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EuroPython 202317 / 141
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00:00
AuthorizationLattice (order)Adventure gameBoom (sailing)Software developerSeries (mathematics)MereologyProjective planeWritingReading (process)BitBroadcasting (networking)Goodness of fitMultiplication signSpring (hydrology)Computer animation
03:07
Coma BerenicesCodeLecture/Conference
03:45
Coma BerenicesMultiplication signPattern languageWeb 2.0Flow separationLecture/Conference
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Coma BerenicesSet (mathematics)AreaComputer multitaskingComputer programMusical ensembleInstance (computer science)Compact CassetteWeb 2.0CASE <Informatik>Video gameText editorStack (abstract data type)Computer animationSource code
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Coma BerenicesMultiplication signCurveCodeLecture/Conference
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Coma BerenicesMereologyGodSource codeMultiplication signComputer animationLecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
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Coma BerenicesRight angleLevel (video gaming)CodeDependent and independent variablesProgrammer (hardware)Video game1 (number)Programming languageInstance (computer science)Multiplication signTerm (mathematics)Bit rateLecture/Conference
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System programmingFood energyComa BerenicesMachine codeSpeicheradresseHexagonMultiplication signSource codeAuthorizationLecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
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Coma BerenicesAuthorizationComputer programmingNeuroinformatikArithmetic meanProgrammer (hardware)PRINCE2Metropolitan area networkSelf-organizationMultiplication signCodeFreewareComputer animationLecture/Conference
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CodeComputer programming
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Coma BerenicesLevel (video gaming)Series (mathematics)SubgroupCodeMetropolitan area networkSymmetric matrixComputer architecturePoint (geometry)Queue (abstract data type)Social classTable (information)Programmer (hardware)Inheritance (object-oriented programming)InternetworkingComputer programmingDijkstra's algorithmBitDependent and independent variablesEvent horizonCentralizer and normalizerProfil (magazine)WordSpacetimeOrder (biology)Chemical equationMultiplication signGroup actionWeb-DesignerSoftware developerCartesian coordinate systemVirtual machineCategory of beingProgramming languageBoole, GeorgePresentation of a groupConnected spaceFlow separationFormal languageCollisionKey (cryptography)Lecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
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Coma BerenicesColor managementView (database)NumberGroup actionArithmetic meanWebsiteSpeciesPiCausalityMathematical singularitySoftware development kitRandomizationFigurate numberPattern recognitionDifferent (Kate Ryan album)Auditory maskingMobile WebSystem callArmTelecommunicationMedianDenial-of-service attackTerm (mathematics)Moore's lawAreaLengthCodeMusical ensembleSpherical capSemiconductor memoryNeuroinformatikSurface of revolutionWeb-DesignerProgrammer (hardware)DemosceneLimit (category theory)Computer-assisted translationMoment (mathematics)Dependent and independent variablesField (computer science)TouchscreenMultiplication signLevel (video gaming)HypermediaMultiplicationVideoconferencingLipschitz-StetigkeitLecture/Conference
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Food energyComa BerenicesLecture/Conference
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Point (geometry)Lecture/Conference
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Mixed realityCollisionMultiplication signLevel (video gaming)Musical ensembleInstance (computer science)Formal languageCodeMereologyInheritance (object-oriented programming)Computer architectureQuicksortProgrammer (hardware)Data conversionBuildingExtension (kinesiology)Term (mathematics)BitDependent and independent variablesOnline help
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Formal languageProcess (computing)Open sourceCodeOpen setSoftware developerEndliche ModelltheorieSoftware maintenanceCore dumpBitMusical ensembleTheoryLecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
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Open sourceBitSelf-organizationSoftwareSeries (mathematics)Touch typingMereologyFilm editingOnline helpLecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
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Multiplication signSoftware developerMechanism designTouchscreenOnline helpWave packetCore dumpLecture/Conference
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Endliche ModelltheorieFilm editingOpen sourceProjective planeLecture/ConferenceMeeting/Interview
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Projective planeOpen sourceStorage area networkDifferent (Kate Ryan album)MathematicsCore dumpCodeSelf-organizationInformationMultiplication signCoordinate systemSoftware developerLecture/Conference
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BitMoment (mathematics)Video gameMathematicsType theoryRight angleLecture/Conference
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KognitionswissenschaftCodeNeuroinformatikPhysical systemRight angleBitLinearizationSoftware testing2 (number)SequenceSoftwareLogicPort scannerDifferent (Kate Ryan album)Programmer (hardware)QuicksortObservational studySerial portMultiplication signMathematicsMIDIVideo gameMeeting/Interview
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Moment (mathematics)Multiplication signComputer programmingLogicRight angleLecture/Conference
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DecimalCodeWebsiteLecture/Conference
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WebsiteAuthorizationAreaFigurate numberLogical constantMultiplication signFerry CorstenRoundness (object)Lecture/ConferenceComputer animation
Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:04
How are you all doing? Had a good afternoon? Oh, come on, you can do better than that. Have you had a good afternoon? Okay. I'm Nicholas, and I am delighted to be able to introduce to you my friend, Andrew Smith.
