How will you feel when you're 20 years into the job? In today's episode we talk to the author of the "The Quick Python Book," and Chair Person of the Python Software Foundation, Naomi Ceder. In this Part 1 of our interview with Naomi, we talk about how she got started with Python.
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How will you feel when you are 20 years into the job? In today's episode, we talked with Naomi Seder. We asked her exactly those questions. Naomi is the author of the Quick Python book and has also been the chairperson of the Python Software Foundation. I'm really excited. My name is Jonathan Cottrell. You're listening to Developer Tea. My goal on the show is to help driven developers like you find clarity, perspective, and purpose in their careers. Let's get straight into the interview with Naomi Seder. Naomi, I'm so happy to have you on Developer Tea today. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you. It's my pleasure to be here. For people who haven't encountered your work yet, for example, my background before I came to Python, actually, I was a Ruby developer. There's lots of JavaScript developers and plenty of... At least, you may have heard of these players into the show. Can you kind of introduce yourself and give just a little bit of background about the things that you care about and the work that you do? Well, sure. I have been doing Python for nearly 20 years now. I actually learned Python from Guido van Rossum, the creator at a Linux world in San Francisco in 2001, and have been active in the Python community ever since. I've been to all the PyCons, helped organize the PyCons, helped create things like poster session and sprint seminars and education summit, and most recently our Spanish language track at PyCon. So I've been doing all of that stuff for a while. Also, I've been involved with the Python Software Foundation from 2015 until... Until the end of June, this past June, I was on the board of trustees for the Python Software Foundation and I was chair of the board the past three years. Since then, I've stepped aside because I think it's very good for a volunteer-based open organization to be able to transition leaders. At the same time, I've taken on the pl plension of the evolution of evolution and evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution been speaking quite a bit. Over the past few years, I have improved my Spanish enough that I can now speak in Spanish. So between the Spanish talks and the English talks, I've been pretty busy talking both about community in the wild times of COVID-19, as well as some various things involving the ins and outs of the Python language. And what else? I guess by day, I lead a small team of developers that does pricing and competitive intelligence for Dick Blick Art Materials. So if you're in the US and you or anyone you know does art, you probably buy things from us. That's a good thing. So I guess that's kind of where I'm at. I'm also, I guess I should, since they brought us together, I should mention my publisher. I'm the author of the Quick Python book, which is now in its third edition, which is intended to help bring programmers from other languages. So all of those Ruby and JavaScript developers out there, if you need to go to Python, you can consider looking at the Quick Python book. How's that for a link? I think that's an excellent introduction and a hand reach out to those communities for sure. And you mentioned that you, you talk about community and that speaking and teaching is a huge part of what you do these days. I'm curious, you know, of course, you're still actively involved with leading a group of developers directly, but in a way, speaking is leading a larger community of developers, maybe not as directly, but in kind of an abstract, sense you're, you're leading larger communities in that particular way. What do you think is most rewarding about that process about speaking and teaching to other people? That's a good question. I started my professional life as a teacher. Actually, weirdly enough, I have a PhD in classics. So I was actually a Latin and ancient Greek teacher. And then as I became more interested in technology, I switched as I, as I say, to other funny languages rather than those funny languages. I switched to funny languages like Pascal and C and ultimately Python. But so I guess teaching has always been kind of part of what I do. And I think we all like to be able to have an effective, effective, effective, effective, effective, effective, effective, effective, effective, effective, effective, effective, effective, effective, effective, effective, effective, You know, it's really, it's hard to describe the feeling you get from hearing those things. But also just in person when you see the light go on and people understand something in the moment, that's a powerful reward for me, I think, for a lot of people. So, yeah, I guess, I don't know. People have always made this kind of contrast. I know when I switched from teaching to being in more the professional corporate environment, people would always sort of say, oh, but you're a teacher. And to me, I don't understand