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The popularity of the Python language has increased exponentially in recent years. Notably, Stack Overflow highlighted Python as the fastest growing major programming language. As Pythonistas, we know why: Python is easy to learn, solves real world problems in a variety of fields, and has an amazingly friendly community. With its success, companies around the world are using Python to build and improve their products, creating a growing need for people that know – or are willing to learn – the language. Today you can see Python’s popularity reflected in the growing supply of Python-related jobs with a quick internet search. Or you can head over to the the Python official site and look at the Python Jobs board! Created in 2010 as a way to connect developers and companies, the Python Jobs board was relaunched in early 2015 and has since been run by an awesome team of volunteers. It’s with great pride that the Python Software Foundation has awarded Jon Clements, Melanie Jutras, Rhys Yor...

When Tim Peters started working on Python, his first advice for Guido van Rossum was that programmers want to add ints and floats . From the beginning, Python had both kinds of numbers, just like today, but adding them together then required a cumbersome type-cast. Peters argued that Python should implicitly convert ints to floats , like most other languages, for programmers' sake: "That is a very common operation for anyone who works with floating point numbers," Van Rossum recalls him saying, "so you’ve got to do it this way." Ever since, Peters has pushed the language in this direction. He insists that Python should be a practical language that caters to the needs of programmers, and he has a knack for guiding design debates to achieve this goal. In recognition of his contributions, the PSF presented Tim Peters with the 2017 Distinguished Service Award . A Realist Algorithm "Timsort is Tim's grand opus," says Van Rossum. The algorithm is not o...

Latin scholars will tell you that “Ophidia in Urbe,” the tag line for PyLondinium (London, June 8-10), is Latin for “Snakes in the City”. The snakes, of course, are Pythonic and “the city” is the City, the banking district of London, specifically Bloomberg’s new European headquarters , just across the way from the Bank of England. It’s a beautiful building and it contains the carefully excavated and reconstructed remains of a 3rd century Roman temple to Mithras. Ergo (as those Romans would say) the need for a Latin tagline. But what’s really distinctive about PyLondinium is the whole idea behind it. PyLondinium was intended to be a small conference that 1) offered great talks, 2) had a very affordable ticket price, and 3) raised a reasonable amount of money for the benefit of the PSF and its programs around the world. And all of this in London, one of the more expensive cities in the world.  With the London and UK Python community at hand, getting great talks was the easy part. K...