00:22
A little bit about Andrew, who's going to be our final keynoter of the day. Andrew is an award-winning international best-selling author and broadcaster. His writing credits include Melody Maker, The Economist, The Face, The Times, The Guardian, and on and on and on and on and on, like that. He's also written and presented documentaries for BBC TV and radio.
00:46
And his first book, Moondust, which dealt with what did the Apollo astronauts do once they landed, that book became an international bestseller. And The Times described it as one of the 100 best books of the decade.
01:04
And in fact, Ziggy Stardust himself, David Bowie, described it as one of his favorite reads. His next book, Totally Wired, was about the dot-com boom and bust at the beginning of this century. That makes me feel very old, because I remember when that happened.
01:21
And that is currently in development as a Ben Stiller-directed TV series starring the Academy Award-nominated actor Jonah Hill. Now Andrew's style of journalism could be, well, what is it, gonzo journalism is sometimes how it's described. And for those of you who are not familiar with gonzo journalism, it's where the actual
01:42
author of the piece is a part of the piece itself. So Andrew doesn't just describe what the Apollo astronauts do or did after they splashed down in the early 70s. It's also the story about, well, how do you go about meeting Neil Armstrong? And what do you say when you meet Buzz Aldrin, who has, well, I'll never forget what you
02:02
wrote about Buzz Aldrin's shorts. It's very funny, and you'll just have to read the book to find out. So Andrew's next project has been to understand the impact of technology on our society and culture. And in that gonzo sense, he's been learning Python and participating in our community, which
02:25
is how I know him, as well as several other people here. And the book that he's written is called The Devil in the Stack, and it's gonna be published in the spring, and it features all of us, the Python community, as a big part of it. And what he'll do today is just share how we appear to everybody else and his findings
02:47
and what it feels like to become a member of our wonderful community. And later, after Andrew's spoken a bit, I'll join Andrew for a fireside chat, hence the bean bags, to explore his adventures further.
03:02
So without further ado, please welcome Andrew Smith. Thank you. Thank you for being here. It's not often that you get to deliver a keynote at a conference devoted to a particular
03:23
activity, knowing that you're probably the worst person in the room at that activity. And Nicholas is sitting there, because he's seen my code. He's thinking, did you say probably? But seriously, thanks for having me.
03:40
I'm so honored and thrilled to be here. When I was thinking about how to explain what brought me here, I realized for the first time that the genesis, the beginnings of my books tend to follow a pattern.
04:05
Typically, I'm exposed to something I don't understand, which raises questions I don't know how to answer. And if several years on, I'm still thinking about those questions, I figure it's triggered something important.
04:21
With Totally Wired, the question was, who killed Web 1.0? The answer to which is not what you think. With Moondust, there was the question of why so many of the lunar astronauts followed such strange and unexpected paths on returning to Earth.
04:40
And also the big one, which Nicholas mentioned. Where do you go after you've been to the moon? Is the whole rest of your life just going to be one huge anticlimax? If I've chosen my subject well, or if it's chosen me well, more often, I tend to find that my favorite discoveries take me by surprise.
05:02
Often they're small things. With this one, for instance, there was the fact that each of the lunar astronauts was allowed to take one cassette tape of music to the moon with them. And that Neil Armstrong, the first person to land and set foot on the moon, had chosen to take an album of theremin music with him, which sounds like this.
