Developer of the week: Katie McLaughlin

Original author: Mike
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This week we welcome Katie McLaughlin ( @glasnt )! She is a key developer of the BeeWare project . You should take a moment and look at her profile on the github to find out what interesting projects she took part in. Katie also has a small, fun website and was a speaker at PyCon 2016. Let's get to know her better!



Can you tell us a little about yourself? (Hobby, education, something else) :


Good afternoon! I am Australian, was born in Brisbane, but now I live in Sydney. I received a bachelor's degree in information technology and have been in the IT industry for almost 10 years. I visited many roles and was associated with a bunch of different technologies, but for the most part these were the areas of web hosting and cloud technologies. When I'm not at a computer or at a conference, I enjoy cooking and making tapestries.


Why did you start learning Python?


To fix a mistake in a small internal project! It was a bug in an old script, I saw #!/usr/bin/env pythonand began to study python. I did not return to the python for several years, but later I was invited to speak at PyCon Australia 2015 and I thought that I should "comb" the little knowledge that I had. That was about a year ago, and now python is my favorite scripting language. I used to use Ruby for several years and so far, although occasionally, I have been printing "puts" instead of "print".


Do you know any other programming languages ​​and which of them is your favorite?


Good question! As for the languages ​​I was paid for - I know JavaScript, Haskell, Scala, C, Python, Ruby, Perl, Bash / Shell, Powerscript, Powershell, PL / SQL, and possibly a few others. Add here a dozen or so languages ​​that I dealt with in high school or at university (mostly Pascal, Lisp, Poplog, Assembly, ActionScript, C #, Java).


But what languages ​​do I really know ? This is a difficult question. Personally, I would define knowledge of the language as the ability to put it into practice. Give me any language and maybe I could work with it, but the style of writing the code would be completely different.


With this in mind, I would say that I know JavaScript, Haskell, Python, Ruby & Bash. #polyglotLife


As for the favorite, in the old days I just loved Poplog. But in reality, I do not use my favorite language everywhere. I use a programming language as part of an environment to solve a specific problem. Using the language in isolation from the environment has not yet brought anyone any benefit. To work, you need to choose the right tool ( smiley )


What projects are you currently working on?


Right now, my main project is BeeWare , an open source project where I am a key developer. You may have heard of him as an open source investment project . BeeWare is a collection of tools and libraries that allow you to write applications in python and distribute them everywhere. Not only in a web environment, but also on Android and iOS platforms.


I am really inspired by what Russell Keith-Magee, the founder and beekeeper of the BeeWare project, has been able to achieve by now . A lot of work is being done now, but a bright future awaits its results.


I am also a key developer in two other projects: octohatrack - an application that shows the total number of project participants on Github , not only those who contributed to the code with master; and emojificate - a module for python, as well as a template for Django, which help make using emojis more accessible on the Internet.


Which python library is your favorite? (Internal or external)


I really enjoy the convenience and simplicity of requests. unicodedata is also funny. Although lately I spent too many hours with boto3.


What niches do you think python moves to as a programming language?


Python, now 25 years old, was originally just a server language. With the advent of Django about 10 years ago, he moved to the web area. And now, python is a major one in other areas, such as education and data science.


However, python runs the risk of being left behind, since now most of the development is far from the server. And recently, IEEE in their research put python in the top languages, but without solutions for embedded or mobile systems.


BeeWare can solve the problem of the presence of python on mobile platforms, Micropython also covers most of the embedded systems. Both of these projects deserve more attention and work so that the python remains in the trend for many more years.


Maybe there is something else you would like to say?


The Python community is amazing! I'm a relative newbie here, but the community has welcomed me with open arms - especially the django community - and I feel so much more at home here than in any other community. This is just wonderful!


Thank you so much for this interview!


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