what that means. Leading my team is teaching. Yeah, that's interesting because it seems to me that some of the people that I kind of admire and want to be most like, they view teaching as just kind of a natural part. Of practice. It's all kind of the same ball of wax, if you will. And that's, I aspire to that myself. I want to make teaching a regular part of my career and a part of my life. What would you recommend to somebody? Rewind yourself, if you can, back to 2001. To someone who's that early in their career, and I guess that's probably mid-career for you if you had already been learning. C and Pascal and Latin and Greek, for that matter. But what would you tell someone who's saying, I want to be more or less, I want to be like Naomi. I want to eventually be teaching people and speaking in front of people. But I don't know what the pathway is. When am I allowed to speak in front of a group of people? And I think I know at least part of the answer to that particular question. But what would you tell somebody who's in that seat right now? If they aspire to teach? Teach more? Well, I think there are plenty of opportunities. And I think you can pretty much start at any time with what you know. I think people who are good at teaching are well aware of the things that they don't know. And they don't try to teach more than they know, if you know what I mean. So I know that some people may be. They feel, oh, well, I need to have this amount of knowledge. Or I need to have degree X. Or I need to have this thing. And I think really the sincere desire to help people is one of the big things there. If you feel that you want to do it, then by all means do it. It's the same as with writing. It's the same as with a lot of things. The best way to get started is to get started. Maybe small. Maybe it's helping out. Maybe it's starting a community event. Maybe it's answering questions in an online community. Maybe it's volunteering to assist at a meetup or something. There are lots of ways that you can get started. As long as you're neither too precious about what the title is. People want to help, but maybe they're not going to say, oh, so-and-so is the wonderful teacher, whatever. I mean, you need to jump in and do it. Yeah. That's great. Good advice. I think one of the things I've learned and I've observed with people that I've encountered that have become really great teachers, when I talk to them in person, a lot of the time what they'll tell me is, I barely knew the thing I was teaching or I just learned the thing that I taught. It wasn't something that I had some extraordinary amount of experience with. I learned it as I was writing the lessons. Right. More or less. And I think that's a misconception. A common misconception is that teachers are teaching something like 20% of their capacity, when really they might be at the edge of their capacity. And they're teaching you as they are learning. They're saying, hey, look, I just forged this pathway for myself. Exactly. Perhaps you can follow the same pathway. Exactly. People who have just learned are usually inspired. In some ways, better able to teach people who are just starting in the same place. So for somebody who's been doing, for example, Python, but anything for 10 years, they have a much harder time remembering what the pitfalls were. Yes. So, you know, for me, I've done Python for 20 years. I can offset that by the fact that I did have, you know, 20 years teaching experience. So I do know the kinds of things that people, people will struggle with. But in terms of remembering my struggles, then when I started, I can remember that I struggled. I cannot remember exactly the things that made it suddenly become clear that, you know, that that's something that is, is too far in the past. So a lot of people who are experienced will actually have a harder time teaching beginners than, than somebody who has just gotten through it. It's kind of, that's a really interesting distinction. You just made a really interesting distinction. You just made there. You can remember that you struggled. So you have kind of like an emotional empathy, but you don't necessarily have a tactical empathy for the specific struggle. Right, right, right. And I mean, there may well be people who have conveniently forgotten they struggle at all. I think those would probably be horrible at teaching beginners, but I mean, you know. Or people who have the distorted view that they didn't struggle at all, right? Yes, yes, yes, yes. That's great. So, so Python for 20 years, that's a long time to invest in a singular direction. It seems very focused. And I wonder, I have, I have a couple of questions about that. Of course you can't predict the future and you can do your best to say, I think this has a promising future, but if you're picking a language in 2001, you know, Python is still relatively young. I think it was probably six years old at the time. Is that right? It's about six years. I think it was. It would have been about 10 years old then. Okay. But it was very tiny. So it's a bit older than the others. Very tiny. What's that? Very tiny. It was very tiny. Yes. At Linux World where I went