05:40
Which probably tells you something about Neil Armstrong's sense of humor as much as anything else. Or he thought he'd have something on hand in case he met any Martians on the way. There's always that as well. Now this new book contains more such surprises, I think, than all the rest of my work put together. Devil in the Stack has its origins, funnily enough, in Bitcoin.
06:05
Back in 2012, when I became aware of it, I did what I often do when I want to know, when I want to learn about something, and I just called some magazine editors and said, can I write about this? And of course, they had no idea what I was talking about.
06:21
And actually, the blockchain was a steep learning curve for me at that time, too. But what it did do was bring me into close contact for the first time with coders and code. And as the coders described their world, the world they inhabited, it seemed to open out
06:41
into this rich, fascinating kind of cosmos. I think of it as a microcosmos often. Just this huge act of invention, which almost no one outside the industry or the profession really understood. At the time, I filed it away as something interesting and just got on with the rest of the stuff I was doing.
07:03
Then came 2016, the year of what? And oh, God, no. And of course, part of me thought he knew why these things were happening.
07:21
Earlier that year, we've missed one? Yeah, oh, God, no. There's the oh, God, no. A part of me thought he knew why these things were happening. It was because earlier that year, David Bowie had died, and he was no longer here to protect us.
07:42
But at the same time, I had noticed that computer code was flowing into the world at an ever-increasing rate. And while most of it was doing things we liked and some of it was doing extraordinary things that we loved, it was also throwing up some problems that we hadn't foreseen as new technologies tend to.
08:01
And it suddenly seemed to me that people like myself, lay people, needed to start paying attention to this and trying to understand it so that we could participate in the discussions that were going to be happening around what we wanted our code to do and not do. Just leaving it to the people who make the code, leaving the responsibility fully
08:23
with them seems unfair. I still believe that. Now, the honest way it seemed to me to try and get that knowledge was to learn to code myself, to go in and try and climb right inside it.
08:42
Now if you'd asked me at any time in the first six months that I was doing this, Andrew, this thing that you're doing, is it a good idea? I would have said, mate, this is the worst idea I've ever had. In fact, it might be the worst idea anyone's ever had, apart from Flava Gin,
09:02
which that's a pretty bad idea. But I mean, if Guido van Rossum had got bored with programming languages and decided to devote the rest of his life to designing really silly things for people to do, this is exactly the kind of thing he might have come up with for me. I found it very difficult. I made all the usual mistakes at first and actually I think maybe came up with a few new ones.
09:26
For instance, when I noticed programmers talking about low level and high level, I assumed that they meant these terms in the way that the entire rest of the world does, and that the humble and sensible place to start would be at the lowest possible level.
09:50
Only some weeks into wrestling with machine code and trying to figure out how hexadecimal memory addresses get generated, did someone take pity on me and say, Andrew,
10:02
you don't really need to know that. So, relieved, I turned to JavaScript, which was worse. But actually, my visceral aversion to JavaScript in the first place took me to some interesting places.
10:21
My fear at the time, and Nicholas will probably remember this, is that there is a kind of coding mind that you had to have. I suppose it's related to the 10x idea, that there's a coding mind and you need to have that to be able to do this well. But when I contacted Gerald Weinberg, the author of the classic,
10:46
The Psychology of Computer Programming, he strongly disagreed with me. And what he said was, a computer is like a mirror of your mind that brightly reflects all your poorest thinking.
11:01
To become a better programmer, you have to look in that mirror with clear eyes and see what it's telling you about yourself. Well, this was interesting to me because suddenly my struggles had meaning. Everyone's struggles had meaning when they're trying to learn. And about the same time, I spoke with Quincy Larson of Free Code Camp,
11:27
which he's a prince of a man and I think that's an amazing organization. And he told me another really important truth about the way coders think and live. He said, the thing that gets lost, and which I think is important to know,
11:42
is that programming is never easy. You're never doing the same thing twice because code is infinitely reproducible. So if you've already solved a problem and you encounter it again, you just use your old solution. This means that by definition, you're always on this frontier where you're out of your depth.
