

have an hour from my job for lunch and

46:35

two, it was contributing back to my work anyway.

46:37

But it was after doing that for a year

46:39

or two, I went from being a super newbie

46:41

to giving conference talks to people like, wow, how'd

46:43

you learn all this stuff? I was like, well,

46:45

lunch basically. Totally,

46:48

and connecting back to this

46:50

podcast, over the summer I started listening. I was like,

46:52

well, I have a 15 minute walk to work

46:54

each way. I might as well learn something while I'm

46:56

at it. And I'm a big fan of podcasts anyways,

46:58

but I'd finished my New York Times daily by then

47:01

and I was like, well, I've gotta listen to something

47:03

else. So it's great to just, we had so much

47:05

downtime during our days and we could be listening to

47:07

something, but listening to this podcast is another great way

47:09

to just pick up tips and learn about what's going

47:12

on in the Python community and how

47:14

can I write my own code better and things like

47:16

that. Yeah, I really appreciate that and thanks. I find

47:18

that there's a lot of people who will write me

47:20

and when I first started this podcast, I thought, well,

47:22

who's gonna listen to such a show? Must

47:24

be the people that really, really into it, right? And

47:27

then I started getting emails from people who would say,

47:29

hey, I really enjoy your show. I'm starting to understand

47:31

a lot of the things you're saying. I'm like, I've

47:33

been listening for six weeks. I'm like, why, you listen

47:35

for six weeks and you like barely understand, like, well,

47:37

okay, thank you, but why do you do this? And

47:40

what I realized is a lot of people who are

47:42

new start to use it as a language immersion. You

47:44

know, like if you wanted to learn Portuguese, you'd just

47:46

go live in Brazil for six months and then you

47:48

would know it, right? And so they kind of like,

47:50

well, I wanna be in the Python space, so I'm

47:53

just gonna like immerse myself in that space

47:56

Until it starts to click. Yeah, it's a good way to do

47:58

it. And Like for the job that I had this... The

48:00

summer as I'm working in a oh framework. And

48:02

you know, obviously when you're on the job and

48:04

writing code and you have a problem, it's pretty

48:06

easy to just look something up and read the

48:09

documentation, etc. But then I kind of started searching

48:11

through your previous five thousand just listening to episodes

48:13

about trying to do like. Okay, what can I

48:15

pick up that I don't a silly need like

48:18

right now the solve my problem. but. And will

48:20

help me down the line. I'm and just kind

48:22

of in my day to day writing code.

48:24

Awesome! Think we my of has some pretty

48:26

much all of the tipsy I guess the

48:29

last one is part time freelance work. So

48:31

one angle was get an internship and and

48:33

so on. but you may be you live

48:35

in a place words hard. hard to find

48:37

a remote internship or something like that right?

48:40

You could do some i'm lightweight consulting type

48:42

of work. yeah exactly and certainly more interested

48:44

in that Anderlecht full stack kind of thing.

48:46

but there are a lot of people who

48:48

are looking for you know, let's say help

48:51

and website. Development So I has averaged

48:53

out on platforms like next door which

48:55

is like a neighborhood in communication platform

48:57

and you know through school email lesson

48:59

things like Allen said hey does anyone

49:01

need help in a building website and

49:03

honestly I'd do most them sir Wix

49:05

so it's not like it takes a

49:07

tunnels technical knowledge like I didn't he

49:09

done study these things her years and

49:12

years to be able to practice and

49:14

but there are a lot. Of people

49:16

looking for just help with technical things. And. If

49:18

you know have little bits of time here

49:20

and there but can't commit to know full

49:23

internship or full time job or anything like

49:25

that it's a great way to just it.

49:27

Started writing code and people are always super

49:29

grateful to Sad the tech help absolutely as

49:32

good way he could get experience up there

49:34

are. I have no one in once in

49:36

here to may be around closing down as

49:38

volunteer at conferences. Sweet Talked about going to

49:41

conferences are going joining meet ups but you

49:43

could volunteer at a conference or to meet

49:45

up In a lot of commerce's like icon

49:47

there's hundreds. Of on many many volunteers I

49:50

think it probably is over one hundred volunteers

49:52

to make that happen and I think there

49:54

might even be sometimes like travel grants like

49:56

of hey of I volunteered are basically we're

49:58

has a conference where you. They'll get me,

50:00

they're sort of thing and muddle I work

50:02

and up a source at really lets you

50:04

make connections with people in the industry right?

50:06

Was speakers and other folks. Yeah yeah, selling.

50:08

I think that's a really great piece of

50:10

advice. You don't think a lot of these

50:12

are very applicable like even if you don't

50:14

has a ton of experience you can get

50:16

started with that. See our next? kind of

50:18

be your onramp into this community as that's

50:20

what you're interested in and think that's a

50:22

really great one right? Because not only you're

50:24

gonna get Serbian the community but also like

50:26

no better place to learn about. I found

50:28

them Python right? So. Yeah, I'm suggesting

50:31

in that space and it will absorb

50:33

the other information as well. Yeah, and

50:35

people might not know the he about

50:37

Pie Com like. Okay, that's the one

50:39

semester big one of the Us and

50:41

it moves around. And then there's Euro

50:43

Python which is an amazing places in

50:45

Europe, but there's actually many many miniature

50:47

him bygones around. You know there's like

50:49

Pie Ohio and there's Pie Tennessee and

50:51

Pie Texas and Pie Cascades in our

50:53

that Pie Bay in San Francisco little

50:55

while ago respond to volunteers there so

50:57

he could be that there's one. Hour

51:00

drive from where your don't have to make

51:02

it a big trip. Yep, definitely an you

51:04

know more more. There are also some like

51:07

online opportunities right? so he really are close.

51:09

Any of that are coming up soon. Global?

51:11

Consider that out Absolutely. Or it was. I

51:13

think that pretty much wraps it up. Anything

51:16

that we didn't cover that you think you

51:18

wanna throw up for people getting into programming

51:20

in python so I think with that a

51:22

pretty comprehensive overview but city flooding thing is

51:25

just if you wanna learn more other a

51:27

ton of avenues to do it and not

51:29

really supportive. community type waiting for you to

51:31

help young i think if you haven't experienced

51:33

it before i do think the the how

51:35

support of the community is and how welcoming

51:37

they are is probably gonna be a surprise

51:40

lot of people like you think i'll i

51:42

don't know enough you're gonna call me and

51:44

i say you're nervous or for this project

51:46

get outta here like now usually their everyone's

51:48

super excited to on or how you speak

51:50

at their event volunteer work an open source

51:52

projects in a bedroom that's been my experience

51:54

anyway yeah miners are excellent or ice well

51:56

before we get out here i usually ask

51:59

questions and about Python

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54:39

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54:42

listening. I really appreciate it. Now get out there

54:44

and write some Python code.