to Guido's workshops, there were, I think there were 11,000 people at Linux World that year. And I know the more experienced established Python types wondered if there'd be enough of them to make it worth going out for a beer. So it was not very popular. And of course it's exciting. It's exciting. It's exciting. It's exciting. It's exciting. It's exciting. It's exciting. It's exciting. It's exciting. At Linux World, evolution has slowed evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution I've thought a little bit about this general question. And to be honest, I do recall thinking after I'd done Python for a few years that it was really likely that something else was going to come along that was better, more interesting, more whatever. And I would probably switch to another language. And it never happened. I mean, clearly there are other things that you do along the way. So, for example, database technologies have evolved and emerged. So there are different flavors of things that you can do with databases. So that's one thing you can do, you know, web, managing things in the cloud. There are lots of different areas. There are lots of different areas around that. I think part of it was that Python was flexible enough to do all of the things I wanted to do. But I think also it's just that through a series of happy accidents, I think I would say, Python has continued to kind of move. And in effect, I don't want to say keep up with me, keep ahead of me. I suppose. So that it's always kind of been there for the next thing that I was interested in doing. I, you know, when I switched to being a developer full time, we started using AWS. And it was a great way to help automate the management of that. By then, Django was maturing. And I was working in an e-commerce platform that was based on Django. So we could do that. You know, those things just kind of happened. And then now, of course. With the rise of data science. And I do a certain amount of not data science, but data engineering. You know, all of the things that data science needs in order to do their things. So that has been part of the reason why that's happened, I think. Python really has just kind of seemed to catch one wave after another. And, you know, having been involved a little bit in the leadership of Python. I wish I could. I wish I could. I wish I could. I wish I could. I wish I could. I wish I could. I wish I could. I wish I could. I wish I could. I wish I could. I wish I could. I wish I could. I wish I could. I wish I could. I wish I could. But I don't think even Guido would claim credit for this. It's just been, you know, it's a good language, certainly. But there are other good languages. It just seems to have been capable and picked up at the right time to pick the next wave. So I think that's part of it. So, yeah, I think the other thing that has helped keep me around, too, though, has been the continuing development of Python's community. It's something that. from Guido on to everybody else involved with Python. Everybody values and is intentional about fostering community. And not all open source communities have that going for them all the time. So I think that's been a plus. Yeah, it's interesting. I agree with the community aspect, although I haven't been a part of the Python community for long enough to, I guess, make an authoritative comment. So I'm leaning a bit on your experience and the stories that I've heard from others. But most of the people I talk to who buy into a language, they quickly move past the idiosyncrasies of the language. And I always find this interesting because it's very clear that the decisions we make about the technology we use often are only very, maybe not very, but maybe half of those decisions are about, I don't know, the implementation detail. The other half is something else entirely. It's the community that's laid on top of that. Or maybe it's, like you said, the adoption in particular practices and that kind of thing. And so it's always interesting to me because I think our perception is that it's something like 90% of the implementation is what we, we think intuitively that we're going to care about. We go and we look at samples of the code and we think, could I imagine kind of living in this world every day in my editor? But really the things that end up mattering for people who buy in go beyond that. Yeah, I think that's true. Can you do with it what you need to do? I think the other thing too is having a community of practice, I guess I would say. You know, clearly you could do pretty much any kind of function with pretty much any computer language, yet doing it with something that is completely unusual is probably not going to make much sense. You will have no one else to go to for help problem solving. And of course, if you are a professional, then, you have experience that doesn't mean anything to most other places you might work. So, you know, I think, I think those things matter quite a bit. It depends. It depends upon the person of course, but yeah. The obscure expert. It is definitely a phenomenon that I think a lot of engineers are familiar with because we'll have something that