12:02
And one of the things you have to learn is to accept that feeling of being constantly wrong and not knowing. And actually, for me, that was kind of life-changing. A little bit later, I spoke to a very distinguished programmer who I met at PyCon, in fact, and I asked him,
12:23
does it ever get any easier? And he said, no, it never does, because as you get better, you're faced with more difficult problems. But he said, you learn to enjoy the difficulty. And even the docs can come to seem interesting.
12:42
Actually, that same programmer gave me one of my favorite quotes from the book when he said that working with Python was like coming home to a puppy. But at the time, it seemed impossible to me that I could ever learn to enjoy those difficult things. But over several years living and working with coders
13:03
in the San Francisco Bay Area, I found that I could and did. I even got into a musical language called Super Collider, which I don't know if anyone here has used it, but we have some hands at the back, so you know it's like the Da Vinci Code of programming languages.
13:22
But even so, I learned to love it with all my heart because of the things we could do together. And I think that shows how this ostensibly technical, highly rational, ultra-rational activity is also highly emotional.
13:44
And I think we do ourselves and the world we're encoding a disservice by failing to acknowledge and account for that. But the thing that changed the key to all this, the thing that made it possible, was when during my darkest hour, like towards the beginning,
14:08
a wise C++ engineer hearing about my woes, chuckled and said, you should talk to my friend Nicholas about Python.
14:22
And that not only brought a great, joyful friendship, but also brought me into close contact with the community that would form the North Star of the book that I was writing. Now in the second half of this presentation,
14:42
as Nicholas mentioned, we're going to unpack some of the things that I found and did. And we may not have time for, how can I put this, learning to program and actually programming are so absorbing as activities
15:00
that we often don't get to think about the shoulders, the giant shoulders we're standing on. We probably won't get to talk much about the history, but if anyone wants to stop me in the hallway later on today or tomorrow, and ask me about the connection between George Boole, surely one of the most extraordinary human beings
15:21
who's ever lived, between George Boole and Sherlock Holmes, or Alan Turing and James Bond, or to know about the clash between the Californian, one of the father's parents of the internet, Douglas Engelbart, and the Dutch master, Ekstra Dijkstra,
15:42
that occurred at a conference in Newcastle in England in 1973, and prefigured so many of the discussions that were debates that we're just starting to really have now, as though these giant minds could see 50 years into the future. Again, just come and talk to me. But before we sit down and unpack a little bit more,
16:03
we thought it might be interesting just to read you a little passage from the book. This is about that turning point, which was my first PyCon in Cleveland in 2018. You're the first people to hear this. I haven't read this anywhere else.
16:21
And I had to steal my wife's reading classes in order to be able to do this. She's probably at home turning the house upside down in New York. Where did I put those things? My most revealing glimpse into the code culture of PyCon
16:42
doesn't involve code. With an eye to imbalances in the trade, an ever-present conference theme is inclusivity. Central to this effort is a high-profile and well-supported group called PyLadies, whose annual fundraising auction bash takes place tonight
17:00
at the convention center Hilton. I wondered what kicking back would look like here, and this is my chance to see. With no idea what to expect, I arrive early to find the ballroom filling fast. Seeing no one of my brief acquaintance, I head for a near-empty table at the far end of the space,
17:21
where I meet Barry, a DC web developer and PyCon newbie like me. Whose first career as an orchestral percussionist was swapped for linguistics and hence code. Three further arrivals to our table work for Amazon in Seattle and are here to keep abreast of developments in this year's Buzz application, machine learning,
17:42
which Python is shaping to dominate. One of this triumvirate originate... We fetch drinks and join the already long queue for sliders and salad before it gets longer. Returning to our table to find it a little fuller and a lot quirkier.
18:02
Along with the quartet I already know, a still empty seat is flanked by two new men who could be any age at all, who stare at the food they eat in silence, occasionally gazing toward the stage as if something only they can see is happening there. Presently a third man I take to be a companion
18:20
glides into the still empty seat, carrying a plate on which four rigidly symmetrical bunless sliders are arranged under architectural sheets of ketchup, mayo and mustard, topped by a canopy of cheese you could set the level of a house by. For the remainder of an otherwise revelrous evening, none of this subgroup utter a word, betray an emotion
18:41
or provide any evidence they know the rest of us are present at all. Were they to blink and find themselves on a beach in Cancun or in space being chased by Klingons, there is no reason to believe their responses would be different. What to do? In the event, I follow the example of the Pythonauts around me who remain serenely unfazed.
