Python to Me
My reflections on the Python ecosystem and community
The Codematician
Latest posts
NumFOCUS 2025: A Year of Transition and Renewal
A look back at NumFOCUS in 2025—new executive director, public board minutes, clean audit, and key resolutions that shaped the year.
The new NumFOCUS Admin Board
The new NumFOCUS admin board met for the first time this week and I can say that I am truly honored to serve the community in this capacity. NumFOCUS has been a leading example of how to build open source culture and provide services to our scientific tool makers. With …
Things to do in 2025
I seem to be waking up with purpose every morning so I felt it good to get a list of things I would like to do in 2025. Yeah this list is too long but gives my future self a direction. Daily General Life The heavens declare the glory; the …
Looking back at 2024
You accomplish less in one year than you want more more in 10 than you ever expect. These words of wisdom seem attributed to Bill Gates. This year of any, I started to see their meaning. The past year represented a pretty stark departure from the last decade of my …
When should your board meet
Seems the first duty as a new director at NumFOCUS is to determine when we should be meeting. Simple question deserves a blog post with far too much reflection, but hey I promised more transparency in decision making to numerous NumFOCUS constituents. In my experience through many boards at NumFOCUS …
Rejoining the NumFOCUS Board
A few weeks ago, I was elected to a new term on the NumFOCUS board. This time it is the Admin board while a newly created Technical Steering council has also been formed. One can see some of the differences of the two group on the election webpage . This group …
Thoughts On Board Member Duties
Last weekend I was working at the concession stand. I’m a board member of the local recreation baseball league and the assigned team to work the stand didn’t show up. For those new to the economics of kid sports, the concession stand is where flexible spending comes from …
A Personal Apology to Jeremy Howard and the Community
I, Andy R. Terrel, issue a personal apology to Jeremy Howard and the Community for the handling of the JupyterCon 2020 Code of Conduct reports. As the ranking board member on the NumFOCUS Code of Conduct Enforcement Committee (COCEC), it was my duty to oversee a fair process and that …
Personal history of NumFOCUS
A NumFOCUS History: Sustaining Open Source Scientific Codes After a few of the last board meetings and discussions on board votes, I’ve been pondering a number of questions. Questions about who is NumFOCUS and why we exist. Where we are going and what problems in the world we would …
Diversity at SciPy2014
SciPy2014 is over, but there is so much more to do. I expect to be reviving my blog with a set of prose on my experience. Today I want to talk about a topic that was dear to my heart when I started this blog, diversity in the scientific python …
Joining the Big Data Brain Drain
So long academia and thanks for all the debates! Today is my last day of a wonderful three years at the University of Texas at Austin. Starting Monday, following Jake Vanderplas' terminology , I join the big data brain drain. I will be joining Continuum Analytics a their Chief Computational Scientist …
Women in Scientific Computing, SciPy 2013
This post written by Kristen M. Thyng about an event we both worked to organize at SciPy2013. As in other computing fields, women make up a small percentage of the people in scientific computing. In order to bring together the women at the SciPy conference to aid in building community …
NumPy SciPy Benchmarks
At PyCon2013, a group of about 30 developers got together to discuss NumPy and SciPy. The room mostly included folks that use NumPy and SciPy extensively, such as myself, a few who were just learning, and several core contributors (if not currently in the past), such as Eric Jones, Travis …
SciPy2013 Recap
It's been a week since the end of SciPy2013 , where I was co-chair, and I'm just now catching my breath. It was an amazing event with so many innovative and forward looking trends that I won't be able to give them enough credence, ever. When I took on the role …
Participate at SciPy2013
The early registration deadline is rapidly approaching for SciPy2013, and all our decisions on speakers are out. This year was really tough as we had more submission than ever at a quality that exceeded all my expectations. If you submitted something and haven't heard from us, let me know. If …
Usefulness of a University
The post reiterating that the biggest problem in teaching software carpentry (SWC) is installation, got me all in a tissy. I even signed up for their mailing list! My first impression with SWC was a wonderful community that in encouraging folks to learn computing skills. After witnessing the TeachScheme movement …
A Rule of Software on Usabilty
Make your software useful. That is the point without usefulness there is no need for existence. If you write a function that is not useful, scrub it from your text editors as not to offend the blessed pixels. Do not fear throwing away non-useful parts of your code, better to …
Python Packaging
There are two major hurdles to Python disrupting the entire HPC work stack: packaging and dynamic loading . Today I want to discuss the packaging issue. While there are many people working on these hurdles, it is my opinion that the community needs to seek out methods to solve these hurdles …
Thoughts on the SciPy Conference
For SciPy2012 I was given the privilege of serving as the co-chair of the program committee. The experience was exciting and rewarding as I was able to affect what I view as one of the most important conferences for the scientific world. Now, that's a pretty bold statement and I'm …
Getting started with Python in HPC
Getting to know Python is a pretty hairy task, as is diving into any language. Fortunately Python is considered an easy language to learn and the potential for using it in HPC settings is pretty large. Below I give an introduction to learning, speeding, and scaling Python. Each topic can …