we're really good at that nobody around us at least cares about. Um, and not that they don't care about us, or that they don't care about our story, but that it just doesn't translate to authority to them, right? It doesn't really, it doesn't matter in a practical sense to what they're doing. So I'd like to ask you a question about, uh, maybe your pathway, your, your career. And specifically, you know, this is maybe a more personal question. I'd like for you to kind of share with us the, uh, an important inflection point, or two in your career, a moment where you thought, okay, this is, this is like, uh, um, a turning point. Maybe the moment that you decided to switch from teaching, uh, uh, uh, Greek and Latin and learn the other strange languages. Right. Um, but what is a moment that you would say this is a, a turning point and inflection point in my career? Um, well, I mean, I, I think that's probably, I think that's probably the most important thing that I've ever done in my life. I think that's probably, that's probably one of them. Um, actually I was, um, I was teaching at an Anglo American school in Athens, Greece. Um, uh, when I really started, um, learning programming, that was, that was an Apple soft basic, uh, and then 65 Oh two, uh, assembler. Uh, but I found the, the ability to, to make the computer do things. And whatever, um, was just, um, both an intriguing puzzle and also sort of enabling and interesting and something that I wanted to do. Uh, and then shortly after that, I ended up at a school in Indiana where I was, uh, teaching Latin. And, um, we had, the teachers had to fill out for report cards, uh, four layer NCR forms, and you would peel off one layer per quarter until you got to the bottom. And that was the final report. And then you had to do the final grade. And of course you couldn't read the first quarters information anymore. Uh, and it was just a royal pain to do those. So I ended up coming up with a system where I could, could basically put my, my comments into a word processor and do a mail merge and then print them out. And, um, the other teachers thought this was so cool that I soon had, I don't know, it was like six, seven, eight users who were, were using this thing as well. And, um, I ended up fixing the computers as the Latin teacher because it was just interesting that you could do this and you could figure things out. Uh, so yeah, eventually, um, the headmaster told me, you know, really, we could probably find another Latin teacher, but you're doing some other stuff that is really, um, more, more valuable. So why don't you just do that full time? So I think that was when I, I switched my mindset from, this is something I do in addition to this is something, that I really want to do. And I, I spent a lot more time, um, studying it, um, and, um, you know, sort of extending what I could do then. Um, I wrote that school student information system, um, back in, in 2002, I guess. And I, I believe it ran until 2015, even though I'd left a few years before. So I figured that's not a bad run. Yeah. Yeah. So, I think, um, I think the other key point for me is something that, um, presumably will, will maybe not be as familiar to most of your users, but, or to listeners, but that's, uh, when in, uh, the process sort of started around 2010, but that's when I decided to deal with, um, with being transgender and to transition. And, um, that was pretty frightening in that, um, evolution, is that you are likely to lose everything if you were to do something so foolish. And time even, right? Yes, yes, yes. I mean, this was, I think I beat, like, I beat Caitlyn Jenner, I beat whatever. I mean, it wasn't really much of a thing then. Yeah. That actually, I think, was what led to, as I look back on it, what led to me being more active and more visible, because when I decided to do that, I decided there was no way I was going to lie about it. There's no way I was going to hide about it. I was going to meet it head on and go out in the public. And if people hated me, fine. And in fact, the vast, vast, vast majority of people were quite kind and supportive, in fact. And I think that liberation of being able to think about the things that interested me, rather than having to struggle with this dual identity thing, which is, for somebody who hasn't been there, it's next to impossible to explain. But I think that sort of led to a, I don't know, a burst of energy or something that I think is sort of what eventually led to me being on the board of the PSF and doing lots of other things. I think once you make it through that, you don't have a whole hell of a lot of fear left. I guess maybe I would say that. You face probably the scariest dragon that you would face in kind of figuring out how to navigate that internal. Right. I would imagine it feels like a battle. Obviously, I haven't been there myself. But I think it's so interesting that this is such an, you know, and I think, you know, your journey is an example that really underscores the idea that our identities are so much. A part of our work. Absolutely. And they interchange with our work. They can either serve us or they can. When I say our