19:02
You'll get used to it, Nicholas grins, why not recount the scene later? And I do. Lifting eyes to the room, I take in the full breadth of humanity on view, expressed in an unanticipated multiplicity of subcultures. There were the geezers in Hawaiian shirts
19:20
in icy Cleveland, and young techie pros in corporate hoodies or t-shirts, maybe a promo baseball cap. The company guys in indigo jeans and jackets. Tonight, many pie ladies rock, ironic, I think, 1950s frocks against a sub-tribe of tattooed, shock-haired Euro cyberpunks who look like a different species in here,
19:43
and hipsters who could be lighting techs for Arcade Fire or at least Maroon 5. In this company, there is always at least one portly code vet in Victorian explorer garb, while beards run the gamut from Brooklyn dandy to downed Pacific theater fighter pilot who doesn't know the war ended 30 years ago.
20:03
Never far from view is a group I come to think of as the code freaks, meaning freak in the Frank Zappa and the mothers rather than Elon Musk sense. Typically older and relatively unisex, often vets of the first public-facing, counterculture-inspired computing revolution of the 1960s, 70s, 80s,
20:21
who dress with a wizardly flamboyance exemplified by, but not limited to, long leather coats and big black hats and t-shirts advertising obscure goth or metal or psychedelic bands. It strikes me that while the auction crowd doesn't look diverse in terms of our usual markers, especially race,
20:40
it is by a Martian mile the most neurologically disparate group I have ever encountered. For the first time, this strikes me as interesting, and in a curious way I can't quite explain yet, precious. Bidding starts with a much-coveted Black Panther goodie bag. Our host group of pie ladies
21:00
approaches auctioneering as stand-up, lending a knockabout fizz to proceedings as they shoe prices through 16, 32, 64 dollars, numbers corresponding to the standard base six increments of computer memory. T-shirts reading, I'm not a wizard. Hooley, electronic frontier foundation, and just shut up about Bitcoin, follow.
21:22
Usually, usefully coders are well remunerated with the US Bureau of Labor Statistics pegging domestic median pay at 84k as we sit here. So items fetch far higher prices than they would at a convention of say, to take a random example, writers. Although this figure
21:41
masks large disparities between mobile or web developers at the low end and data science or data scientists or site reliability engineers at the high. Bidders from the big tech co's who've come with cash to spend in support of the cause lift values further. A signed sketch of Gido goes for 600 bucks
22:01
with a custom painted Python Fender guitar and pre-assembled Raspberry Pi theremin kit still to show. The highlight for me comes from far out of the blue though. When towards the end of proceedings, one of the pie ladies team presents an offering of her own.
22:22
As I watch, I don't know much about Lynn Root beyond the fact that she's young, a programmer and active within pie ladies. That she retreats to the open backstage area in evident anxiety as a colleague explains the next lot's provenance. The story we hear runs as follows.
22:44
Not long ago, Lynn experienced a code burnout so severe she was forced to withdraw from the fray to recover. Sympathetic nods and grimaces of recognition at this announcement make the room appear to sway like a field of poppies.
23:01
Needing something to keep her from the screen, the young Pythonista took up painting and soon felt the need to do it every day, appreciating the stillness and singularity she found at the easel. When the other women begged her to paint something for the auction, she was aghast at the thought. Her painting had meant so very much to her personally.
23:23
But what could it mean to anyone else? And as the story unfolds and the room goes quiet, Lynn recoils at the back and is comforted by a friend. I can see she is shaking. Relentless encouragement persuaded her to proffer a watercolor of her cats
23:42
which is now brought to the front of the stage. The effervescent auctioneer, a friend and fellow pie lady, knows this could backfire. She solicits a bid of 16 dollars to a silence you could spread on a slider. There is a further pause as people look around.
24:02
Lynn looks down. And a dozen hands fly up. I breathe again. The painting won't go unsold. So the auctioneer suggests 32 dollars. Now two dozen hands. 64 bucks. More hands. 128. Leaping arms everywhere. 256. 512.