identity, our identity, if we can accept ourselves, it can serve our work. But if we're struggling to accept our own experience or if we're struggling to kind of resolve those internal issues, then that's going to absolutely display in the end. And that's going to be external. And I think that's so interesting. I love the idea that you kind of used these forcing functions in a way to say, you know what, I'm going to schedule, you know, a bunch of talks. And here I am, you know, and there's there's a moment where you are saying, well, either I'm going to do these talks and everybody's going to be okay with me or they're not. But I'm going to do the talks either way. Right. Is that kind of how it felt? That I think is fair. Yeah. Mm hmm. That's such an. It's such a. It's such a moving story. I know there are people who are listening to this show who are probably struggling with something similar. Well, something similar. But what I found, actually, because I've talked about this in various things quite a bit, I've found that there are people it may not be that issue exactly. But the issue of some aspect of. Of identity, as you say. Yeah. Of identity. Yeah. And it does seem to resonate with with people. Right. I was sort of surprised that, you know, you're clearly not transgender. Why are you. But no, there are many, many ways in which you can look at that and say, well, no, that's actually something that that does have a bearing. Absolutely. I mean, I think, you know, there's it's anything really where we have some expectation of who we are. Mm hmm. That is either put on to us or maybe an expectation that we put on ourselves maybe earlier in life, for example, and I didn't. Right. That we that we were more willing to accept earlier, but not so much later. Simple examples of this might be changing our belief structure, religious belief, political belief, whatever. Could be. Could be. And and coming to terms with those kinds of changes can even cause this. Internal struggle. Absolutely. Or or maybe deciding that a previous career direction is not really what you want to do after all. You know, it's it's scary to reinvent yourself even even on that scale. You know, and but yet it can be an enormous and enormous burden if you're if you're doing something that you don't really think is you. And then that's. It's just very tiring. Yeah, it's amazing. And I don't think that the average person would think, oh, this is going to have these grand implications on my career or on my professional growth. That's all sidelined. It's all parallel to these other things. I don't know. I just don't buy that. I don't think that's true. Yeah. No. I mean, I think in in LGBT circles, they they have a lot of. They have a lot of. I mean, in LGBT circles, they they have this phrase of bringing your whole self to work, which has almost become kind of a truism. But the the the kernel of truth there is is really significant. If you're not worrying about those other things and you can truly get into whatever it is that you're you're getting into, it does make a huge difference. I agree. I mean, there's there's some interesting research even at the most kind of superficial layer on this. I mean, I. layer on on this kind of thing for example if you have a place in your house right that is cluttered okay let's say um you you know that your i don't know your closet has has clothes all over it on the floor um and obviously this varies from one person to the next because some people don't see that as cluttered but if you are uncomfortable with that place for some reason you want it to be cleaner but you haven't had the time or whatever the the research that like i said superficial research shows that you're not as able to focus until you go and get that done right and so it's kind of this it's it's kind of an interesting um signifier that our minds are working on things beyond what we're you know cognitively aware of of course they are right of course we have to be able to do that but if that's true on a large scale imagine how much more your brain is doing double duty right you're you're not able to really put like you said put your whole self into it because your your mind is still dealing with this massive conflict that you're sitting right in the middle of every day right a huge thank you to naomi for joining me on today's episode of developer t and you can catch the second part of this interview subscribing on whatever podcasting app you're currently using thank you so much for listening to this show this show wouldn't exist if you weren't here listening to it and one of the best ways you can help us continue doing what we do here is by leaving a review in itunes or in whatever platform you use this helps other engineers like you find the show and decide to listen to it but it also helps us know what kinds of content are resonating best with this community thank you so much for listening this episode and every other episode of developer t can be can be found on spec.fm as well as on any platform or podcasting app that you currently use today's episode was produced by sarah jackson my name is jonathan cutrell and until next time enjoy your tea