24:20
And as the bids continue to escalate in a flurry of call and response, my own attention is drawn away from the happy auctioneer and beaming audience. And I become transfixed by a sight that would be easy to miss. Of Lynn at the back of the stage. Dissolving into tears and then floods of tears
24:41
with the visceral release of a cliff crumbling into the sea. Hanging onto a friend for support as the hammer falls simultaneously on the ground. $1410 and the pain that brought her to this moment. And as a raucous cheer goes up, rising and sustaining over the crowd,
25:02
I think this is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. Not just because of Lynn's unfiltered response to such a show of affection and support, but because a room of people she knows and doesn't know conspired to bestow this gift of empathy and catharsis for no better reason than because they could.
25:24
And in a curious way, I feel they've given me something too. Because I'll go away knowing this is a community I want to enter and understand. Not with all the computing power in the world could I foresee where this ultimately will take me.
25:41
Thank you. Wow. Andrew, come join me.
26:02
I feel very emotional. I still feel very emotional about that thing. I only know of one person who was there that night. Naomi Cedar was there. Oh, you were at the auction. Okay, so two. So I'm kind of hoping that they remember it in the same way.
26:23
Yeah, they do. No, I thought that was, when I say that, I thought it was one of the most beautiful things I'd ever seen. I really mean that. I really did. It was just a beautiful thing for that crowd to do for someone. It did really make me think,
26:41
well, as I explained in the passage, it's really true. At that point, I just thought, oh yeah, I want to go further into this. And I really developed quite a deep love for the Python community, which I retain. Yeah. Well, I think that's something that we can all empathize with. Lots of us have a deep amount of love for our community.
27:08
So I want to say, well, why Python? But we know why Python in one sense. But from a technical sense, and this is where you put your coding goggles on or something like that, why Python? Well, for me, strangely, I think it was primarily an aesthetic thing.
27:26
When I looked, I suppose it might be slightly different for me than for a lot of other people coming to code. Because as a writer, I spend a lot of time thinking about syntax and trying to make it elegant and beautiful and concise and clear at the same time.
27:43
And particularly JavaScript, what I went into, it just wasn't that. And I think my response to it was aesthetic. The strange thing being that once I had learned Python to the extent that I have, one never learns all of it. And I'm way down on the totem.
28:02
Low level. Yeah, I'm low level. I'm super low level. But once I had learned Python, a language like JavaScript doesn't bother me anymore. And actually, as I mentioned, Super Collider, which is really messy, I actually love that too. Because trying to make it beautiful and clear
28:23
becomes part of the challenge. And so I understand why people like JavaScript now. It's not a mystery to me at all. I think for me, it wasn't a good place to start. And interestingly, in fact, Naomi is interviewed in the book. And she said something that I thought that really chimes with me
28:44
in terms of my experience with it, saying that while Guido is obviously a gifted programmer, I think precisely what Naomi said was that there are lots of gifted programmers. So that's not so unique.
29:01
But what he brought was a sense of aesthetics. And it's like a classical building that you build good aesthetic foundations and then everything on top of that will. There's a quote in the book from Buckminster Fuller that I like a lot where he says, when I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty.
29:21
I only think of solving the problem. But when I finished, if the solution isn't beautiful, I know it's wrong. And there's another interesting because Guido is obviously also in the book. I went and saw him in Belmont and spent time with him. I do think that the language reflects his personality.
29:40
And there's a really fascinating conversation because I can't help being a kind of arts nerd, humanities nerd before any of this. I can't help but think of the Dutch De Stijl movement, Mondrian and all those people,
30:00
Dutch and Danish, the kind of design elegance that they have. And I sort of see that in there. And I always thought, well, is that me just being a kind of reading things into it and being an arts weenie? But I discovered a talk that Larry Wall of Pearl, designer of Pearl, had given, which is really, really interesting.
30:22
And he's very funny. His talks are like stand-up. But he specifically says that Pearl is designed as a postmodern language. And he contrasts it with Python, a modernist language, which he doesn't like. He thinks it's restrictive. Whereas Pearl admits of anything in the way that postmodern architecture,
30:45
you are allowed to pull from anything. And I personally don't tend to respond terribly well to most postmodern things, I mean, the artist Moby, for instance, or Fat Boy Slim, you would say that they were postmodern because they just take from everything and mix it up.
31:01
And I like that a lot. But it may just be that Python partly appealed to me because it's just the way my particular mind works. A little bit what Gerald Weinberg was saying. So I'm intrigued to know, how did you find the whole, I mean, there's Python, the language, but there's the whole process that we use for developing code, the whole open source thing.
31:21
How did you find that? Well, open source, when you first encounter it, if you're not from the code world, open source, the open source development model just looks like this miracle. And I mean, it's extraordinary. And you look at it and you just think, why can the whole world not be run like this?
31:43
It's just, it's magnificent, you know, in theory. And I still feel like that. I still feel like that. I did also, of course, see a darker side of it, which is that a lot of the maintainers and core developers that I've talked to have had bad experiences with it.
32:02
And I was really introduced to this through an experience you had. And I mean, I don't know if you mind talking about that, but I would like to talk to you a little bit about that. Yeah, okay. I think this is really important because I fear that we're going to lose it it's a little bit like democracy.
32:21
You take it for granted, we can see, we see that it can go. And I think the same is true of open source. We need to address this. It's okay. So I'm trying to, I'm going to be very careful about how I choose my words and try and be very respectful. But yesterday, you know, we heard about Brett saying
32:41
about open source should feel like, you know, a series of acts of kindness. And for me, maintaining software and being a community organizer in the UK, it actually felt like death by a thousand paper cuts.
33:01
And this was, I think, I guess it was just the sheer amount of cuts that I had to deal with. That was what did it. It was just overwhelming. And so I realized that this was affecting my mental health in about 2018. And I don't mind revealing, you know,
33:22
I went to see a therapist and have help with my mental health. And what I managed to work through was I needed to be able to release this. By that, I mean, the usual narrative about our Python community is a little bit like
33:41
the Lego movie where everything is awesome. And my experience of the UK community was that everything definitely wasn't awesome. And so I needed to release, really. And so in 2018, I kind of went public about how I felt and some of the things that happened.
34:03
And there are many amazing people in the UK Python community who emailed me or got in touch and asked if I was okay. And I was also contacted by people, some of whom were in this room, who are European-wide community organizers.
34:20
And they said, I know how that feels. But true to form, there were some in the community who actually attacked me for saying that everything wasn't awesome. And to this day, it means that I am no longer a part of the UK community. And that fills me with sadness, a great deal of sadness,
34:42
because as far as I can tell, nothing's been done since then to actually address those things. So that's really all I want to say about it. But you need to know that there is a cost. And I've seen that in this conference as well, in the way some people have treated the volunteers who have been putting on this wonderful occasion as well.
35:02
Yeah, well, we were friends by that time. And I know that watching you go through that was horrible, really horrible. And I think it's a problem we have generally with online things. A psychologist I talked to said that we've evolved lots and lots of mechanisms that prevent that
35:22
in face-to-face. There's a thing called the blush reflex, where if I say something awful to you or aggressive to you, I blush, because I know I shouldn't have said that. And of course, once we're behind screens, we lose that. So myself, I think there's going to have to be some special training.
35:42
These things come naturally to some people and not to others. And that's absolutely to be expected. And that's fine too, particularly in such a neurodiverse community. And long may it remain so. But those things come easier to some people than others. And I think we need to start trying to help people who need help with being able to engage constructively
36:06
without upsetting people. I doubt anyone wants to upset the core developer that they're... Yeah, exactly, exactly. Unsurprisingly, coming from me, I see this as kind of like an education problem. How do we interact with the people
36:21
who are coming into our community? Because how we think about education and how we just are with them, what we embody, the things that we do with the people joining our community, we're role models. And if they see kindness in the way that Brett described it, then that's somewhere they would want to be.
36:43
Whereas if they don't see kindness, they get the death by a thousand paper cuts, then they're going to leave. And we don't want that. No, that's right. We lose all the best people. And actually, having worked on an open source project myself in San Francisco during when the pandemic started,
37:04
I was a member of a code for San Francisco Brigade there, which I love code for America. I think it's a great organization. And we did a pandemic dashboard because there are nine counties in the Bay Area and there's no coordination between them. And it was trying to get all the information feeds
37:22
from the different counties was hilarious because everyone was using different... I think there were two APIs and everything else, but just whatever. And so someone in a county made a change and it just kind of broke everything in our fee. And I know how many mistakes I made and how I must have made the people
37:42
at the core of the team, the senior developers, I know I made their lives more difficult sometimes because I didn't quite know what I was doing. It was my first time. And I would have loved some education on how to do open source. Yeah. But the wonderful thing is that they welcomed you into that. I know because I've read bits of the book
38:00
and you were encouraged and shown how to flourish. And I remember when you landed your first pull request. This is the best thing ever. Yeah. And he let me hit the merge one myself. And that was a huge moment. I felt more pride doing that than almost anything I've done.
38:22
So we have just a few minutes left. And I wanted to sort of ask you, you know, being a coder for me, that's changed my life. And I know it was something when you came into the book, you were intrigued about, well, how would learning to code change one?
38:42
So let it all out, right now. Yeah. How have you changed? I was actually a bit worried at first. Yes. Because with the work that I do and the type of writing I do, I have a very laterally tending mind. I've never been particularly good at sort of serial thinking, linear thinking.
39:01
And it's an effort. You know, it's always been an effort for me. I just naturally want to go sideways. And I was partly afraid that in learning to work with the kind of sequential logic of computers, that I might actually lose a little bit of that. And I had two brain scans, fMRI scans, one at the beginning
39:21
and then one about two and a half years later. The first with a team, both with teams who were studying how the brain treats code. The first was in Magdeburg in Germany. And the second was at the lab of an amazing woman named Evelina Fedorenko at MIT, a cognitive scientist.
39:41
And what I learned actually between those is that an fMRI scan can't tell me if the internal workings of my brain have changed. It didn't find any holes or anything like that. You're right. But though it did actually turn up, because I was the only person who was in both studies, so it actually turned up some really interesting stuff,
40:02
if we don't have time to talk to you. It was quite, I think, is significant. But I think the test has to be subjective. And the person probably to ask would be my wife. Has it changed, Andrew? And I know what she would say. She would say, yes, absolutely, it has for the better.
40:20
Because that thing that the programmer told me about learning to enjoy the difficulty, I really think that's life changing. And if you learned code when you were young, I rather suspect you're not even aware of this because you're still being formed, you're still becoming. And so the influence of the code
40:41
and the writing software and working teams is probably not obvious to you. But I was in my mid 50s, late 50s when I started this. And so I was pretty fixed when I came to this. And so I can see the differences. And it is really profound.
41:02
When I'm faced with something, and this is what Jan says, when you're faced with something you're not trained for, a problem, say it's in the AV system, there's sounds gone, something, nothing in the manual, rather than get grumpy and put it off, that I'm now quite good at what you're all
41:24
obviously very good at, which is just sitting down and saying, okay, so what is this problem? What might be the solutions? Has anyone else encountered this? And just stepping through it. There was one glorious moment when our oven had broken and we had these people come in.
41:45
It was a weird oven, right? This is in California. And this team came in and they came in and they went, well, we think the problem is this. And then they did it and that didn't work. And then someone else came in and they said, we think the problem is this. And then they couldn't, for some reason,
42:01
they couldn't do that at that time. And I did what you would all have done. I took what both of them had said and worked through the logic of that and found that actually the problem was in the programming. It was all set wrong and it just needed to be reset. Switch it off and on again. And I wouldn't, that's it.
42:23
Yeah, always the first one. I'll give it a good kick is the other one. And I would never have been able to do that before in a million years. It's a little thing. But actually to me, that gave me huge pleasure. And that's code. That's totally the code. And so the book comes out next?
42:41
It's March in the US. We're not exactly sure when it's going to be in the UK yet. And if anyone is sufficiently interested, you can actually pre-order it in the States now. It's in all the books that are in websites and stuff. And if you just want updates on it to see what's happening,
43:01
my website, andrewsmithauthor.com, you can check it periodically to see if it's in your area. Well, I'm certainly going to be buying a copy. You're not. I'm going to be giving you a copy, mate. Nicholas is in the book from start to finish pretty much. You're the constant figure. Well, with that, I notice we're at time
43:21
and we have the lightning talks starting in about five minutes. So ladies and gentlemen, please give us a round of applause as we try to exit these bean bags. Thank you.